Paris {day three}

Our third day in Paris was still pretty overcast, so we planned to spend a majority of the day at the Louvre. We got four-day Museum Passes, which I would highly recommend (they also come in 2-day and 6-day passes). It covered entrance fees for almost everything we wanted to see, so we saved a lot of money and got to skip ahead of the line everywhere. We got up early and were in line before the Louvre even opened.

It was massive and had a ton of beautiful paintings and sculptures that we absolutely loved. It was almost too big - we had picked out a few exhibits that we really wanted to see, focused on those, and kinda skimmed over everything else so we could see it but didn't stop to read all the signs and such.

Ramses and the Victory of Samothrace

1) Venus de Milo, 2) The Code of Hammurabi, 3) Athena

 

Everyone had told us that the Mona Lisa was so much smaller than they had expected. So we thought it was going to be real tiny, and it ended up actually being a bit bigger than we were expecting! For reference, according to google, the actual dimensions are 2'6" x 1'9".

We saw several painters who were replicating other paintings within the museum, as well as students who were sketching in notepads. I couldn't imagine being able to do that at all, much less with so many people walking around and stopping to watch.

There were amazing views of the city all throughout the museum's windows. Some of my favorite shots:

Ile de Cite

The Seine River

The Louvre Courtyard

Tuileries Garden

The Louvre Courtyard

We were over it by lunch time, and as you can see from the last picture it had finally cleared up outside. So we decided to venture out since we had a whole free afternoon ahead of us. From there, we walked along the river to the Sainte-Chapelle.

The first floor is a beautiful little chapel.

We almost didn't go up to the second floor but we were so glad we did. It was an absolutely gorgeous church. The stained glass windows were stunning!

 The sky was pretty crazy - just 30 minutes later when we left it was nice and blue again.

The Pont de l'Archêvché was just a few minutes away, so we did our love lock since we had forgotten it the day before. Beware, there is also a fake love lock bridge on the Ponts des Arts, just up the river from the Ile de Cite.

That evening, we randomly stumbled upon Le Grand Colbert for dinner. As we were walking in, we saw a poster for the movie Something's Gotta Give, which prompted a heated discussion over the next few days on whether or not the restaurant was actually the one they went to in the movie. There were several other movie posters inside, so we weren't sure whether they were random movies shot in Paris or if they were all related to the restaurant. We actually own the movie, so we watched it when we got back home - turns out it was the restaurant in the movie, and we sat in the exact same seats as Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. Pretty funny! Had we known that, we definitely would have taken a picture, but this was all I got. 

braised beef - delicious!!