It's kind of unbelievable what we fit in to one day today. We purchased the museum pass which let's you freely move between museums and skip the lines. We took a taxi to our first stop, Orangerie museum and saw Monet's waterlilies.

We took the pedestrian walking bridge across the Seine river to see Van Gogh's stary night at Orsay museum.

This museum was once a train station and it was really beautiful. It was a bonus to see some of Henri rousseau's art work too!

Back on the pedestrian bridge we crossed over the river and followed it to the Louvre.

The kids got their picture by the pyramid entrance and we funneled through the lines and through security.

We were deposited into the most congested museum experience. The effort it took energetically to move through the masses taxed our nervous systems. We swam upstream looking for the Mona Lisa. Out of the corner of my eye I recognize a familiar face, it's da Vinci's saint John the Baptist! Like an old acquaintance staring at me through the crowd! We stopped to say hello and he pointed us in the right direction.

Then there she was, THE Mona Lisa. I was relieved to see a que, I imagined we'd get our 5 seconds to take a picture and let our eyes soak it in but at the end of the que the masses swarm. From Dakota's left a mother shoves her to insert her son. Sam tries to get a picture of the kids, we rehearsed this moment. Sheer joy mixes simultaneously with fear of being trampled.

We went through the king's apartment.

We walked to the Eiffle tower to ride it to the top. It had been previously closed for months but opened recently and the kids really wanted to do it. When we got to the top we realized why Paris is called the city of light. Bonjour Paris!