Last two days in Paris: Montmarte and the Louvre

Saturday was spent hanging out in Montmarte, shopping in boutiques, and checking out the different markets. It was a relaxing day spent near the apartment. I left the camera behind to travel as light as possible, and did not even carry a handbag.  One of the most interesting things about shopping abroad, besides seeing the different products, is seeing the different shopping etiquette.  I spent a lot of time observing the shopping before I purchased, so I didn't make too many mistakes.

Sunday, we had to be out of the apartment at 10 am, but our flight to Madrid did not leave until 7 pm. What to do for several hours with baggage in tow? Why, go to the Louvre for a second round, of course! The Louvre will check your baggage for free all day with a purchased ticket. What a great deal!  After depositing our bags, we went searching for some familiar faces in the French sculptures wing of the museum.

We rounded the corner and saw a couple of famous Americans. Sculptures by Houdon:

Benjamin Franklin, my favorite Founding Father:

Greg contemplating the details of the Ben Franklin and George Washington sculptures:

I had forgotten that the Code of Hammurabi was displayed in the Louvre. We stumbled upon it after exploring the French sculptors.

Code of Hammurabi:

From Louvre, we caught the Metro to Porte Maillot where we took a shuttle bus to the Beauvais Airport to catch our Ryanair flight to Spain. The only problem I have with traveling by subway is that I get very disoriented traveling underground, and it always takes me a while after returning to the surface to figure out which direction I am facing (I am one of those types of people who always needs to know which direction is north).  Porte Maillot has several exits from the Metro, and we thought we were taking the correct one. We emerged from under the earth to find ourselves in a park in a middle of one of those huge roundabouts with about 5 lanes.  Hmmmmm.  I had drawn a map so we would know where to go, but the map I based it on did not show a Metro exit in the middle of the roundabout.  We were toting our suitcases, and it was hot.  We couldn't wheel our bags because the only walkways were gravel paths. The roundabout was huge and the street signs were too far way for me to read and try to orient myself to my map. After parking Greg with our bags in the middle of the park, I wandered around a bit to try to figure out which direction we needed to go. I finally saw the bus park in the distance, but it was across the very wide, very busy street from where we were and there was no crosswalk. We searched for a crosswalk, but the only exit we could find was a pedestrian underpass on the opposite side of where we wanted to go.  We saw other people with suitcases disappear in the direction of the bus park and not return, so we followed them.  Their solution to reaching the bus park? Jay walk across five lanes of traffic. What could we do?  Backtrack and walk at least a half mile in that heat using the underpass and walking all the way around that roundabout hauling our bags? No way! We waited for an appropriate lull in traffic, and together with a bunch of other people with the same problem, ran across the road before we got creamed by a tourist bus or the speeding taxis. Whew!  

After that little adventure, the flight to Spain was quite relaxing.