Day Six: Last full day in Paris

We awoke (to more sun!) and took the metro to Sacre Coeur. This is a church in the Montmarte area which offered breathtaking views of Paris from atop a hill. 

When you get to the bottom of the hill, you can use a metro ticket to take the funicular (like an incline car) up the steps and save your feet a bit. Wanting to conserve our tickets, we climbed more steps to see the cathedral. No pictures allowed inside here. 

But what did I tell you about those views?!

We then began a walk downhill past Place du Tertre where many "artists" wanted to paint our portrait. Continuing on through Montmarte which was the inspiration for many famous artists who lived in France including Picasso, Matisse and Cezanne. This was also the dirtiest part of Paris, with scammers and litter all around. We saw the Moulin Rouge. The can-can girls still perform nightly but the tickets are $$$$.

We made our way back to the hotel for a pit stop before taking the metro to Les Invalides again this time to see Musee de l'Armee that had been closed the other day. This was one of John's highlights.

Les Invalides

You guys! My dad collects antiques and he has one of those yellow handled Nazi daggers!

We also saw a ceremony with French military cadets. 

They were singing La Marseillaise!

After the museum, we went back to see the Eiffel Tower in the sun and got pictures with blue sky. 

This is our only picture together in France. We need to work on asking people to take them for us.

We headed in the direction of the next (and last) two museums on our itinerary but first we needed sustenance. I wanted to write down every restaurant, what we ate and how much our meals were but sadly, I did not. I don't recall the name of the place we ate but it was most likely a tourist trap, due to the proximity to the museums. I ordered a hamburger but it arrived, inexplicably with no bun. I didn't bother trying to inquire for one. I'll talk about this later in a wrap-up post but as a whole, we were completely underwhelmed by most meals in Paris.

Then, we headed over to Musee de l'Orangerie. This was on the Museum Pass (duh) but we would have gone anyway just to see Monet's Waterlilies. Holy cow! I have seen other prints of this in other art museums but there is nothing like the original. The colors were so vivid and it's HUGE! There are 8 (I think) gigantic panels on the walls all around the oval shaped room that houses it. No pictures here, sadly. But I will never forget what it looks like.

Relatively nearby is the Musee d'Orsay.

No photos allowed in here either but we saw a lot of people breaking that rule. Including John, who took this photo on the sly. If you saw the movie Hugo (highly recommend!) you'll recognize the clock. Musee d'Orsay used to be a train station before it became home to masterpieces.

LOTS of Van Gogh, Degas, Monet, Cezanne and more. I love impressionism so both of these museums were awesome for me. d'Orsay is also on the Museum Pass. I didn't add it all up but I know we got more than our money's worth, especially with saving time not standing in line.

Looking a little tired here

There is a sizeable cafe in Musee d'Orsay where we had a delightful treat of wine (I forget what I had but John's Gewurtztraminer was outstanding!) and a pistachio mille feuille. Oui, I even ordered in French.

Delicious! We stopped back at that outdoor market near the Louvre, bought a few more things and made our way home. A few drinks at the Cricketer (yes, we went back -- it was Ladies Night!), dinner at Cafe Marco Polo and back to the hotel to pack. The last night of a trip is always the saddest.

We ate some dessert and drank wine while we packed and went to bed thinking everything to be all right for our flight the next day. Boy, were we wrong!