Paris, Carrousel Arch

There is a street that goes right through the courtyard (the Place du Carrousel) of the Louvre, between the entrance to the Louvre and the Arc du Carrousel. When we visited in 1983 we parked right here, among the tourist busses and fixed lunch — match that if you can.

When we arrived at the Louvre in 1991 (we have visited inside the Louvre four times, during our nine visits to Paris), they were doing a lot of digging, and the hole extended two or three floors below the surface. Since this was Saturday, the trucks are not running, so that meant the entrance to the work area, right in front of the Louvre, was available for us to park and have lunch.

They were building the "Carrousel du Louvre" — a vast underground space stretching from the Hall Napoleon, the main entrance to the museum, to the Carrousel Arch. Its central crossroads — Place de la Pyramide Inversee — is fed with daylight through an inverted pyramid, a smaller model of the Pyramid entrance to the Louvre. There are shops, restaurants, exhibition spaces, several auditoriums and conference halls, car and bus parking areas, and new premises for the Louvre's research department.

I always try to park the RV in a place where the view from our dining table is as grandiose as can be imagined. In Paris that’s easy to do. Out our window to the east was the Glass Pyramid entrance to the Louvre; the Denon Wing of the Louvre to the south; the new Richelieu Wing to the north; and just out our window to the west was the Carrousel Arch, Tuileries Gardens, Place de la Concord with the obelisk, then the Champs Elysées with the Arc de Triomphe in the distance.

Ain’t no restaurant, no place — even in Paris! — with such a location, and such a view! The case in favor of RV travel in Europe is now closed!!!