Paris – Day 4

Day 4 we went to la Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle.  It’s a pretty impressive museum that was opened the same year that the Eiffel Tower was built – 1889.  The museum is actually in a huge park where there is a zoo, huge gardens, and other museums.

We spent our day in the main gallery that is full of stuffed animals.  It’s kind of strange – there are all these exotic and some endangered animals  – but they were all shot and brought back to Paris 100 years ago or so when no one really cared about killing off a species.
The strangest was the gallery of extinct species – where you are looking at a specimen of an animal that no longer exists. It’s a bitter irony how many of them were ‘over-hunted’ to extinction – just like the one that you are looking at behind the glass.

Later we got on the metro bound for La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. 
It’s A LOT of steps to get to the church at the top – but it’s worth it.

There is an impressive panoramic view over Paris from up top

 

After walking through the church we wandered around the Montmarte neighborhood for a while.  The kids picked out some post-cards to put in their journals

We got back on the train for the last time.  
The next day we loaded back in the van for the 6 hour drive home.

We had a fantastic vacation in and around Paris.  The kids saw so much stuff for the first time – and we saw a lot of things for the first time, and saw many things differently through their eyes.   We are truly blessed to be able to live here for this stage of our family’s life – and we are trying to truly appreciate it as much as we can.