Saturday Opera house and the Louvre plus the tip of the tower

All but Jane were up and working on computers by 7 AM...tonight we have a 9:30 PM reservation to ascend the Eiffel Tower so we can see The Paris lights at nite. This will be another first for me and according to the Internet the sky's should clear up by late this afternoon. Meanwhile we were off to see the opera house..what a beautiful building full of huge marvelous staircases and balconies... Many artifacts of yesterday's productions. It is still raining so it was raincoats back on as we made our way back to the Louvre for a second afternoon of explorations and each of us finding our special interest areas. Mine was the Dutch painters as I searched for works by the Teniers family artist s as I enjoy their works, especially David Teniers The Younger, but I already knew from the Internet that he did not have any on display at this time in the Louvre but was very happy when Bonnie discovered a small side room that had a full display the Teniers works. Our last special to find was for Martha...Venus de milo.. Such a beautiful armless lady she is.

Back to the apartment then off to the Eiffel Tower to meet Bonnie's son-in-law, Scott, who is in town for work had invited us all out for drinks and dinner before our night time trip up the tower. We ended up in a classy restaurant where we all should have worn our best outfits...but the rain won out and except for some small changes we all went as we were. We started with wine in a nearby restaurant before making our way to the Clos des Gourmets Restaurant where we had a 7:00 pm reservation for a four course meal ...first more wine, appetizer, salads/soup, main meal and then cheese plate for desert(we had the cheese plate but Jane and Bonnie both had a luscious dessert), of which we sampled. Wow what a meal...but the conversations with Scott who is such a honey, that we would all like to take him home with us, was so much fun. He even ordered a vegan dinner for me and of course I had a small amount of wine but let Martha drink most of my share. So for a change I was hanging on to her for different reasons....but she sure did enjoy herself...we all did rain and all.

As we were only had minutes to spare to make it from the restaurant to the tower before our scheduled elevator tickets We walked very fast down the rain filled streets and just made it as they opened the gate for our time group. We were surprised when,because of the rain, they let us go all the way to the top. Usually in bad weather they stop you at the second level. What a great end to a wonderful evening.