Louvre-ing

It was another sunny day in Paris so we decided to start off with a walk along the left bank, past the Ile de la Cité and the Ile St Louis to the Jardin des Plantes. It was our first visit to this beautiful, quite formal park which is dedicated to science; how plants can help people. We heard a shout at one point and it was a parkie giving a man a proper telling off for walking on the grass! When we turned to head towards the Louvre, James pointed out that we were near a “Batobus” stop (a river boat which travels up and down the Seine, stopping at various tourist attractions.) There was one just arriving - the steward very kindly held the boat up for us while James purchased a ticket - and we jumped on and rode in style along the river right to the Louvre. We had prudently bought a “timed ticket” for the museum, which allowed us to join a much shorter queue than those who had not had our foresight. Soon we were on the 1st floor of the Richelieu wing, looking for a café on the terrace in order to have a light lunch. As we looked around a waiter noticed us and very pleasantly led us to a table on the terrace of the Angelina restaurant, which was exactly where we had hoped to be. The terrace overlooked the inner courtyard of the Louvre, where we could see the pyramids and the long queues of visitors waiting to get in. It was very sunny but there were large sunshades which kept us cool behind a row of statues perched on the edge of the terrace. It was just brilliant. Also, we have never been to Angelina before, which is a Parisian favourite, established in 1903, so that was a lovely new experience. The original restaurant is on Rue de Rivoli, but there are now about half a dozen of them around Paris, including the one in the Louvre. The meal was lovely; I had a delightful tomato tart with walnuts and burrata. Then we went up to the second floor to look at the medieval Dutch and French art, and then to the first floor to see the Italian Renaissance art including the three Caravaggios, first introduced to us there by Ewan years ago. After nearly three hours (not including lunch!) we felt that it was time to head outdoors. I hope that we’ll be back soon. We had paid for whole day tickets on the batobus so we had ourselves another trip up and down the river, looking at all of the buildings and passing under many bridges. Later we had dinner at the Café de Paris, pleasantly near the Artus, our little home from home.