FIRST FOUR DAYS - DECEMBER 23 - 26
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Day Five: A walk up the Jardins Tweedledee to the abominable pyramid which serves as the entry to the Louvre. If you intend to visit many museums, it will pay you to purchase a four-day pass to the popular museums which also allows you to bypass most long lines. Among other things we saw the obligatory Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. We met Ken and Elise for dinner at a nearby restaurant. .
Day Six: St. Sulpice and the notorious Rose Line made famous in The DaVinci Code. Then to the Pantheon which not only houses French heros and Foucault's pendulum, but also some mammoth installation art. We end the day at Centre Pompidou one of whose features is the fourth floor exhibition of installation art. A sandwich for dinner. .
Day Seven: Finally Montmartre, Sacré Coeur and Place du Tertre. We walked up many steps to reach the summit and came down via Rue des Martyrs ending at Place Pigalle and Moulin Rouge. Then a walk through the Marais again to Place des Vosges, a seventeenth century housing project for the rich and famous. And on that bitter cold night we met Ken and Elise for the obligatory Tour Eiffel. .
Day Eight: Rodin Museum, Les Invalides and finally Musée d'Orsay. This is without doubt the best art museum I have ever visited! I is devoted to impressionist art, pre- and post-. It is a gem and unfortunately we left it for the end when we had little time or energy left. It will be first stop on our next visit. .
Day Nine: New Years Eve. We arrive at Charles deGaulle airport with hours to spare only to discover that the flight was overbooked and we had been bumped! We were going to do the Seinfeld bit explaining what a reservation meant, but restrained ourselves. The original flight was with a dubious connection at Boston due to shortness of time. . That's the bad news. The good news was that we were put on a direct flight to JFK three hours later, that we had emergency exit seats which allowed us to stretch without limit and visit the lavatory without let or hinderance…and that they gave us $720 each by way of apology. Of course the baggage did not follow until the next day but we received consolation toilet kits. .
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