Day 13, continued- A taste of Marais, Ile St. Louis, and a final stop at the Ile de la Cite

Wow, sorry about that delay!  I ended up going to a little get together today and was trying to make cupcakes--but I was having a very bad baking night.  But on to the last bit of my French adventure!

We left off yesterday in Montemarte.  Our tour guide (before we left the group) had recommended that we check out the Marais quarter if we hadn't yet, and recommended a street for us to go to for dinner.  We took the metro from Montemarte to the St. Paul station.  As we came out onto the street from the station, we saw stands selling lily of the valley.

It is a tradition in France to give out a spring of lily of the valley on May Day.  Our tour guide was really sweet--she gave each of us a sprig.






St. Paul's station happens to be named after a nearby cathedral, Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis. Since we were right there, we decided to go ahead on in since (because it was a church) it was open despite the holiday.

 

This church was built between 1627 and 1641, and has some Italian influences, including in the outside façade.

 

 

The dome inside the church also has Italian influences.

 

Here are a couple of other pictures of the interior:

 



 

From here, we walked to the Place des Vosges, built by Henry IV from 1605 to 1612.  This was the first planned square in the city.

(Statue of Louis XIII)

 

 

After dinner in a nearby restaurant, we walked down to the Ile St. Louis.  This is the second smaller island in the middle of the Seine River that I skipped in my post about Day 2.  While we were walking down the street, I saw the cutest little salon de the I would have loved to stop at if we had more time.

(cutest collection of random teapots in the window)

The island is the home of the cathedral of St. Louis, another 17th century church (this one slightly later, as it was constructed 1664 to 1675).

 

 

We actually visited the church on Day 2, on our last day in Paris we just walked around the island a little bit before stopping and getting an ice cream--the Ile St. Louis is famous for ice cream, so we made sure to get a cone here.

(picture taken on the bridge to the Ile de la Cite, looking back towards the Ile St. Louis)

We had one more major activity planned before we left Paris--a cruise on the Seine River.  As I mentioned in my last post, it was cold and rainy on this day in Paris.  We decided to do a nighttime cruise because it was so nasty and grey looking out during the day.  Unfortunately, it started really raining when we got on the boat, which made picture taking very difficult.  The cold didn't help either.  These were the best of the pictures I took: 

The cruise went from a docket near Pont Nuef (on the Ile de la Cite),

 to the Eiffel Tower, and back down the Seine,

 

 

passing the edge of the Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame is located,

until it reached the edge of the Ile St. Louise, and turned to return to the dock.

Once we were back on the Ile de la Cite, we walked down to take pictures of the Notre Dame at night.

 

 

So we ended  our time in Paris by seeing some of its most famous landmarks one last time.

Thank you so much for going on this journey with me!