For Thanksgiving break we headed to Paris, France

Here are some highlights of our trip
Click on any picture to see it larger

We stayed at the Louvre Marsollier Opera Hotel. It's near the Louvre and Opera (just in case you didn't figure that out), on a small side street with little noise.

It was built in 1814 and Oscar Wilde lived at this hotel in 1899.

We were on the 6th floor in the little windows that sit out by themselves (Mackenzie is in one window and the window to the right is ours also).


This is inside our room. Isn't it cute? We ate breakfast in our room at the table (there are only 5 tables downstairs so they serve in rooms also).


This is the tiny lift that we used mostly at the end of the day. The stairs were the spiral type so we were quite dizzy by the time we got to the 6th floor.

We were only a few blocks from the Louvre Museum so we headed there first thing Friday morning (well by the time Mackenzie eats and dresses, middle thing Friday morning).


She really liked the glass pyramids outside and was ecstatic when I told her that we could enter the museum by going in the biggest one. We walked around outside for awhile so Mackenzie could look at the fountains and pyramids and finally we went inside.

Since we were only going to be in Paris a short time I didn't think we should spend too much time in the Louvre (it's HUGE), and I tried to drag her around to the bigger name pieces, like the Mona Lisa.

Of course, it took us a really long time to get to each piece because Mackenzie would stop and study some of the paintings along the way. It was fun to watch her. She would stop, back up a little, back up a little more, then take a step or two to each side and never look away from the painting that she was studying (I finally bribed her into buying a book about the Louvre if we could just move a little bit more). Finally we made it to Nike of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo (she knew the Venus de Milo because it's in the Disney Hercules movie and he knocks the arms off with a discus).

We finally made it out of the Louvre before sunset and headed through the Carrousel Arch into the Garden de Tuileries to take a break (Mackenzie is in the middle of the Arch in front of the two people, she has on a white shirt).

The Arch was built between 1806 and 1808 to celebrate the victories of Napolean Bonaparte in 1805. If you look at what I didn't cut off of the horses on top, they are replicas of the horses on the Basilica in Venice (Napolean had them removed from Venice and put here, then when they were returned in 1815 they made copies).

From the Garden we headed over the Seine across the pedestrian bridge Ponts de Arts. Someone was doing the statue thing of King Tut so we watched him for awhile (just like all the other times we see someone doing this).

Then we continued our walk down along the Seine to Notre Dame. They are doing some work on the front so there is some plastic covering some of the front.

We went in a walked around. Mackenzie was so excited to be in the place from the Disney movie "Hunchback of Notre Dame". She recognized a lot of stuff from the movie and was quite impressed.

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