Bonjour, Paris!

As usual, for our first full day in a new city, we had a full agenda! We got up early with the goal of hitting two museums before the afternoon. First stop, though – caffeine and pastries! We met Will outside our hotel and walked to a place between our hotels and the first museum of the day. I had chai and a lemon cake, which was pretty good. Kiley had a hot chocolate that she said was really rich but delicious! Thus fortified, we headed off to the Musee Picasso, a museum dedicated to Pablo Picasso and his works. This was a short visit but interesting! His work in cubism and surrealism are arguably the most famous, but he also explored a ton of other styles and types of art in his lifetime. Worth a visit if you’re interested in Picasso!

Next up, we visited the Musee d’Orsay. This is one of my favorites from last time I was in Paris, so I was glad to have another opportunity to visit. This museum is in a building that used to be a large train station for Paris. It fell into disuse, and fortunately was saved from destruction. It opened as an art museum in the 80s. It’s a massive place, nowhere near the size of the Louvre across the river, but still a huge place you could spend hours in! We had just gotten started with our visit and entered one of the corridors to look at the pieces in there when suddenly some employees started aggressively ordering everybody out and toward the entrance. Of course, being deaf, we couldn’t understand exactly what was going on… but a few minutes later, the situation seemed to have been resolved and we asked an employee what happened. The employee said that there was an abandoned bag that they were concerned about, but the owner had been located. Glad it turned out to be nothing!!

We saw some really neat pieces here, including some works by Degas, Monet, Renoir, Manet, Van Gogh, and more! Below are some of my favorite bits we saw.

After our visit, we grabbed a quick lunch at a small shop near our hotel. I had a croque monsieur which was good other than the fact that the cheese on top was super hot and the sandwich was cold in the middle. Meh. At this point, Kiley and I were ready for a break (we did 20+ miles of walking at Disneyland plus like 4 or 5 miles on this day so far) so we decided to retire to our hotel for a short nap and rested until about 4:45pm.

We reconvened with Will and headed off to our next stop of the day – the Paris Catacombs! I had also visited this place last time I was in Paris, and thought it was super interesting, and Kiley wanted to see it as well. So why not! We had timed tickets, and once we entered, we had to climb down over 100 steps. The catacombs are deep underground, underneath the metro lines. It’s a real labyrinth down there! They had us on a linear path, with offshoots from the tunnel blocked off, but I can see how it’d be very easy to get lost in the maze down there. The entire visit took about 45 min to a hour, and we saw the bones of millions of long-dead people, stacked neatly and sometimes in oddly macabre designs. This site was created in response to the effects of overflowing cemeteries in Paris. Quite an interesting sight to see!

Once we emerged from underground, it started pouring. Luckily, we were still under cover in the gift shop area, so we waited for a little bit to see if it’d let up. After about 15 minutes, the rain lightened up considerably, so we decided to find a place for dinner. We ended up at an Italian place… yet more pizza! Definitely the food I’ve eaten the most on this trip, lol. It was delicious though!

After getting our pizza fix, it was not too far off from sunset, so we thought we’d attempt to visit the Eiffel Tower. Tickets were completely sold out online weeks ago, but they said that you could try getting tickets on the day of. Luck was on our side, because we were able to get tickets to the tippity top, and we saw a nice sunset! I love the tower. From a distance, it doesn’t seem that big – at least compared to other skyscrapers or monuments I’ve visited – but walking under it, it does feel massive and quite an elegant creation! A great visit and great views!

We called it a night after enjoying the Eiffel Tower. A great, full first day in Paris! More later…