Day 28: Louvre, Champs-Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, Académie Royale de Musique, L'église de la Madeleine, Sacré Coeur et Moulin Rouge

I've never walked so much in my life like on March 28th 2009. Especially in a foreign country. We started our day at the Louvre museum. Since I saw the DaVinci Code, when Tom Hanks enters the main piramide that I asked myself how the museum's like past that marvelous entry. It was a shame we went in through the subway station and not through the main square, but since we left through it anyway it doesn't really matter. Unfortunately, the Louvre being the enormous and artistically wealthy museum it is, we weren't able to see every exhibition nor every wing in so little time. But what I saw was enough for me to be enchanted. Especially the notorious Mona Lisa, of course. I was so surprised when I saw that the painting was so small, I was imagining a huge frame, but no. We went to the greek/roman/etruscan antiques exhibition, to the egyptian antiques exhibitions and to the paintings in general. I was very annoyed when a friend of mine told me she heard a woman (I think she was american) ask her friend if the Winged Victory of Samothrace was the Titanic. Cough, cough.

After taking loads of photographs and filming the center of the museum (especially the elevator, that was neat) and the piramides outside, we wandered an almost never-ending path. From the Louvre we hopped to the Place du Carrousel, to the Jardin des Tuileries and to the Place de la Concorde (and the obelisk, of course). All this wrapped around a gorgeous view of the Eiffel Tower (like I said, I love how in Paris everything is interconnected). All good up to here. Then the rain started. Then the wind. And the cold. And in these conditions we climbed the Champs-Élysées. We stopped for some lunch at a sandwicherie, even though we sat in a promenade with said rain splashing all over our faces (kind of). The heaters helped a bit. We also stopped at Virgin Records since we don't have it in Portugal and we devoured the whole shop. A few steps later we arrived at the l'Arc du Triomphe.

We thought we had already done the main path of what was originally planned, but ooooh nooo. No, no, no. From the l'Arc du Triomphe we catched the subway until de Académie Royale de Musique (the Opera) at the Garnier Palace (even though it was a brief visit, unfortunately). After that, we walked to the Madeleine church. I was so enchanted by Rue Royale (Royale Street) which is perpendicular to the church. My eyes popped when I was the Chanel and Dior boutiques, but I was also surprised when I realized we took the long way around because the obelisk was right in front of us again. There they are again, the interconnections.

I honestly don't remember if we catched another subway in la Madeleine, but even so we made it to the Sacré Coeur walking. And what a climb! The majority of us didn't want to climb until the very top because we were already so exhausted. I was so embarrassed because I didn't know that monument even existed. It reminded me of the Taj Mahal. When I saw the movie Sabrina with Audrey Hepburn and I saw the Sacré Coeur in the background of a scene (in Sabrina's room at her Paris apartment) I smiled so much.

After the Sacré Coeur we went down and walked a bit longer and stopped at the legendary Moulin Rouge. I was a bit sad I was in an excursion, we never get to do half of what we want. We arrived at our hostel very shabbily, but it was an unforgettable day.

Paris, tu me manques beaucoup.

Bisou, bisou *
* Every photograph taken by me.