Paris in September — Part Three

Traveling to Paris in September 2016 was magical! Today, I will write about the iconic sites in Paris: the Louvre, the Catacombs, and of course, the Eiffel Tower! At the Louvre, we walked around seeing numerous pieces of art. Obviously, we saw the Mona Lisa! It was much smaller than I thought it would be! There was a huge line of people wanting to get their picture taken next to the famous artwork. The Mona Lisa was painted in the early 1500’s by Leonardo da Vinci. It is most likely the most well-known piece of art. Did you know that the Louvre is the world’s largest art museum? Well now you do! The building used to be a royal palace, but it became an art museum in 1793. In the late 1980’s, a glass pyramid was constructed to act as the iconic entrance of the museum.

Another famous site we went to was actually under the city streets of Paris: the Catacombs of Paris. Over 65 feet underground, we walked through a maze of Parisian bones. It was quite eerie and a bit depressing. In the tunnels of abandoned quarries, millions of bones were intricately placed. I did not enjoy this site, so if you need to cut something from your itinerary, I suggest cutting this. I actually watched a YouTube video recently on dark tourism, and the Catacombs of Paris was briefly mentioned. I personally am not a fan of dark tourism.

Next, we of course had to go see the Eiffel Tower! It is the image most associated with Paris. My dad was able to get us tickets to go to the top of the tower to its observation deck. We could see the city spread out beneath us! Named after the engineer who designed the tower, the Eiffel Tower was finished being built in 1889 to be the entrance to the World’s Fair! It’s as tall as an 81-story building. As a souvenir, I bought a small purple replica of the tower. Apparently, when Germany occupied France in World War II, Hitler ordered that the tower be destroyed. Thankfully, the Nazi General disobeyed him!

On that note, I will end my account of my family vacation to Paris in September 2016. I hope you enjoyed reading about it!