Today we spent our day in Paris- travelling to the Louvre, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Saint Chappelle.

Our tour guide took us to the Louvre – home of the famous Mona Lisa, and this kept the art lovers entertained for three hours. We saw Venus De Milo which was the only Greek statue that was originally made in marble instead of bronze. The mini Sphinx, the Winged Victory statue and the Coronation of Napoleon impressed us all. We walked through the apartments of Napoleon the Third and saw fancy furniture and intricate chandeliers but perhaps everyone’s favourite was Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa; although a little smaller than everyone expected, we all fought our way to the front of a massive crowd for a photo. It was interesting to learn that the Louvre housed no landscape paintings as the paintings of that time were only considered important if they had a respectable or religious figure in them.

After the Louvre, we went for lunch and some souvenir shopping before heading to Notre Dame – the church remembered from The Hunchback of Notre Dame minus Quasimodo. Outside, our guide Valerie showed us the zero point of Paris which is the point from where all French towns are measured from. A few of us spun on the point for good luck (Mr V spun multiple times) and headed inside. The church has been constructed in typical Gothic style, with cross vaulted ceilings and buttresses holding the intricate stained glass windows together. There were two large rose windows that cast colour onto the floor when the sun shone through – one was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the other to Jesus Christ. While we were there a mass was being conducted and all around the edges there were small candles lit by visitors to the church.

The Saint Chappelle was our next stop, we went and had a look inside and it was amazing especially when the sun shined through the stained glass windows, and this allowed us to get many great photos and we learned a lot about church architecture.

Before we went to dinner we had about 2hours to explore the town centre.  Zac  found a music store and spent a fair amount of money there and  a few of us also found a KFC so we ate there just to get a taste of Tumut. Then we went to dinner and ate something many of us thought we would never eat. We ate snails some of us were not a big fan and didn’t like them but some were the opposite for e.g. Nick Gray ate 21 of them.

And that was about it for that day. Now we are all off to bed to get ready for our last day in Paris tomorrow.

Blog by: Maddie Harris and Zach burgess

Miss you all <3