If it’s Saturday it must be Paris

And it’s our 50th wedding anniversary.

We start out our day at the Louvre. Armed with a Chat GPT list of “zero-fluff” hit list, we begin our sojourn.

We think we got to almost all of them, but we really scoured to find one that ultimately turned out to be on loan to a traveling exhibit.

The crowds on the left are all waiting for a picture of the Mona Lisa.

Facts about Mona Lisa: Her real name was Lisa Gherardini, she was the wife of a wealthy silk merchant. Her dress is covered by a large veil of transparent silk. Leonardo de Vinci painted her as if she was turning to welcome you. Her body is in three-quarter view, but her gently smiling face is turned forward. He started painting her in 1503 and never finished it. He carried it with him everywhere until his last trip to France in 1516. King Francois bought the painting and thus it became part of the French royal collection.

One of my favorite parts were the floor vents (above on the right) - many of which I just stood on whenever we came across one.

We even stumbled on a fashion wing.

That beautiful huge ball gown is by Christian Dior.

We head back to our hotel room for a quick break before our next museum - Musee d’Orsay. Jordan decides to sit this one out, so we are on our own!

I had to include pictures of the Eiffel Tower because we may not get any closer to it than right here.

Again, plenty of others around - we’re not alone.

When we were here in 2002, I got some incredible pictures of this clock that is from the original train station and looks out across the Seine and Paris. But now they have put a restaurant in front of it…so glad I have my original shots!

We head upstairs to see the Impressionists.

A final trip downstairs before we leave.

And we make our way back to the hotel to meet up with Jordan who is taking us out to dinner tonight for our anniversary!

We are going to a French steakhouse.

We actually picked out a steak, we chose the third from the left to split among the 3 of us. And even then, we only ate half. But we had room for dessert.

A walk after dinner down the Champs - Elyse to see the Arc de Triomphe.

And now we call it a night. We are back in our hotel room and already in bed when the doorbell rings. At the door is the Guest Relations Manager with an anniversary gift. Wow!

We really are going to bed now and will have champagne tomorrow!