After leaving Notre Dame, I crossed to the north side of the river and walked west along it until I reached the Louvre.
The statue in the courtyard is of King Louis XIV, who in 1682 chose to change residence from the Palais de Louvre to Versailles, thus allowing the palace to be used as a residence for artists.
The famous palace was built on the foundations of an earlier 12th-century fortress, parts of which are part of the museum's exhibition beneath the ground floor. It was converted to a public museum after the French Revolution and opened officially in 1793. You enter the museum through the iconic glass pyramid and descend into a mall-like foyer with entrances into the different wings of the museum, cafes, and gift shops.
The Louvre is enormous. It contains wing after wing of 35,000 works of art, housed in 650,000 square feet of space, spanning two millennia and three continents at least. I had already seen the Roman art and artifacts (it briefly was shown at the Seattle Art Museum a few years back), but I lingered among the Greek statues and the Italian Renaissance paintings, and spent as long as I could gazing into the eyes of the Mona Lisa (but only after fighting to the front of the mob of tourists gathered around her). I wandered the halls for a good two hours, occasionally getting lost and having to backtrack, and once I'd had my fill, I made my exit through the glass pyramid and went to stroll the Tuileries.
It drizzled on and off and there were low clouds for most of the day, but now and then the Eiffel Tower emerged in the distance.
I stopped for a light lunch at Café le Nemours, just a few minutes across the street from the Louvre: a green salad with warm chevre on toasted bread.
After the fuel-up (and more urgently, the chance to rest my already-aching feet), I headed across the river to the Musée Orsay.
Where the Louvre leaves off at about 1850, Orsay picks up the baton with 19th century Conservative, Neoclassical, Realist, and Impressionist paintings and sculptures. A little pressed for time, I went straight to the top floor for the Impressionists and basked in Monet and Degas for a while, then backtracked to the second floor for Van Gogh.
After I'd taken in about as much classic art as my brain could process in one day, I took a stroll up the Champs-Elysées, surrounded on all sides by glittering storefronts and expensive restaurants. The rain had started up again, so I put away my camera and just walked, heading towards the Arc de Triomphe, where I took the metro south to the Eiffel Tower.
It's a few blocks' walk from the nearest metro station, but the tower is hard to miss. At the time of its construction culminating in 1889, it was the tallest structure in the world, 1,063 feet including the antenna. It was constructed using 7,300 tons of iron and took just over two years to build (about one-hundredth of the time needed to build Notre Dame—how things have changed!).
While it is possible to take elevators to any of the three levels of the tower, I opted to save money and avoid lines by taking the stairs.
Remember last year's 463-step ascent to the cupola of the Duomo of Florence? It is 670 steps to the second story of the Eiffel Tower. My legs ached for days.
I didn't go up to the third and highest level (I was having bad enough vertigo as it was, the elevator lines were long, and sunset had come and gone), but they say that the view is best from the second level, anyway.
Just as I was getting ready to return to solid ground, they switched on the lights.
I made my sore and breathless way back down to earth through the blinding golden floodlights, and followed the crowds across the bridge to place de Trocadéro.
After sunset, for five minutes, the tower comes alive with dancing white lights.
I ended the long day at Café Bonaparte, a block off of boulevard St. Germain, with steak tartare (raw, seasoned, ground beef on toasted bread) and a glass of cider.
Next up: a morning in Pisa!
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