European Vacation: Wednesday & Thursday July 31 to August 1 PARIS

This morning's breakfast was in our own "garden". So nice. a good start for our busy day ahead.

This is the "The Original Bus Tour" bus--- hop-on, hop-off tour bus which we took to tour the city of Paris. It gave us a view of the many facets of the city. Shopping areas, restaurants & cafe's, historical buildings, churches, outdoor market, etc. and people, people everywhere. Here are some of the sites along the way.

People everywhere. There are 26,000,000 visitors a year to Paris.

Market all along a street which takes place twice a week.

Many outdoor cafes

Large gold dome holds the remains of Napoleon I

Trocadero Gardens

Seine River

There's just so much to see. Paris is a very large city.

Our destination and goal for today ---- take the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Did I mention there are a lot of people near the Eiffel Tower?

Standing in line to buy tickets to the top. It took about 2 hours to get to ticket booth ad about anher 1/2 hr. to get on elevator that brought us to the 2nd level of tower. Dd you know that this tower was built as a temporary structure for the world fair in 1889 - Exposition Universelle? It took 2,500,000 rivets to put it together. When it was complete it was the tallest building in the world -- 300m high

There is a monument of Gustave Eiffel, at the base of the tower, who was the engineer of this amazing structure. The Eiffel Tower has more visitors, about 7,000,000 a year, than any other paid monument in the world.

We are at the second level of the tower showing some of Paris behind us.

View of the park where we were sitting the night before from one end to the other.

Very striking as we look around, as to how white everything looks. Paris is such a huge city with so many buildings. The Seine River is on the left.

This was taken from the top floor..... over 900 ft. high.

We stopped for lunch at the top. A hot dog is made differently in Paris. Start out with a baguette, then ream out the centre, squirt some catsup and dijon mustard into the hole, and stuff in 2 or was it 3 hot dogs. It was pretty good.

Here we all are at the top with the beautiful city of Paris behind us.

Pretty pink flowering tree with the Eiffel Tower.

We left the Eiffel Tower about 3 pm, got on the Red Bus and headed out for our next tour stop ........ On our way we saw this bridge lined on both sides with brass padlocks. { see blog from Venice}

When you stand at a distance the sides of the bridge look gold from all the locks.

Our next stop "The Louvre", which is the one of the world's largest museums. It contains sculptures, paintings, tapestries. You name it has it. And of course the famous "Mona Lisa" .

Here we are at the entrance --Glass Pyramid. It was a very hot day.

Tom & Michael listening to info about what is enclosed in glass.

Sandy & I listening to the commentary about this sculpture.

Largest painting in the museum "The Wedding Feast of Cana"-- almost 22 ft x 30 ft.

The famous Mona Lisa.31 in. x 21 in. which is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. You wouldn't believe the number of people around the painting taking pictures!

See the Mona Lisa behind Tom & I?

Painting and artwork in the ceilings. Incredible!

We spent a few hours at the museum but only saw a fraction of this massive museum. So many beautiful things to see. Lots of stairs up and down.