In my previous 4 posts, I have shown 71 photos from the first 9 ½ days on the French Waterways vacation that we went on last July. This post will show 20 more photos that were taken over the next 3 ½ days. All of these photos were taken within the city of Paris.

We arrived in Paris aboard the high speed train; the Train à Grande Vitesse (TGV). It was Saturday, July 26^th, which was the day before the Tour de France bicycle ride would end near the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées.

The opening photo was taken at that location The bicycle riders in my photo are not the racers, but are some of the bicycling enthusiasts that pay for the privilege of riding the entire distance of 3,664 km (2276 miles) of the course – one day ahead of the real racers.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

Barb and I walked from our hotel the 10 blocks or so to the Arc de Triomphe (with 2 other ladies who had signed up for the 3 day extension in Paris). This monument was completed in 1836, and its size is truly astonishing! It stands 164 feet high (50m), and the large vault is 95.8 feet high (29m).

After dinner that same evening, others in our Vantage Travel group thought it would be fun to strike out on our own to see if we could get to the Eiffel Tower and go on a river boat ride in the “City of Light”. That would involve using a subway system in a land where we didn’t know the language very well….

As we waited to board the boat, I managed to get a couple of photos during twilight.

Darkness quickly came upon us as we started up the Seine River.

The Palais Bourbon is where the French National Assembly sits, and is illuminated at night to look like the French Tricolor (flag of France).

I carried my tripod that evening. After the boat ride, I put it to good use.

It was late – very late – when we finally made our way back through the subway system to our hotel that night. We were up early the next morning, and on the bus for a City Tour of Paris.

We were let off the bus on the Champ de Mars for about 15 minutes to get some great photos of the Eiffel Tower.

About an hour later we were walking toward the Notre-Dame de Paris, and this was our view of it from across the Seine River (we were on the south shore).

Note the flying buttresses and those two large round stained glass windows. The bottom one is the south “rose window”.

We crossed the bridge over the Seine, and waited to enter the church from the west (left side in the photo above). This is some of the elaborate stone work above the entrance on the west side.

And here is a view of that south “rose window” that you saw earlier from the outside.

Since it was late Sunday morning, there was an actual Catholic church service going on while we were inside this spectacular building. (Our tour guide whispered into his microphone that we listened to over our radio receivers.)

Afterwards, as we waited outside, I took this photo of the archway above one of the two main entrances on the west side of the church.

About 3 hours later, we were walking around in the Montmartre area when I found this colorful display of cooking aprons that were for sale.

Montmartre is a hill in the north of Paris, primarily known for the white-domed Sacré-Cœur Basilica (Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris) on its summit and as a nightclub district.

From virtually the same location that I took that photo, I turned around and took this mini-panorama photo of Paris. (The Eiffel Tower is located further to the right.)

The next day, we joined about 20,000 of our fellow man and went on a tour of the Musée du Louvre (Louvre Museum). There were so many people in that building, that the only photos that you could get without people in them were photos of the ceiling.

Fortunately, it was a beautiful ceiling!

On our last day of our 3 day stay in Paris, Barb and I went all by ourselves from our hotel, using the Paris Metro (subway), walking across the Tuileries Garden and over the Seine River to the Musée d’Orsay (Museum of Orsay). This art museum was originally a railway station.

We saw some incredible works of art at that museum, but unfortunately photography of the artwork was strictly prohibited.

OK, so now I’ve shared with you 91 of my favorite photos that I took while in France this past July. Although I showed them in chronological order, there are too many gaps between some of them to tell the full story. In my next blog post I intend to “fix that” for those who are interested in seeing a more complete story of this fabulous trip.

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