Paris Day 2 – Musee du Louvre

Today we went to one of the best museums in the entire world, Musee du Louvre. We started at a nice café right in front of the Louvre, and took the advice to enter at the Carousel du Louvre to skip the long lines. Sitting in the café at the plaza, we understood how one could let hours waste away with a good book and cup of coffee. As much as the café had a nice ambience, it was also the city of Paris surrounding you, that made the scene so you could sit back and think.

At the Louvre, we saw most of the Denon and Sully wings, including the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, as well as sculptures of Augustus Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. They’ve improved the audio guides substantially since Joe was last in Europe. No longer do you have to continue linearly, but you can click on whatever interests you most and here about that.

For lunch we went to Notre Dame first, and sat in on Mass. After mass, we took pictures of the cathedral, and then headed for lunch right behind the Cathedral. We took Jean-Francois’ advice yet again and enjoyed Berthillon ice cream after Notre Dame – which he promised us was a very French thing to do. And from what we could see it was. There were also a bunch of really cool shops in that neighborhood and we window-shopped.

We were exhausted from the previous day of traveling and getting on Europe time so we went back to our hotel to nap. Thanks to Courtney’s suggestion, we ended up making dinner reservations at Hotel du Nord. The restaurant in Hotel du Nord turned out to be a hip hang out for young Parisians. The food was amazing. We were a bit worried about communicating with our server. As luck was in our favor, he happened to speak Spanis and was able to recommend some wonderful entrée choices for us – which included a yummy Chinese chicken salad, a tuna salad, black angus steak, and a warm chocolate dessert.