We spent our third day in Paris visiting Jardin des Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Vedettes du Pont Neuf Seine river boat cruise. The date was October 10th, our official five year anniversary.
We started our day by heading out from our hotel to stop at a bakery that we saw the previous day to get some breakfast and took it over to the Eiffel Tower.
While there are many cute little bakeries in Paris, this was definitely one that stuck out as the epitome of what I imagined Parisian bakeries to look like. The beautiful white walls, detailed architecture, and rows of carb goodness had my little heart singing.
One of the benefits of staying in a hotel so close to the Eiffel Tower was that it allowed us to just "stop by" almost once a day -- the perfect backdrop for a morning bite to eat.
We spent most of our days walking everywhere (versus taking the metro), trying to check out different little streets each time. We stumbled upon a small street market that was just opening up for the morning.
We thought it was pretty funny how full the street side recycle bin was! It was literally bursting with wine bottles!
We passed over the Pont Alexandre III bridge. While the golden statues are breathtaking, there is a lot of traffic coming and going. It did not have quite the same impact I expected when seeing it in pictures. But I did my best to try to capture it's beauty in photos nonetheless.
Of all the places we walked, we encountered the most street scammers along the Seine here. I did my research so we were plenty prepared to say no to everything and just walk away. But it was almost insulting how obvious they were. Are tourists really that gullible? I guess so. It was kind of crazy to deal with it all firsthand.
We made our way to Jardin des Tuileries. They have a sweet little book store where I picked up some Paris children's books written in English. This was also the first garden we visited where we found out we had to pay to use the restroom!
The gardens are some of my favorite spots that we visited. It is a great place to people watch, the gardens are spectacular, and it is so beautiful to see so many people congregate and just be. The entire place is filled with little green chairs inviting you to sit, chat, eat, and even nap!
The Jardin des Tuileries is right next to the Louvre providing a beautiful visual landscape.
I was on the fence about visiting any museums (I know, hate me -- not a history buff). But we figured we should at least visit the Louvre, which I am glad we did. The museum is huge and we only saw small parts of it in the few hours we were there.
While the art was gigantic, stunning, and awe worthy, this home obsessed girl really just loved seeing the palace decor. Napoleon's quarters were by far my favorite part.
I think I need these chandeliers in my life.
I have this obsession with scenes. Being up high and seeing people and cars look so tiny is one of my favorite things. It is amazing how much you can see in such a condensed city. These are a few of my favorite pictures from the day.
And it would not be a trip to the Louvre if we did not visit the Mona Lisa. It is a complete zoo of people trying to get selfies with her. That in itself is worth seeing! But it was pretty cool to see this iconic woman in real life. And the hunt made for good memories! I'm still considering framing the above picture to add to one of my gallery walls!
After a few hours of wandering the Louvre and getting confused where we were (!!!), we headed out to the Vedettes du Pont Neuf Seine River boat cruise. Catching a river boat cruise as it got dark was highly recommended by many. We did not quite time it right so we ended up coming back to see it at night. But though it was not dark yet we still got to enjoy watching the sun set behind the clouds.
It ended up being pretty helpful to take the boat cruise early in our trip because it gave us a better understanding of the layout of the city. After some research we settled on this particular boat cruise as it seemed to be the most reasonably priced while still offering a quality tour experience.
It is hard not to obsessively take pictures of everything from the water. But after looking through my pictures I really did not get that great of photos from the water. My advice would be to sit back and relax while taking it all in.
We ended our day with a long and somewhat lost walk back to our hotel. It was a rough end to a long first few days of walking, but it was also the night we found out we got our Eiffel Tower room after all. We ended our anniversary day watching the Eiffel Tower light show from our bed.
Catch up on all posts from our Paris trip here.
