Summer 2026 Graduation Celebration: Edinburgh, London, Disneyland Paris, Paris - Day 14 Paris

Our last day in Paris was set to be a busy one. We had multiple things we wanted to do and we needed to pack and get our AirBnB sorted out before leaving early the following day. We got up and got ready, got a little packing done and left at 9:30 to rope drop the Arc de Triomphe for their 10 AM opening. With our Paris Museum Pass we could skip the line and go right in. Not only did we save money with the pass, but the ability to skip the line was great. With the pass we visited: the Arc de Triomphe, Musée de Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Orangerie, the Pantheon, and Versailles. Purchased individually that’s 133 Euros and the pass was 108 Euros so we save 25 Euros/person with the pass! For some of the museums, we still had to make a reservation (Louve, Orsay, l’Orangerie, Versaille) but did didn’t cost anything. 

So we skipped the line and climbed up all the stairs to go to the top of the monument where they have some information in a top room, then you climb some more to get all the way to the top outside for a really incredible view of the city. 

We climbed all the way back down and hopped a metro over to see the opera house that inspired Phantom of the Opera. I wasn’t sure if we were going to make it over there so I didn’t book any tickets to go in. I remember it being sort of confusing how that worked, but we got to see it on the outside. Then we make a quick stop at Galleries Lafayette Haussman which is a huge department store with a beautiful dome in the center. You can also go to the top to get a good view, but we had basically just done that so we skipped. 

Then we spent an overly long time trying to find lunch. Finally we decided on some ramen about 15 minutes walk away because we were all tired of French food. The ramen was fun, the decor of the place being kooky and over the top. After lunch, we took a quick walk down Passage des Panoramas, which is Paris’ first covered walkway with shopping and dining. There are more passages, but we didn’t really have time to explore everything and our feet were just about dead and we had a 1:30 reservation for Musée de l’Orangerie.

We took the metro over to Place de la Concorde and admired the obelisk, statues of women marking some of the great cities of France and two large fountains. It’s a really impressive plaza. 

Musée de l’Orangerie houses Monet’s huge water lily paintings. They are absolutely enormous and really beautiful. I just wish people would respect the signs on the wall and view them in silence. It was definitely not silent. There are some other works there, a few by Picasso and some other painters, but the lilies are the main draw for this museum, the rooms for which were designed by Monet himself to house these works. 

We took the metro back to our side of town and got some coffees at a little shop in our neighborhood, which was very good. Then we went back to our apartment to relax and finish packing before having an early dinner. What did we have? French again. I’m actually very proud of myself because I ordered everything in French and helped Roger order the size of wine he wanted because our waiter actually didn’t speak the best English, but he was very excited that I spoke some French. I’ve been doing Duolingo for almost a year and listening to several podcasts, and following some French learning Instagram accounts. For the most part, I always made an effort and always said “Bonjour!” I didn’t experience anyone who seemed irritated or rude in Paris regarding my attempts at French. In fact, we really didn’t encounter any of the rudeness I’ve often heard of with Parisians. 

After dinner, we got back on the metro (our metro bill was astounding and much more than I budgeted for) and rode to the Louvre for our evening reservation at 6:30 PM. The museum closed at 9:00 and they would start rounding people up at 8:30 so we had two hours to see what we wanted to see. Before we left, I had actually printed up a little one hour tour from the Louvre website that basically took you through the “greatest hits” of the museum. This proved to be incredibly helpful. We had a plan and a very good guide that led us on the route to see some of the best of the best in their collection and a little blurb about each one. Emmaline acted as our guide because the text was very small. 

The Louvre is, well, the Louvre. I mean, it houses some of the most famous works of art in the world. And they are all just as stunning in person. The museum itself is also a masterpiece in its own right, being a former palace. Seeing the Mona Lisa in person is something we had to do, but wow is it an absolutely terrible experience. People jostling and shoving and pushing, trying to get to the front to see it. They need a better system (and supposedly she’s moving and it will be better). At the Tower of London, the crown jewels are seen from a moving sidewalk. Everyone gets an equal amount of time. They really need something like that. It’s otherwise just insanity. 

After the greatest hits, we speed-toured other sections of the museum: the Egyptian collection, a room of statues Emmaline wanted to find (that she saw on Heartstopper) and then accidentally some other sections of the museum we got to experience when we got lost both trying to find that one particular room and when we were done where and wanted to get out but got lost and couldn’t find the exit. Finally, we finished up just before 8:30 PM and made our exit. Whew! 

We got home and got a bit more packing done and then tried to get a few hours of sleep before we had to be up super early for our flights home.