Notre Dame and More Art

The second full day was just as jam packed with activities.  In order to be ready to go, we started off with the hotel breakfast.

 

The first place we headed was to the Notre Dame Cathedral.

 

Here are some sights from along the way.

 

 

Ah, there it is, Notre Dame.

 

 

I think we must be blind because we never located the way up the towers.

 

These are on the front of the building.

Here we are inside.

I thought it was funny they kept a replica inside.

Here is the organ, which actually played while we were inside.

Although we never found the tower, we did enter the treasury and looked at all the bling.

When we got out, it was already time to grab some lunch before we started walking.  This place, Aux Tours de Notre Dame, was just outside the Cathedral, which made it convenient.

 

Ryan started with the onion soup.  See, when you are in France, the French is implied, so here it is just onion soup.  I didn’t mention this, but Ryan was extremely sick for this trip, and on this day was only feeling a little better with the French medications we picked up.  He actually credits this bowl of soup with saving his life, by not only making him feel better, but giving him the will to live.  Seriously, he said this was the best onion soup he has ever had.

I ordered a cheese omelet.

Now, Ryan’s soup was 9 euro, and a good portion, but he had also ordered a tuna sandwich, which was good, but we were already so full.  He made me eat some of this too.

Yes, we even ordered fries.

Now, if that wasn’t enough food, while we were walking to the next museum, we stopped at a Haagen Daz.

While Ryan waited for an ice cream, I HAD to get a crepe on the street.  I was in Paris for heaven’s sake!

look at all that nutella.

I had nutella with banana.

Look how cute it is when they serve it to you.

This was super cheap (under 4 euro) and super tasty.

 

I had to stop and take a picture of the American Apparel store in Paris.

Next stop: The Jewish Art and History Museum.

This is in the courtyard.  Sorry, no pictures were allowed to be taken inside.  It was a very nice museum with a good history of the Jews in France and throughout Europe.  They had many old items there that were well preserved.

After this museum, we walked a very short distance to the Pompidou, which has the museum of modern art.  The building itself is a work of art too, in the modern art sense.

The front houses an escalator to take to the top levels.

Here is the view on the ride up.

At the top, there was a nice view, so I took a few pictures here too.

Then we headed to the 4th floor for some really modern art and some displays by feminist artists.  I am not posting all of those because some are quite graphic.  The next set of photos are all from the modern art section here.

Yes, even food storage containers are considered art.

 

Then we headed to the 5th floor for some modern art, but classic works.  Artists shown here include Dali, Chagall, Picasso and Kadinsky, and many more from that era.  I have some pictures of these works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After this museum, it started to rain, so we ducked into the nearest place to grab some dinner and wait it out.  This was a pasta and pizza place, not far from the Pompidou.

 

Ryan and I split a 4 cheese pizza.  As this is France, this pizza had some different cheeses as part of the 4.  I loved that there was even “stinky” cheese on it (as we call at our house).

 

 

Here are some more pictures from the journey back to the Eiffel Tower, where we planned to take a night cruise down the Seine River.

 

 

On the way we found this book shop, which is mentioned in the Rick Steves Books.

 

You can see as we approached the tower, it was still light outside.

 

We made it to the boat just in time for the 10 pm cruise.  The company we took the cruise with is called Bateaux Parisiens.  The hotel had given us 2 free tickets.  Since it was threatening more rain outside, it was nice that this boat was covered.

 

Here are some night shots as we cruised the river.  I love how well light the city is at night.  Everything has a nice, warm glow.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Here we are, back at the Eiffel Tower.  You can see how dark it is now.

Now it was time for bed because Ryan was still sick, and it was late.  After a short walk back to the hotel, we were ready to call it a night.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever been to a Jewish history museum?  Have you ever take a boat ride for sight seeing while on vacation?  Do you like French onion soup?  What is your favorite topping for crepes?