Glimpses of Paris- Part II

Continuing from my previous post about the short trip to Paris...
Besides the Eiffel tower, my daughter also wanted to see Musee du Louvre. Based on our previous visit to the Louvre, when we scheduled an entire day exclusively for it and still came back unsatisfied, we knew that it is not a reasonable goal by any means to span the entire museum in this short a trip so we focused on a few famous sculptures and paintings.
I think the art of being annoying to your kids comes with the hormones of the pregnant belly that carried them, so true to my prescribed role I had my daughter browse through a kids book about the art at the Louvre museum and that gave me some tips about where I'd like to take them besides I had a few favorites from the last visit.

 Tuileries Garden outside Louvre

A half size replica of Arc de Triomphe

Louvre with the glass pyramid

Winged Victory of Samothrace

Venus de Milo statue

Psyche revived by cupid's kiss

Inverted pyramid mentioned in Da Vinci Code

Glass pyramid by night light

As much as both DH and I love Paris after about two days of hustle and bustle of city life we start craving something more rustic and quiet. One of the most popular day trip excursions from Paris is the trip to Palace of Versailles but since we had covered that on our previous trip, we took a trip to the Palace of fontainebleau, which is used to be a hunting lodge before it was upgraded to the status of a palace and is now a Museum of mostly Napoleon paraphernalia. 

The main entrance of Fontainebleau palace during Napoleon's time

One of the many exquisite chandeliers 

The library at the palace

The Chapel ceiling

Hunting grounds and the gardens

A vista view of the Castle

Glimpses of Paris - Part I

It all started on a hot summer afternoon about a year ago. We were visiting our local library and I was greatly alarmed and puzzled by my daughter's fascination with the likes of Junie B Jones, Fairy series and Judy Moody.She is an avid reader and reads much beyond her 'required' reading levels, don't take me wrong I am pretty proud of her reading skills but was just a little concerned with the thought and language development that she was getting out of the overdose of survival stories of obnoxious girls with bad attitude and poor language skills. 

To prod the choices of books in a different direction, I chose a book for her which contained 13 fascinating buildings from the all around the world. It was a very lofty goal on my part to make my daughter read something by mere suggestion, as I said I usually have to prod. So the day before my third renewal of the book was up and I could not keep the book in my possession any longer without paying a hefty fine, I offered her a deal. 

That she would read up the book and give me an oral report on it and then we will visit one building of her choice from the book of 13 buildings. Long story short, she picked Eiffel Tower and frankly I wasn't too thrilled, I was hoping she'd pick Sydney Opera house or leaning tower of Pisa, the places that I have yet to see but that was not something for me to say. So we planned a short trip to Paris just so that she could see and climb the Eiffel tower and here I am sharing the story of the visit four weeks later. 

  

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower by night...

Hotel des invalides

Notre Dame

Rose window in the Notre Dame

Ahh... Crepes

The cobbled street

Muse de Orsay

Pont des Invalides

Le Grand Palais

Arc de Triomphe

Will post a few more pictures and I am sure Paris will keep appearing in future posts as well. It was a short trip but well worth it, something that we'll all remember and talk about for a long time.