Day 16, June 13 - Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

Our day began with going straight to one of the places I have been looking forward to going to this whole trip: the Louvre!  It opens at 9am so we got there around 9:30am. I'd say for anyone else who wants to see this museum: go early. When we got there, we walked right in without waiting in line. Of course, we had our Paris Museum Passes, which gets us in without paying for tickets. Once we were inside, we followed all of the signs for the Mona Lisa, ignoring everything else for the time being. We knew that the more time that passed by, the bigger the crowd we would have to fight to get a good picture with Mona. Thankfully, the crowd was pretty small, so we were able to get close to her. 

                    

After that, we just got lost in the museum. I wish we had more time in there because we maybe only covered about a third of the museum in about 2 hours. We had to leave because we scheduled a wine tasting nearby at 12pm. Luckily, our passes allow us to go back into the Lourve another day, so we may resume the rest of our viewing another day. At 12, we arrived at O'Chateau Wine Bar for our tasting. Let me tell you, this was amazing! Our sommelier was American and spoke both fluent English and French. He has been studying French wines for 6 years and was quite the expert. We learned so much from our tasting! We started with a champagne... and it was true champagne, not sparkling wine. Then we had 2 reds and 2 whites, all paired with cheeses that bring out certain palettes and tastes. That lasted about 2 hours and left me wanting more! We purchased a bottle of the red wine of Bordeaux we tasted, so we can have it on a picnic one day before we leave. We then headed down towards the Islands to the famous Notre Dame. 

             

We were able to easily go inside for free and walk around and take lots of pictures. After that, it was around 4:30 and we're pretty wiped out. We went back to the hotel to lie down for and freshen up. We then went to a restaurant nearby, which the name of it escapes me, and I was able to finally have French Onion Soup! Here it is called traditional! Scott had some cold pork that has some French name and looked pretty good too. We went back to the hotel and called our folks back home to update them and say hello, and then we hit the sack.