Paris Day 3 7/10
I had booked another tour with City Wonders for this morning - "Louvre Highlights Tour". If it was just my husband & I traveling, we probably would have booked fewer tours & used guidebooks or RS audio tours for various sights. With the kids, a live guide worked better. We really enjoyed every guide we had - not a dud in the whole bunch! I had determined that we could walk to the Louvre from our hotel. I was still hesitant to use the Paris Metro system. Even though we had no problems in London, the thought of navigating the Metro w/o knowing hardly any French was daunting to me! My son, upon learning that we would be walking, refused to go. I think by this point he'd had enough of traveling & the close quarters in the hotel room with his sister had taken its toll. I was upset of course, but realized that forcing him to go would only make the day miserable for the rest of us. Some time apart would be good for all of us & the tour was only 3 hours long. We left him in the hotel, he could go down to the breakfast buffet, but otherwise we requested that he stay in the hotel.
The walk to the Louvre was pretty long - probably took us about 35-40 minutes, but it was another beautiful sunny day & not hot yet. We made it to the meeting point early & spotted our guide Lillya from the Notre Dame tour yesterday. We chatted with her for a few minutes, but she would not be our guide today, she had a private tour booked. Our guide was Susan, who had grown up in Paris. Our group was about 15. We were set up with headsets & followed Susan into the Louvre. The entrance we went in took us past the old stone walls. Susan stopped to show us a heart that had been carved into the stone long ago. The tour seemed to take a while to get started. We started with a restroom break & purchasing water, if needed. With the lines for the restrooms, it seemed to take forever before the group was all together again & ready to go.
We started with Greek sculpture and went on from there. The headsets were great since we could listen to Susan, but not have to stick right by her side. We did have to pay attention to when she was moving on since it would be easy to lose her in the crowds. Susan took us to the famous highlights - Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, Mona Lisa, but took us by other artwork as well, always with interesting information. My husband & I said "we can't believe we're really seeing these things in person!". The Mona Lisa, of course, had huge crowds in front of her. My husband & I didn't fight the crowds to get closer, but daughter is small, so she made her way through the crowd & got some pictures for us. By the end of the 3 hours, we really felt we had seen what we wanted to see. It would have been very overwhelming to do this w/o a guide on our 1st time. If we get there again, I wouldn't feel the need for a guide, but would wander around on our own. Around 12:30 we said goodbye to Susan. Some of the group stayed in the Louvre to continue looking around, but we were hungry & had had enough art for the time.