Monday
Fantastic avocado toast and a filtered coffee!
We found the best place to eat breakfast–Maisie’s Cafe. Tucked onto rue Mon Thabor, Maisie’s has gluten-free, organic food. We loved our avocado toast! For around 22 euros we had two orders of avocado toast, a filtered coffee and a house-made lemon cure juice. They were even kind enough to bring some almond milk for my coffee—American habits die hard.
We had a guided tour to the Louvre scheduled for Saturday, but we wanted an extra visit for us to wander around on our our own and headed out after breakfast. After purchasing tickets, we found a doorway labeled coat check. There are free lockers to put your coat and whatever else you don’t want to carry around the museum. The lockers close with electronic combinations that we set and then we were able to browse the museum with free hands! There are are also special storage receptacles for your umbrella—especially handy for the large umbrellas that you can borrow from the concierge at your hotel. We snapped a photo of our locker number so our jet-lagged brains would not have to remember it.
Snap a pic of your locker number! Good luck trying to remember your 4-digit combination
The Louvre is massive, with some 600,000 items in its collection,so the best bet for a day is to have a plan. The big three are the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and the Venus de Milo. But there is so much more! Spend a few minutes online before your visit, and decide what you are most interested in seeing. Have a plan, but don’t be afraid to let yourself be swept away by what catches your eye— it’s the most famous museum in the world for a reason!
Pardon me, bartender, but there appears to be a demon in my cup.
We stopped for a snack and coffee, and brunch for my daughter who slept through our breakfast at Maisie’s Cafe at the Le Cafe Mollien where you can get a set-price breakfast, lunch, or snack. It’s ready-made food counter with an ordering line, but the coffee is good and even on a day where the outdoor seating was closed, it was not hard to find a table.
We continued on our museum visit and stopped briefly at the gift shop. I have to admit I was tempted by the vividly-colored reproductions of the Venus de Milo, but if you want an umbrella, coasters, lip balm, or breath mints with the Mona Lisa printed on it, this is the place to get it.
All we wanted for dinner was a quick bite at one of the many sidewalk cafes near our hotel because Tuesday was going to start early. Sigh, while the food came out in a reasonable time frame, the check did not. New post tomorrow!
Cafes almost always bring you a salty snack to nibble on with your drinks