Paris 2021 - Day 5

Friday, October 29, 2021 – Day 5

Today we're actually going to Disneyland, and since it's always busy there, we're there at half past ten. But even though there are apparently still tickets available, we can't get any - impossible, in both senses of the word. So we buy tickets for the next day and drive back to Paris. It only takes an hour anyway, so we're angry and grumpy.

OK, then change of plan: off to the Louvre to get tickets there and then to the Brasserie Le Nemours for refreshment. Hidden under the table is a bronze plaque embedded in the floor with the inscription " Arago ". The Internet immediately informs us:

The meridian of France was calculated in the 17th century and more precisely determined in the 19th century by the astronomer François Arago. The Prime Meridian of Paris was for a long time the Prime Meridian of the world (more important than the Prime Meridian of Greenwich). It passed through the Paris Observatory, but this line had long been in rivalry with other meridian lines, all of which eventually lost out to the Greenwich Meridian. The rest of the world accepted the London Prime Meridian fairly quickly (International Meridian Conference, Washington 1884), the French took a little longer and finally accepted it in 1911.

The course of the Paris meridian can be identified and followed using 135 bronze plaques embedded in the ground. They were installed in 1994 to mark the 200th birthday of the astronomer, physicist and republican politician François Arago.

There is a lot going on in the Louvre (once again free for EU citizens under 26), but everything is still easy to reach and can be viewed at your leisure. We also discovered an Arago plaque in the Louvre. And yes, we saw the Mona Lisa , filmed it and photographed it from a distance, but the crowd of people waiting and wandering around fills an entire hall and most people don't even notice the other works of art in the room.

On the way home we did a little shopping at Subdued, Zara and Brandy Melville and then took 15,000 steps back to base: Hotel Aramis and the bar Le Trait d'Union.