Beautiful City with Unique Cultures - Paris 4th May 2008

We had our light breakfast at the station with croissant and a little cup of espresso before finding the Paris OpenTour bus stop. The direction gave by the Tourism Info receptionist was not useful at all. We had to spent about 15minutes locating the OpenTour bus stop. The ticket is about Euro29 per person for one day. Gare du Nord is within the Montmarte - Grands Boulevards circuit.


The only problem we had with this hop on-hop off tour was the time that we had to waste waiting for the bus to move on to the next location. I think the bus waited about 15-20 minutes at each stop. We really wasted an hour for this route. We should just take a metro straight to Louvre, and from there we can directly hop on to the bus Paris Grand Tour route. Anyway, here few photos around the yellow route [Opera National de Paris Garnier, La Madeleine, Printemps, Louvre Hotel].


We spent about 3 hours at the Louvre Museum area. Lucky us!Because it's Sunday and therefore we didn't have to pay the usual entrance fee to enter the museum. The queu was also not that bad. Inside and outside look of the museum area are just impressive! The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was built in 1805 to celebrate Napoleon's victory. The glass pyramid of the museum was built by I Ming Pei, an American Chinese born architect in 1989.

Our quest for few popular artefacts of Louvre Museum took longer time than we expected. The museum is so big, and very confusing. Anyway, we did find what we're looking for! The experience of locating Da Vinci Monalisa was particularly funny! The painting is 500 years old in year 2006. I thought I can appreciate more of the Monalisa's smile when I come face to face with her, but errr looking at the number of visitors - well just forget it! Maybe another time... Her smile is said to be so mysterious and many has come up with so many theories over the centuries. I wonder if anyone had obtained a PhD trying to solve Monalisa's smile!


Among so many artefacts that we managed to see include Venus de Milo, Egyptian Squatting Scribe from Saqqara, Winged Victory of Samothrace and Crown Diamonds of Louis XV.



After having express lunch at Louvre cafe, we walked through Jardin des Tuileries. This formal garden is huge.

Then we reached Place de la Concorde. The 3,200 year old obelisk from Luxor, Egypt is just impressive. Around this huge square, there are two fountains and eight statues to depict French cities.

We hop on the Paris Grand Tour route bus to go to our next city exploration - Champs-Elysees, Charles de Gaulle-Etoile, Trocadero and Les Invalides.



We stopped at Esplanade des Invalides to take a walk at the famous Pont Alexandre. We didn't enter the Army Museum because no time but managed to take few photos around the place. A 10-15 minutes strolling through the Esplanade des Invalides was nice. I wish London will have this kind of summer everyday!


The view from Pont Alexandre III was not that spectacular as I imagine. But the bridge itself is unique due to its beautiful decoration. Our next destination using Montparnasse - Saint Germaine bus route passed through the Assemblee Nationale Palais-Bourbon, St Germaine Boulevard and the Notre-Dame area. We stopped at due Lagrange to shop for more souveniers and to have a second lunch at the Lebanese kebab shop. We think this is the best area to hunt for Paris cheap souveniers. There are so many shops and stalls around these areas. Then we continued our journey on the next bus and we passed through the Luxembourg area.

We decided to skip the fourth Bastille - Bercy bus route, and instead took a Paris Grand Tour bus and then hop onto the Montmarte - Grands Boulevards to go back to Gare du Nord. On the journey back, we passed through the famous Moulin Rouge and the XXX route site of Paris heheh.