Cruise Port 9 – LeHavre & Paris
Our last port before we disembark was LeHavre, in Normandy. We chose the Princess tour to Paris, which included a brief city tour as well as a guided tour of the Louvre, then lunch at the Eiffel Tower. It’s pretty hard to say you didn’t experience Paris, after you’ve eaten lunch at the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre was not surprisingly crowded, but surprisingly hot, which made it difficult to keep the kids engaged. But we did see the Venus De Milo, Winged Victory, and of course the Mona Lisa.
Mona Lisa was interesting. This is a piece of art that many humanities and art teachers refer to, to demonstrate the introduction of “point perspective” – that is to say, oversimplified, that artwork began to use visual angles to give the appearance of perspective. All boiled down, you’re supposed to view Mona Lisa from various different angles, and no matter where you view her, her eyes are always “looking at you” – not forward, but toward you. But you can’t. There are ropes keeping you surprisingly far away (I would have expected to be able to get just a bit closer – it still required a bit of optical zoom on the camera to get a good shot) and getting to the front of the rope isn’t managed at all – just a big muddle of people jockeying. Moving from one side at the ropes to the other side of the room, still at the ropes, would have required an iron constitution. A queue would do a lot of good here.
The Louvre tour was expectantly short, only about an hour, then we made our way back to the bus and toward the Eiffel Tower for lunch. You can’t help but be a bit overwhelmed, eating lunch in a fine dining restaurant on the first level of the Eiffel Tower.
After lunch, we were a bit pressed for time and the elevators going back down were all full, so we had to take the stairs down. Yes, there are stairs. Back on the ground, we made our way back to the bus, and then started the long (2.5 hours) drive back to the ship at LeHavre.
It was a great experience for everyone, albeit a bit crowded and hot. Not sure I’d do it again, but I’m glad we did it this trip.
Some picture commentary: First, we made our way from LeHavre to Paris, and arrived at the Louvre around DSC03648. Mona Lisa at DSC03669. Then, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower, arriving about DSC03686. Then, we started making our way back to LeHavre about DSC03694.
DSC03703 forward shows some pictures from the last day on the ship, like the Baked Alaska celebration after dinner on the last night, and Flat Stanley at our room. Then the IMAGXXXX photos are Marla’s, starting back at the beginning and working forward again. Worth a look through those, as she got better pictures of Mona Lisa.
SLR long & wide lens pictures are HERE.
Tomorrow, we disembark 🙁 but we’ve got one more day in London before we go home, and we took a Jack The Ripper walking tour, which I’ll talk about. Then, I’ll do some reviews of the ship, excursions, and hotels that we stayed at.