The Perfect Way to Spend Your First Day in Paris

The Gorgeous Cluny, ignore the construction...

I am going to go ahead and pat myself on the back for planning this part of the trip very well. Well done, Me!
Anyway, we went to the Cluny Museum first thing. It was about a block away from where we stayed at the Hotel Marignan and happens to be a smaller museum that sells, and participates in, the Paris Museum Pass. Pick up one of those and you can skip ticket lines at a bundle of monuments and museums: it covers your admission and lets you go straight to security. There were maybe 2 other people at the Cluny as we got there right as it opened. We spent a short time there before moving on to our next sight and came back another day, but we took a couple photos...



The Cluny lets you see some stained glass up close, usually the windows are much farther away.

We made the 5 minute walk from the Cluny to...NOTRE DAME! (Pronounced Noh-Truh -DAAhm) The greatest Gothic Cathedral, arguably, in the world. Notre Dame means Our Lady (referring to Mary) and she is quite a lady, probably my favorite spot in Paris was right here next to her on the Ile de la Cite.

You may notice the soldiers behind me, evidence of the heightened security here.

We got to know Our Lady very well. We climbed up her towers and met her many gargoyles. None of them dance or sing, sorry Disney fans. I've heard from multiple sources about how long and slow the line can be to get up into the bell tower, but we got there shortly after the tower opened and only waited 20 minutes or so. All you Paris travel junkies know how good that is, and it is only the beginning of how minimal crowds and lines were for us.

 

Protective nets to keep us from jumping a la Quasimodo.

Even on a hazy day the view was pretty fabulous!

  And we climbed up and met the bells. While we were up there, the bells in the other tower started ringing, which was awesome. Sorry, this video isn't great, but you can hear the bells!

I guess it was a bell like this one in the other tower that we heard ringing.

I am a little Gargoyle obsessed. I just really liked that this eagle is, like, eating grapes or something. I  loved getting up to close to them, seeing the details, naming them...

I call these ones Herbert and Sam.

We climbed up on top of the bell tower as well, as if the views weren't good enough before, and we got the full 360 of Paris.

 

 Yes, we saw Notre Dame top to bottom! Outside...

and in. I am a nut for stained glass. Notre Dame's Rose window is among the largest you'll find anywhere.

And we wander around the back and check out Our Lady's flying buttresses. She looks good from every angle. This is going to be a super long post, by all means keep reading for the world's most beautiful windows at Sainte Chapelle:

This stunning little chapel was built to house the Crown of Thorns, a relic of the Catholic Church. The is, hands down, the greatest stained glass I have ever seen, glorious colored light from every side.

Pro tip: The camera will probably pick up more color through a window that is not getting direct sunlight. look at all those blues and greens

And on to our next stop...

The LOUVRE! It wasn't hard to find what was once the largest building in the world, but it took a while to get to the entrance. It's big. Really big. Really, really big.

The Napoleon III Apartments: Lavish and large.

The now enclosed courtyards of the Louvre hosts hoards of great Greek (and imitation Greek) statues.

Winged Victory, one of the big hits of the Louvre, does not disappoint.  And here is the world's most famous face! I was a little star struck. She isn't big, but she is beautiful. This is as close as you can get to her these days. I guess her theft back in 1913 left the French feeling very protective. She was moved something like 7 times during WWII to keep her out of Nazi hands, her caretaker almost died for her. This is the part where I make an obligatory comment about her smile.

Surrounded by masterpieces, how does one handle all of the art? All of the history? Well you enjoy it, brag about it, then you go back to your hotel and eat macarons.

Lee and Michelangelo's Slave

I wondered if the Louvre would live up to the hype or if I would be one of those people who left thinking they'd just spent all day being bored by old stuff. If you are one of those people, then I am really sorry you went to arguably the greatest museum of ancient-romantic era art and couldn't find anything that took your breath away. I am sorry that the grand scope of human achievements bores you. Go home and read a book.

 Learn a little about the how Michelangelo discovered figures in enormous marble slabs without creating models or sketches to copy from. Or how Rembrandt did one of his famous self portraits using the same brush for every stroke: every texture--hair clothing, skin--were created by the artist without the assistance of different sized or shaped brushes. Study French history from Louis XIV to Napoleon Bonaparte, the turbulent bloody times that led to this museum being the first of it's kind being open to the public. And make sure you explore the more recent events that led to the theft of over 4 million pieces of art by Nazi leadership. A significant portion of the art at this museum was hidden away to protect it from bombs, looting, and calculated theft during WWII. Much modern art--"degenerate" is the term Hitler used--was burned. Masterworks that will never be seen again. If you knew just how close this all came to being rubble and embers, how close we came to losing the greatest cultural artifacts and sites in Europe, maybe you wouldn't yawn your way through the Louvre. People made incredible sacrifices to keep this art safe, it was worth risking their lives.

If you don't enjoy this incredible collection, don't blame the art or the curator. It's not them, it's you. It's okay to not know about all this, I didn't. But before I visited one of the worlds greatest museums, I took the time to learn. I researched the crap out of this trip with the help of good guidebooks, the internet, and my library card, so that I would get more out of my trip. The time spent in preparation was well worth it if it meant that I could chuckle at the look on the Pope's face as Napoleon crowns himself.