Paris: The Sainte-Chapelle and Saint-Pierre

Paris is a wealth of gorgeous churches, and the following 2 were probably my favorites. First, the Sainte-Chapelle:

The Sainte-Chapelle is right around the corner from the Notre Dame. And I guess, as a result of its proximity to the world's most famous church, the line to get in is significantly shorter, but the wow factor is absolutely no less. Sainte-Chapelle is overrun with stained glass. And if all the gorgeous colored light filtering into the cathedral was not enough, Sainte-Chapelle has also maintained its original painting. The whole effect is wonderful. You may even like it more than its famous neighbor! Next up is the Saint-Pierre de Montmarte:

If the Sainte-Chapelle is a little too flashy for you, look no further than the Saint-Pierre. It is also right around the corner from a much more famous neighbor, the Sacre-Coeur, and so it too is overlooked by many tourists. In fact, there's no line here despite the fact that the Saint-Pierre is one of the oldest churches in all of Paris. It's been around since the 12th Century, and it is supposedly the site where the Jesuits were founded. Personally, I loved this quiet, small respite tucked away behind a tree shaded courtyard. It was a welcomed break from overwhelming tourist trap surrounding the Sacre-Coeur. Plus, I never get tired of statutes of Saint Denis holding his own head!

Paris: Pantheon & Crypt

Despite its impressive size, its elaborate decoration, being the resting place for some very famous Frenchies (Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, Marie Curie, Alexandre Dumas), and containing Foucault's pendulum which demonstrated the rotation of the Earth, the Pantheon was virtually deserted compared to Paris's other famous sites. That was fine by us, though. After the insanity of the Louvre, Notre Dame, even Shakespeare & Co. (that bookstore is packed!), a cool, quiet, beautiful place with a lot of benches is a welcomed change of pace.

Paris: The Louvre

We had to go. You cannot go to Paris and not stop by the Louvre. To be honest, it can be an unpleasant experience. You really have to work hard to make it a nice experience. But since there is just so much famous art there, we made the effort to enjoy it. We ended up going 3 times so as to not overwhelm ourselves--Wednesday and Friday night when it is open until 9:45 pm and Sunday morning. Here are my thoughts:

• Our guidebook recommended going on the evenings, saying it would be calmer then. We found that going at 6 pm on Wednesday was still crazy. But going at 8 pm on Friday was a significant improvement.
• Getting there 30 minutes before it opened was actually our best experience. The security line moves super fast once the museum opens, and then you're inside with only a few hundred other people for a little bit. But we made sure to get out by 11.
• The Mona Lisa is never not crowded. The first 50 people in line will always run there immediately, so unless you are one of them, you are not going to see that painting without a crowd. So see it, cross it off your list, and then get out of that room asap.
• The museum itself is so massive and so stocked that, if possible, you should cap the amount of time you spend there to about 2 hours. This is just my experience, but I have found that any more than 2 hours in the Louvre becomes completely overwhelming. And your feet will start to hurt.
• Speaking of feet, Napoleon had slippers made of real rabbits. Creepy.

Paris: Maritime Museum

There have been a few unexpected surprises during our trip. 1) There's a bottle of pretty decent sparkling wine at our local grocery store that says its 4 euros but for some reason always rings up at only 1.62. 2) Despite being highlighted extensively in our Rich Steve's guidebook, the modern art museum is abysmal. And 3) the Maritime and Army museums (which might seem boring to anyone not very well versed in French military history) are both fantastic and not very crowded.

I can only report on the greatness of the army museum through my brother since I, in my shortsightedness, did not go in. But I did go into the Maritime Museum and loved it! There are so many model ships, and they are so beautiful! And the actual experience of going to the museum, unlike all of the art museums, is so pleasant. We got there around noon and were literally 2 of maybe 20 people in the whole place. And the audio guides are free here. So you can follow along with the  pieces that interest you the most. I learned:

• that the female masthead holding the scorpion was part of Marie Antoinette's boat that she cruised the lake at Versailles on. And the white boat with the raised ores was Louis XVI's counterpart.
• the most boats were "shes" with female mastheads unless they were large, important warships. Those were always "hes" with mastheads depicting famous leaders.
• the boat made of ivory was a gift to Napoleon and his second wife, and some of the ivory sailors sculpted on it are only a few millimeters tall!

Paris: Cluny Museum

The Cluny Museum is a fantastic repository of medieval artifacts that was built on top of the ruins of a Roman bath from the 3rd century. It is most famous for a tapestry series called The Lady and the Unicorn, but my favorite pieces were the gold works and the stained glass. Stained glass (although common in Paris) never gets old to me. And to see it up close and be able to take in all the details is really special, since usually stained glass is placed up high in lofty cathedrals. A few other fun things to note: the original heads of the kings of Judea on the front of Notre Dame can be found here. During the French Revolution, the people mistakenly believed the carvings were the kings of France. So the poor kings of Judea were beheaded just like Louie XVI. The heads were eventually recovered, preserved here, and replaced on the Notre Dame by replicas. Also, be sure not to miss the "frigidarium," one of the rooms of the original Roman baths that has been subsumed into the museum. There's nothing quite like wandering through a museum only to find yourself in a room that itself is almost 2000 years old.