| Nora experienced much serendipity today. She began at a cafe on Boulevard St. Germaine for breakfast and then walked to the Louvre where she was able to bypass the 2-hour line and enter directly due to a "secret" underground entrance that dad read about. She saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus De Milo, Delacroix' Liberty Leading the Masses, and too many other DaVinci's, Titians, Vermeer's, etc. to count. As she left the museum she was blockaded by police just as the Tour de France cyclists came into Paris proper for the race's finish. She watched the peloton pass then walked toward the Opera and visited the second hotel from mom and dad's honeymoon just as the remaining cyclists passed that street en route to the Arc du Triomphe. She took Metro to the old location for the Bastille and then walked across the river where she toured the Pantheon and saw the tombs of France's great philosophers, writers and scientists. She saw those of Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Marie Curie, Louis Braille and more all in subterranean vaults, as well as Foucault's pendulum swinging above ground. She walked along the Champs de Mars as six French fighter planes flew overhead trailing blue, white and red smoke to streak the sky with the colors of the flag for the end of the race's festivities. She then went to the Eiffel Tour where the line was very short (35 minutes) to reach the elevators and rode in stages to the top. As she walked down on the 600 bottom stairs the tower was illuminated entirely in yellow for the winner of the Tour du France. Once at the bottom Nora rode a carousel that she had ridden eleven years ago when she first visited the city and for ten minutes the tower was illuminated by hundreds of strobe lights before turning back to solid yellow.
|
