My Paris Travel Day 2 – from Louvre Museum to Notre Dame

On the 2nd day of my Paris travel, we started off our Paris city exploration at the Arc de Triomphe and strolled down the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. But it was only our morning activities. We continued to walk. We overpassed the Jardin Des Tuileries, the public garden, from Avenue des Champs-Elysees to the Louvre, from 8th Arrondissement to 1st Arrondissement of Paris.

But let me warn you here, it is not a short journey. After 2KM length of walking distance from Triumphal Arch to Place de la Concorde, or the start and end of Avenue des Champs-elysees, we still need to walk for another 1 KM to reach Louvre Museum. So we stopped a while at the square. There are 2 monumental fountains stand at each side of the Obelisk. Fountain display was stopped when we got there. I heard the display is quite nice at night. These fountains are to memorate the maritime and river commerce of Paris.

At the centre of Place de la Concorde is the Obelisk of Luxor, measuring 23m high and weighing over 250 Tonnes! It is one of the 2 Luxor obelisk originally placed in Egypt and was given to France in the 19th century.

Place de la concorde is in fact the largest public square in Paris. From the square we saw the Eiffel Tower at its South West, and the Triumphal Arch at its West.

If you feel the distance from here to the Louvre is too tiring to walk, you can opt to take a Metro from here at the Place de la concorde station. Jump on Yellow Line 1 underground train and hop off at either Palaice Royal Musee du Louvre, or Louvre Rivoli stations. Single trip would cost you €1.60.

We chose to continue walking. We entered the West gate of Jardin des Tuileries and were being greeted by the statue of Mercury riding Pegasus, (1701-02) by Antoine Coysevox (1640-1720). Jardin des Tuileries was the first royal garden to have opened for public in 17th century.

Andre Le Notre (1613-1700) was the famous French landscape architect who contributed in the planning of Tuileries Garden. His another great piece of work is the Palace of Versailles park in suburb Paris.

The most notable feature of the garden is the giant hexagonal pond at the West entrance of Tuileries Garden called as the Grand Bassin.

Chairs are lining up along the perimeter of the pond which any visitor can take a rest and relax on. The pond or basin is so huge that making a round walk around it will again make you sweat. 🙂

We had a brief rest at the basin and continued to walk around it and go further into the garden. This is again a straight, long and wide sand alley with various kinds of trees including chestnut trees lining along both sides. Make sure you wear your sun glasses whenever windy as sands will be blown into your eyes. Wearing a mask would be the best! 🙁

There are also cafes with open sitting area in the garden. I believed this is Cafe Renald. But I wasn’t fancy on this at all as I don’t like sandy coffee!

If you are looking back to the Triumphal Arch at this stage, you will be surprised to know that you have gone through this far… you have just walked for almost 3KM!

Don’t worry, fill up your empty bottle at this drinking water tap and you are again on your move!

After a while, (well, not quite a while if you walk, stop, see and take photos along your way)  we reached the 2nd smaller round water pond. Congratulation! You are not far away from the East Gate of the garden and the Louvre Museum. Here is also The Grand Carré (The Large Square).

This is one of the many statues found around this part of the garden. Don’t ask me what it meant for… the weather was too hot perhaps. 🙂

Here is The Terrace, the elevated square of Tuileries Garden.

The best part of the whole garden tour was the bird feeding session. Not something we have planned, a muffin given by another tourist we met had attracted so many birds flying over!

At the end of Jardin des Tuileries, we came to the Jardin du Carrousel or the Place du Carrousel. The central feature is the Arc de triomphe du Carrousel, built to celebrate the victories of Napoleon, with bas-relief sculptures of his battles by Jean Joseph Espercieux.

Finally. We were here at the Louvre Museum, one of the main attractions I was dying to visit for in Paris. I first came here about 13 years ago and everything have changed since then but its glorious appearance remain unchanged. Complicated feeling and memories crossing over my mind…

Read the full coverage stories from my Louvre Museum travel by photos post.

We spent the whole afternoon in the museum and the hefty entrance fees we paid was just as valuable as the collections in Louvre!

We exited the museum to Rue de Rivoli to continue our journey to our next planned destination, the Notre Dame cathedral. Rue de Rivoli is one of the famous shopping street in Paris where international fashion and restaurant chains are found around here.

2 Adidas outlets were spotted here side by side with 2 different logos; One with a new logo with 3 parallel stripes selling performance outfits and the other with the original Adidas logo selling traditional outfits.

Rue de Rivoli street view…

I thought we had reached the Notre Dame when I saw this tower from far. It was actually another monumental tower called Tour Saint Jacques.

Not far after the Tour Saint Jacques iconic tower, we arrived at the Hotel de Ville of Paris. This is the landmark for Notre Dame as most visitors are crossing the River Seine via the pedestrian walkway in front of it. Don’t try to book a room in Hotel de Ville though. It is not a hotel but the city hall of Paris actually!

The Hotel de Paris and the fountain in front of it.

We walked across the River Seine via this bridge of Pont d’Arcole to this one of the 2 natural small islands in the River Seine of Paris city called Lie de la Cite.

Once we reached to the island, restaurants and cafes are seen everywhere. But we were not in the mood of eating. What we are looking for is the Gothic architecture of the legendary cathedral of Notre Dame. Breathtaking! Another one of the top 5 attractions in Paris!

Read the full story of my Notre Dame Travel by photos.

I went into the church for some sneak shots of prayers in Notre Dame. Instead, Jean and Bobo went over to Cafe Panis across the river to try their so-called famous French crepe!

We went there for its crepe but found disappointed. It didn’t taste or feel as good as we would expect. It was soft and simply tasteless. The coupled jug of honey didn’t help much.

Despite the crepe that let Jean down, other dishes that we ordered, such as pastas, mashed potatos and steak, all taste very good instead! We considered it as our light dinner though.

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At 7:30PM, we were all exhausted after the whole day exploration. We took Metro back to our hostel and again dropped by Carrefour market to buy some packed foods back to our hostel as supper. My stories on Paris travel Day2 going to stop here. Off course we had more adventures later at night but I’m not going into details here as it was actually a nightmare to us. We had a very bad experience with the service provided by the only one assistant in the Regent Hostel. We had an argument with him and we actually asked for refund and moved out to another hostel instead! Anyway, we still had a good time on our last night in Paris. It was also real fun chatting with 2 young lady travelers from Hong KongRome who came here from and kept complaining how scary was the Rome underground and how cheap travelling in Berlin!

We had another great travel experience in Paris, sort of… – Travel Feeder, your ultimate photo travel blog