Cruise Planners "On the Road" - River Cruising on AMA Waterways - Paris to Amsterdam on Ama Lyra - November 4-14 2014 - Naples to Paris - Day 4 - Paris - Paradis Latin Cabaret and Musee' d'Orsay

Well, last night at Paradis Latin Cabaret was an experience that all should consider - especially if AMA Waterways in making your excursion reservations...  As noted yesterday, we couldn't have got the tickets and round trip transportation for the price we paid for the excursion.  Then our party of 6 was shown to the first table on stage left - outstanding!  Arriving at 8pm, we ate an included three course meal with accompanying Rose and Red wines - with champagne for the show.  Food was actually pretty reasonable for event fare - and our server managed to find us little bowls of vanilla ice cream to accompany our apple tarts.

How was the show?  Really good - yes there was a fair amount of feminine pulchritude in various states of costuming (or not) and masculine beefcake as well - all tastefully presented - interspersed with high boy unicycle and trapeze acts; and a very talented singer filling in a fast paced 2 hour set.  The dance numbers were modern, with excellent music and some innovative sets to boot.  And yes, the chorus line also did the traditional "Can Can" as well...

Our Program cover

We snuck this picture

This is the official picture - 10 Euros - not bad

Sorry - no pictures of the show - we'll leave that to your imagination...

So after a late night last night - after midnight - we got up leisurely this morning and fueled up at our included breakfast at the Pullman Montparnasse - the breakfast is ok - would we eat there if it wasn't  included?  Honestly, most likely not - but we have had enough energy to walk for 5 hours each day and delay our lunch until 2:30pm each of the last two days.

Directly from breakfast, we headed to Musee' d'Orsay via Rue Invalides -- hate to be boring but the sun was out, puffy clouds dotting the blue sky, and slightly warmer than yesterday.  The sun shining off of the gold enhanced roofs and monuments was truly magic...

Cafe Zazous in background

Les Invalides

Front of Les Invalides

Most beautiful bridge in Paris

Musee' d'Orsay

Beautiful Sky

Selfie at Musee' dOrsay

Lunch at the Bistro on the corner of Rue St Germain and Rue Raspail

We spent 4 hours walking through the three floors (0,2, and 5) of exhibits at Musee' d'Orsay.  Just as we had at the Louvre, we had bought tickets on-line at home.  We walked right in and had our tickets validated.  Wow - the Impressionist exhibits on the 5th floor were exceptional and set the stage for being able to see the influence from this period as it matured into the Neo-Expressionist period.  I think we also found our French ancestors in the sculptures of "Bourdelle" on the ground floor...

After the museum, we ate lunch at the bistro above - nice meal and this Bordeaux stuff is starting to grow on us...

But we weren't done...  about two hours after we got back, we saddled up again for a trip up to Mont Marche to see the Sacre Cour (Church of the Sacred Heart) and the night lights of Paris as part of the AMA Waterways tour.  We took a min-bus up to the Bohemian side of town and the heart of the "Red Light" district centered on the famous caberet, "Moullon Rouge".  From there our expert guide continued to narrate our track up the hill on a tram to reach Sacre Cour.  The weather was clear, windy, and cold but the moon was full -- better yet, when we entered the church, there was a service underway with nuns singing in the background -- you would think the timing was planned that way for us.  After a brief walk, we arrived at the main plaza where we were able to choose from about 10 different restaurants for dinner before resuming our tour 90 minutes later.

After dinner, we met everyone at the funicular for the trip down the hill and the brief walk back to our bus.  Our guide's monolog was both informative and entertaining -- including her non-plussed comments about some of the stunts being pulled around our mini-bus by Parisian drivers.  Made Valerie and I feel like we were back home in Napoli, Italy.

Then for the highlight of our evening, we arrived at the foot of the Eiffel tower just before the hour.  We were directly across the river and could see three sides of the tower - and then - the "twinkling" started - the entire tower began twinkling - no other way to describe it.  From what we were told, this event started with the Millennial and has continued since then despite cutbacks in the amount of time this is done each hour.  Open the short video below if you want to see what we captured last night

So, with our arrival back at the Pullman Montparnasse, our pre-cruise activities came to a close,  This morning, we put our bags outside our door at 0800; we headed down to meet Uwe our cruise direction at 0915.  All aboard our bus to Garde d'lEste (Paris' east train station) to catch our high speed train (TGV) to Metz.

Overall, I have to say we have been very impressed with the organization and execution of our AMA Waterways pre-cruise activities - we wouldn't have changed anything except for the hotel -- the location was excellent, but the accommodations were only so-so, and the hub bub in and around the lobby was much too convention like for our taste.

Cruise Planners "On the Road" - River Cruising on AMA Waterways - Paris to Amsterdam on Ama Lyra - November 4-14 2014 - Naples to Paris - Day 3 - Paris - The Louvre

The beauty of arriving in daylight after a large time change is that you can get outside and have the sun reset your Circadian rhythm.  So yesterday after arriving, we went out and about -- had pasta for dinner last night and piece de resistance -- an Ambien at bed time. Voila' - almost 10 hours of sleep last night - ready for the Louvre this morning.

We awoke with the sun shining, a slight breeze (<10mph), and crisp temperatures in the mid-50's, ready for our walk to the Louvre - took perhaps 45 minutes at a nice stroll mostly along Rue de Rennes to get to the Seine and our first look at the Louvre.

Valerie along the Seine

Jim with Louvre in the background

There was a slight line at the Louvre's entrance but as promised, if you buy your tickets ahead of time -- and you pay attention to the signage out front -- you skip right past all the people in line for tickets, and walk right in.  We had bought our tickets on line from home about a month ago and everything went perfectly.  We did the same thing with our Musee d'Orsay tickets - we'll see how those work tomorrow.

Val with Louvre entrance in background

Love birds enjoying themselves

So how was the Louvre?  Valerie and I had both been here before in other lives with other people -- but love, like art, is timeless, in the eye of the beholder, and depends on how light reflects on the subjects...  We think the sun was shining perfectly and just for us today, what do you think?

 

The exhibits - with the exception of the Mona Lisa were crowd-free and we had minutes alone in entire hallways with no one there except us.  A perfect way to contemplate 3000+ years of art and history.

We stopped at a little pizza place along Boulevard Raspail on the way back.  We split the pizza and had a glass of Chianti just because it seemed to fit.  All told -- according to Fitbit -- our walk there and back - with our walkabout in the Louvre -- encompassed 16,000 steps, 22 floors, and 7.31 miles.  Eating all this good French cooking, we better be walking everywhere!

Tonight, we are doing an AMA Waterways optional excursion to the Paradis Latin Cabaret -- we checked out all of the "Cabarets" before signing up -- this one is rated as the most authentic, provides good food and wine along with the show -- and having shopped it, price-wise we couldn't have beaten AMA Waterways' price.  I doubt cameras will be allowed tonight - and even if they were, I shouldn't be posting photos on a "G" rated blog.  Tomorrow - Musee d'Orsay....

Pizza, Chianti, and lots of Love...