Today we were planning to go to L'Orangerie gallery, but being a Tuesday it was closed, as was the Louvre. We instead went to the Saint Chappelle. It wasn't too far away and the queue to get in was about half an hour. We haven't had too many long queues to stand in.
As we were approaching the gate we noticed signs about dangerous items in bags . Mike was carrying his Laguiole knife which was scanned and he was then sent out to check it. He had to go and chat to the man with a very big gun who was very nice and let him back in once he had secured the apple cutting weapon.
The chapel is so beautiful. We went into the lower chapel first, which is very nice, with a blue painted domed ceiling that looks like velvet. Then we went upstairs to the King's lavish chapel. There is so much stained glass, it is spectacular with the sun shining through. The windows are very detailed. There was a big crowd in there, some were quite noisy.
After picking up the knife and stowing it in Jude's handbag as the boys were going to do a tour, we walked across the river and into the Chatelet area where we had a coffee.
Jude and I left the boys and wandered through the shops on Rue de Rivoli. We made it as far as the Louvre and decided to have a break (and find a clean loo) so stopped in at a tea place for lunch. A nice mini bagel, a tiny rubbery cake thing and a very large cup of vanilla earl grey tea and we were on our way again.
We were heading to Printemps on Haussman, so still had quite away to go. We bumped into Ken and Mike while we were walking along the street - the people you meet! They were going to their starting point for a history tour they had booked into.
We finally made it to Printemps, it was worth it. It is a very beautiful shop with a lot of very beautiful merchandise. We made a couple of purchases and power shopped around the levels of the store, before popping over to a cheaper one to complete our list for the day .
The boys were going to join us at the top of the building for a drink once their tour finished. The Printemps store has 3 buildings. We went all the way up to the top of a wrong one first to the cafe restaurant. It does have a gorgeous stained glass domed ceiling, so it was worth the trip up, but we were rather parched and our feet were rather sore so we tried again.We made it up onto the terrace to see the spectacular views over the entire city. And like a tragic romantic drama, our dates failed to be there. We couldn't wait for them, we ordered a beer and sat down.
It is well worth the trip to Printemps to see the beautiful shop, and for the views. We could see all of the city we had been exploring. The boys finally turned up. They had really enjoyed their tour and got to see some great buildings and go into a bank vault which was pretty amazing. The tour was about Haussman and how he redesigned the city. We had another drink before beginning the trek home. It took us ages to find the Metro,, we did a detour in to Galleries Lafayette and bought chocolates and Macarons from Pierre Hermes.The macarons were ok.
We were all shattered after a big day when we got home and rested up for a while before we went to find a restaurant. I took everyone in the wrong direction and we ended up at another Italian restaurant for a great meal.
At least it wasn't too far to walk home where we had those delicious chocolates.


Steps 21,14
Kms walked 15.8