Paris - Day 15

Breakfast again with the singing waiter at Café St Regis, after which we headed towards the Champs Elysees as it was Bastille Day, the French National Day, and we thought that we would try and catch the military parade.

We walked on the southern bank of the Seine, past Notre Dame and on through St Germain des Pres and the Musee d’Orsay, and past Pont Alexandre III and the Hotel des Invalides, crossing Pont des Invalides to head north to the Champs Elysees.

By the time we got there the parade had started and we were quite a distance from the parade behind a crowd of Parisians. We couldn’t see much of the marchers, except for those whose uniforms had feathers on their helmets!

We had a much better view of the dazzling display of French military superiority, when the horses and military vehicles (tanks and jeeps and transports and trucks) clattered and rumbled by. Not to mention the flyovers of helicopters and jet aircraft, both big and small.

Afterwards we went to the Louvre, along with many others, as entry is free on Bastille Day. We looked through the exhibits of ancient Middle Eastern art, admiring the Code of Hammurabi and the winged bulls of ancient Iraq, before visiting some of the galleries of statues and paintings. We were particularly keen to see some of the works of Spanish artists that we had seen in Madrid’s Prado Museum.Read more