Sunday 20 July Paris

We tried to leave home fairly early this morning, to get to the Louvre before the crowds, and we made it by 9:15, which wasn't too bad. Our first appointment was with Mona Lisa,
and after that we just cruised along with our headphones, past lots of mostly 17-19 century European paintings, but also some ancient sarcophagi, pots, and statues, ('Winged Victory' - headless ancient statue which had great attraction to Japanese with cameras)
and finished at closing time with sculpture. I hadn't intended that we stay all day - it just happened that while we were there we may as well keep going. (We both liked this lady better than Lisa.)

We lay on the grass in the Tuileries gardens to recover, then caught another train to Notre Dame.
Being Sunday, there was a Mass in progress, but still tourists wandering up and down, talking and flashing cameras - we wondered what the faithful think of it all.
We had intended to use our Eurail pass to get a cheap Seine cruise, but they wouldn't be in it, so we went off to tea on the left bank. We chose a cafe with a set price menu - for entree he had snails and I had goat's cheese on toast.

After that we headed back down along the riverbank, and just about made it to the Eiffel Tower by 22:00 for their light show.

The fountains in the Trocadero Gardens were not working, so we went to the station, got a train in the wrong direction, but got home eventually.