Notre Dame, Orsay, and Versaille

In the morning we first went to Notre Dame cathedral because it was really close to the church we wanted to attend. It was pretty cool, but after seeing St. Pauls and St. Peters, it wasn’t as spectacular. Although the stain glass windows were pretty neat. After, as we were walking to church, Mike joked ‘What if we meet Elizabeth Smart at this ward?’ as we knew she was in the Paris, France mission. When we walked in, she was there greeting people.

The Orsay museum was our next stop as we had to see it on Sunday because it was closed on Monday (our last day in Paris). We were excited for this as it is mostly composed of Impressionist paintings which Emily and I both like the most. Unfortunately our audio guide didn’t work so well because they had changed lots of the museum around so we couldn’t get the background on lots of the paintings. So some of it got a little boring but the main paintings were neat to see – Rembrandt, Monet, Van Gogh, etc.
In the evening we bought train tickets to go out to Versailles.


Em had always wanted to go there and since I had learned a lot about Versailles in my history class at BYU – all about Louis XIV and the rise of monarchs – I was really looking forward to it. For the most part, it didn’t disappoint. The palace itself was huge – much bigger than expected. The tour throughout was interesting as we had the chance to learn about how HALF of France’s money in one year was spent on this palace and how powerful each monarch was.

The coolest part was the famous hall of mirrors where a whole wall is made of mirrors down a long tall hallway with multiple crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.

Along the other wall were large windows overlooking the famous Versailles gardens making the whole hall pretty grand.
The gardens were all of our favorite parts. They were huge and were composed of multiple fountains, a couple ponds/lakes, roman statutes, bush mazes, and great views of the sun setting in the distance.



We spent awhile walking around and taking it slow.
That night we took the train back near our hostel to Montemartre. It is a pretty nice area of Paris and at its center is a tall hill which houses the Sacre-Coeur – a white Roman-Byzantine basilica that has one of the best views of Paris. We first had our first real French food at a restaurant recommended by Rick Steves. We got some Quiche that I really liked but Em didn’t love (it had goat cheese which she doesn’t like). After dinner it was dark and we hiked up the hill to the Sacre-Coeur and sat on a hill overlooking Paris. The view was neat.


It gave us a good idea of how large Paris is – it was huge. While we were on the hill we snacked on some cookies that we bought at a French dessert shop a couple hours before – they were good.