Monet

We have made friends with the man at the café next to our hotel, at least we are being very friendly without much substance, so we have decided to go there for breakfast every morning. We have the petit dejuener complet, which is half a skinny baguette with butter and jam, a croissant, hot chocolate (or tea or coffee, but you know which one I have) and freshly squeezed orange juice.

We did a little more exploring of the department stores this morning, discovering Printemps where they have counters for Tiffany, De Beers and Cartier - we didn't buy much!

We walked down the street to the Louvre and really appreciated our Museum Passes that allowed us to skip the queues. Thanks to Tim and Shona we have an excellent book which describes a tour of the Louvre that takes in the highlights such as

the French crown jewels,

the glorious history of France,

Italian renaissance paintings like this one of the wedding
at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine,

this little painting of some woman,

the Venus de Milo,

kept in palatial (it was a palace) rooms with ceilings like this.

The museum is immense and we certainly didn't see all of it but I am really looking forward to the Musée D'Orsay either tomorrow or Wednesday.

Would you believe it was actually raining when we finally emerged from the Louvre? We have an umbrella... it was in the hotel room. It was soothing on our sunburnt skin as we walked through the Tuileries gardens to the Orangerie to see Monet's waterlilies.

They are breathtaking in person, shimmering and blurred. When you stand right in front of them the strokes are almost crude and the colours seem incongruous - purples and blues making up a tree trunk - but when you stand back the effect is spectacular.

Tomorrow there are lots of things we might do. Maybe we will walk along the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe, maybe we will go to the Eiffel Tower or some more museums, we'll see what the weather does.