Wayfaring Day 55 Saint-Chapelle

August 24, 2025 Sunday

For our first full day in Paris we have tickets for three attractions: Saint-Chapelle, The Orsay Museum and our Seine River Cruise.

We took the short walk to the Ile De La Cite and found the place to line up for Saint-Chapelle. There were not many people waiting in the lines and we decided to go ahead and get in the timed entry line corresponding to our tickets. Surprisingly they allowed us to go in early since there was no one waiting to get through security. Inside the courtyard there are interpretive signs to give the history of this relatively small sanctuary built primarily to hold Christian relics under the reign of Louis IX. Inside there are two levels. The first is mostly for shopping and picking up the self guided tour tech. We grabbed our self guided tour tech and headed up the narrow stairway to the sanctuary. Upstairs is where you find the primary attraction: The amazing stained glass windows. The audio tour gives some details concerning the stained glass and other amazing features. The draw to the balcony is not for the view outside but for the view of the carvings around the doorway. You could spend hours looking at all the scenes depicted in the stained glass and the carvings. We spent a couple of hours here before leaving the compound and heading back to our apartment.

After a few minutes of rest at the apartment we decided to walk to a hamburger place our younger son had told us he enjoyed when he was here back in March. We found the place and had a cheeseburger with some fries which were very good and all cooked to order. Maybe our experience was skewed by the fact that it was early and we were the only customers. They were just taking some type of brownie/cake desert out of the oven and cutting them into squares to put in the display. We were watching the two guys working on the brownies and they offered us one for free. It was so good that we bought a slice of their other desert which was a banana bread slice. Then it was the short walk back to the apartment before heading the the Orsay.

Burger & Fries (yes, that’s the name)

I almost missed getting tickets for the Orsay for two reasons. One, I did not take my son´s advice that we should go. And two, I did not realize that it is full of my favorite type of painting; Impressionism. We took a bus that picked up near Saint-Michel and stopped in front of the Orsay just down the road along the river. But the bus did not make the stop. We were a bit confused as were others on the bus. Fortunately for us a local woman talked the driver and he let us off shortly after. I suppose we learned here that you should push the button to signal the driver that you want off at the next stop.

The Orsay is a beautiful museum that is easy to navigate as it is very open and clean. This building was a train station before it was a museum and this has a lot to do with how it is laid out. We looked at many famous paintings by great impressionists namely Monet, Morisot, Renoir, Sisley, Van Gogh, Whistler and others. We spent a few hours mostly in the impressionism areas of the museum and then had a bit of a snack at the rooftop cafe. At some point we decided we had taken in about as much as we could and we made our sortie.

From here we decided to do a walk to Invalides. This was a bit of a walk but we stopped for a rest in Square Samuel Rousseau. We sat and watched local kids playing and took in the majesty of the Basilique Saint-Clotilde. We continued our walk and entered into the Invalides area at Rue de Grenelle. We walked south along the Bd des Invalides down to the other end of the complex. We sat on some benches along Avenue de Tourville where things were mostly quiet since by this time Invalides was closed for the day.

Not thinking we wanted to walk forty minutes to our apartment we started looking for ways to get to Saint-Michel. We found a bus stop and hopped on for a little ride to a connecting bus. We made the switch and were back to Rue de Huchette in a few minutes.

From the rooftop of The Orsay

A Note on Transit:

At the beginning we purchased a 5 day pass good for the Metro, RER Trains and buses. We purchased the pass using the Bonjour app. The Bonjour app is a free app that is essential in travelling around Paris. Once your tickets are on your phone you just scan it at the scanning device and your getting around super easy. The app also alerts you to changes in trains, platforms and delays. If you ride the train the app displays the train names that will take you to the place you want to go. The name is usually on the placard on the front of the train. The app will show the names for the train you want which look like NITR, EXTP and other four letter names. We only boarded the wrong train on our first ride from Saint-Michel. We discovered our mistake and got off at the next station and tried again. After that we understood the system and had no other issues.

We just hung out in the apartment and eventually had some dinner from one of the quick service places on Rue de Huchette.

Our river cruise was set to depart at 22:15. This is a one hour cruise with its major attraction being at the Eiffel Tower at 23:00 for the light display. The cruise was uncrowded and the guide pointed out points of interest in both French and English. The timing for the light show was not precisely perfect but it was good. The overall cruise was enjoyable and worth the 30€. We walked from the cruise dock back to our apartment which was only a walk of about 10 minutes. The boats for this tour are docked on the Île de la Citi not far past Saint-Chapelle.

Being able to go back to the apartment throughout the day kept us from being overly tired from our full day of sightseeing. This was simply possible due to all the attractions for today being located in and around the Latin Quarter or the Saint Germain 5th Arrondissement. This made for a very nice first full day.