2 am Tram/Train Ride, Paris, Versailles, Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, Tired....Days 13 and 14

The next morning we had to leave Munich to travel to Paris, France.  We knew there was a lot we wanted to see in Paris and didn’t want to waste a whole day in travel.  That meant we ended up taking a downtown tram at 2 am, yes you read that right--2 am, in order to get to the train station to catch our 3 am train to Paris.  Ugh.  It also saved us some money going at that hour since it was not a popular time to travel.  Go figure--haha!  Anyway, it was so early.  I was very nervous to ride a tram, a mini train like Trax in Salt Lake, through the streets of Munich at 2 am.  We had to sit at the very dark outdoor tram stop with all our luggage for a few minutes until the tram came with some interesting people, but luckily, nothing crazy happened.  We made it to the train station and had to wait for about 20 minutes for our train to arrive.  Since we had to leave so early in the morning, we packed everything the night before and just ‘slept’ (if you can call 4 hours of sleep slept) in our regular clothes.  Both of us were pretty tired when we got to the train station.  We did get to talk to the kids at a regular hour for them, though.  It was about 7 pm in Utah so we were able to FaceTime with them for a bit while we waited which was nice.

 We tried to sleep on the way to Paris, but for some reason it wasn’t very restful--haha!

We got to see the sunrise somewhere in the misty German or French countryside (we had no idea which one at this point) which was pretty:

When we got to Paris we had to wait in a long line to get our subway tickets.  Then we had to try and wrangle our luggage through the train station involving quite a few staircases up and down to get to the subway stop.  Then we rode the packed subway (it was rush hour) while standing up since there was no room to sit down for 30 minutes to our hotel.  That was not very easy, but we made it okay.  It was too early to check in at our hotel so we just dropped our luggage off and went to go sightseeing.  Here’s our hotel:

We then decided to go out and see the Palace of Versailles.  Versailles is about 12 miles outside of Paris so it took a bit longer to get out there.  It was cool to see, though.  The Palace of Versailles is a former royal residence.  Construction to build it was started in 1634, but took another 40 years to finish.  It was later turned into a museum in 1837. In 1919 the Treaty of Versailles was signed putting an end to WWI.  The place is quite large and has an interesting history.

There was a lot to see while we were there.  They had some cool artwork like this famous one of Napoleon:

It was a pretty opulent palace:

A personal favorite was the Hall of Mirrors:

Some more cool rooms:

Here’s a small glimpse of the backside of the palace:

The grounds were beautiful so we decided to walk around and check them out.

We didn’t realize how massive they really were until after walking straight for over 25 minutes we were still in the middle of them.

I wanted to go and see the Queen’s Hamlet which was 2 miles away from the original Palace, however, when we finally got out there it was an additional fee to see it.  We were starting to run short on time so we decided to forego it.  We realized we were actually close to the Paris temple and decided to walk over there to see it instead.  It was an additional 2 mile walk to the Paris Temple from the Queen’s Hamlet.  The temple was in an interesting location.  It was kind of like a nicer strip mall.  Anyway, the temple was beautiful.  We had time to walk around the grounds for a bit.  They were pretty tiny, but beautiful.  Here’s the outside of the temple:

On the grounds they had a Christus statue.  A worker asked in English if we would like him to take our picture.  He then heard us talk and then asked us where we were from.  We just said the United States.  He then asked where from.  We said Utah.  He then asked us where from in Utah.  We said Salt Lake since that would be the most likely known city closest to where we actually live.  He then rolled his eyes and asked what city, really.  We said Clinton.  He knew where that was since he was actually from Tooele.  That was crazy.  That was the first regular English speaker we had heard for a while.  That was kind of cool to run into him out there.

Here’s the outside sign:

We went inside and filled our water bottles and spoke with the visitor center missionaries for a bit. Then we had to be on our way because we still had a 2 mile walk to get back to the train/subway stop.  We had an appointment for the Eiffel Tower that evening.  We rode the subway back to our hotel.  Our hotel was by a subway stop.  We then checked into our room.  After that we walked over to the Eiffel Tower because our hotel was close by.  We walked around the outside and admired it:

We had an appointment to ride the elevator up shortly after.  The views from it were awesome.

An interesting side note....I did a semester abroad in London, England about 23 years ago.  During that semester we took a week and spent it in France.  During that week in France, my friends and I had the chance to climb the stairs to the second level of the Eiffel Tower.  That was a lot of stairs.  By the time we got to the second tier it was dark, but the views were amazing.

Anyway, after being up there for a bit we rode the elevator, which is a lot easier than doing the stairs back down.  Here’s what it looks like from the middle of the bottom:

At this point we were running out of energy since we had been up since 2 am.  We walked around it a bit more then headed back to the hotel and crashed for the night.

My watch said we walked 26,861 steps, went 13.2 miles, and climbed 17 flights that day.  We were tired.

The next morning we got up early and headed over to the Louvre since our reserved ticket time was 9 am. I am glad we got there early because as the day went on it got pretty busy.  When we got there we were one of the only ones at the ‘Winged Victory’ Statue whereas later on it in the day there were a lot of people around it.

The Louvre is MASSIVE!!  It’s galleries span over 15 acres.  So we only saw a very small portion of what it had to offer, but it was still A LOT!!  The galleries are huge.  Here’s just one hallway of many displaying artwork:

We did see the Mona Lisa:

We didn’t have all day to spend here so we saw as much as we could in the 5 hours we had here.

The Apollo Gallery Ceiling:

They have everything from paintings to sculptures, to mummies, to jewels, etc.  Here’s some beautiful diamonds from a royal jewels collection:

The Venus de Milo which was a sculpture created sometime between 150-125 BC.:

It looks the same as it did 23 years ago--haha!

Athena of Velletri:

The Egyptian artifacts were interesting as well.

The Great Sphinx of Tanis:

Egyptian Dog Statue:

Here is a view from one of the second floor windows inside the museum:

Did I mention how big this place is?!?  We did manage to get turned around quite a few times and had to ask directions from some employees.  Luckily, they could speak enough English to help us out.  

Dying Slave sculpture by Michelangelo:

Saint Mary Magdalene sculpture:

Liberty Leading the People painting:

Cour Marly:

They even had some rooms set up to show the furnishings of Napoleon:

We did grab a quick picture of the famous pyramid from the outside:

Looks a lot the same as it did from 23 years ago--haha!

We did stop and look at the Arc de Triumph du Carrousel before we left the area:

We then headed over to Sainte Chappelle to make our reservation time.  Sainte Chappelle was a royal chapel.  It was built around 1238 and was consecrated in 1248.

It is well known and famous for it’s collection of 13th century stained glass.  The bottom level or lower chapel was beautiful:

The second level or upper chapel was stunning.

We tried to FaceTime the kids while we were there so they could see it, but it wasn’t working.  We did this short video clip and sent it to them so they could see the inside, too.  It was awesome:

When we finished at Sainte Chappelle we came out into the courtyard of the Palais de Justice.  We looked around for a bit.

We then headed over to Notre Dame.  It had a major fire a few years ago so you couldn’t go inside anymore.  They have started to rebuild it, but it is still sad that so much was burned.  They had a fence around it so this was as close as we could get.

I was able to go inside 23 years ago, but not this time.  Here’s a small glimpse of what the inside looked like 23 years ago:

They are rebuilding it, but it will take a while since so much was destroyed.  Here’s a side view of the reconstruction:

We did pass by the Olympic Rings set up on the front of the Courtyard of the Hotel de Ville.  Paris is set to host the 2024 summer games.  It was cool to walk by the rings:

We stopped by to see the Mermaid statues on the Place de la Concorde fountain:

We did also stop by and see the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde as well.  This 3300 year old Egyptian obelisk was moved from Luxor and erected on the square in 1836. This royal square was the execution site of Louis XVI, Marie Antionette, Charlotte Corday, etc.  

We then stopped by Garden des Tuileries which is a beautiful park and rested for a minute.

On our way back to the subway we did get this cool shot of the Obelisk and the Eiffel Tower:

We then went back to our hotel and grabbed a quick dinner.  Then we walked over to see the Eiffel Tower again because we could.

We walked so much this day.  Both or our feet were pretty sore by the time we headed back to the hotel to be done for the day.  This is what my watch showed as for how much we walked--28,002 steps, 13.56 miles, and 32 flights climbed that day: