March 20, 2015
Today was supposed to be the best day weather wise. We decided to set today aside to explore the sites of Paris outdoors. When we woke up the weather was gloomy, gray and misting. After significant soul-searching, we decided to hang at the hotel a little longer while we waited for the weather to clear up. It appeared that the weather gods were not smiling on us so we headed out. The first stop of the day was lunch. We had been planning on the Hard Rock Cafe but we were distracted by Chipotle. The Hard Rock did however successfully tempt us for dessert with their famous brownie sundae.
We walked by the Pompidou Center which houses the public Information Library as well as the National Museum of Modern Art. This museum was built in 1977. What makes this building unique is the fact that it is inside out. The skeleton of the building is exposed meaning all of the colorful guts (plumbing, climate control, electrical, etc) are on display.
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| Pont Neuf La Siene Paris, France |
The next stop was a walk over to Ile de la Cite to see Notre Dame. We took a break in the playground on the side of the cathedral before heading to our next destination. From there we headed to the Pantheon. Construction started for the Pantheon in 1758 it was complete in 1790. The original intention for building this structure was a church but it is now used as a secular mausoleum for some of France's elite including Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and Voltaire.
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| Notre Dame Paris, France |
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| Pantheon Paris, France |
From there we walked through the Luxembourg Gardens which were showing signs of spring in the green grass and colorful flowers. We chilled in the garden for a bit with the locals, then we headed toward two of Paris' most notable landmarks, the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe for picture taking.
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| Luxembourg Gardens Paris, France |
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| Eiffel Tower Paris, France |
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| Arc De Triomphe Paris, France |
After a quick dinner of steak and a chicken sandwich at a place called the Hippopotamus we saw the Mugler Follies, a cabaret style show at the Comedia Theatre. The show was in French but it wasn't that difficult to follow along with what was going on. Anyone interested can check it out further online.
Somewhere around Notre Dame the clouds started to break apart, unfortunately we were left with quite a bit of cloud and smog cover for the remainder of the day. Paris has been having some massive air pollution issues lately (including being the city with the worst air quality in the world temporarily) due to lack of wind and warm temperatures aloft creating a virtual “bubble” over the city from which pollutants can’t escape. Due to this and the season in general the weather wasn’t the best.
We finished our trip with another quiet day inside shopping and hanging out in Paris, then flew to Oslo in preparation for our trip back stateside.