Day 2: Paris

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Day 2: Paris

Effiel Tower Part 1
We must have walked at least 10 miles and climbed over 50 flights of steps! Day 2 we became Adam and Carrie on Tour who love to see and do as much as they can in one day! We started out walking, walking, walking and I really didn’t know where we were going. Adam in amazingly good at directions. He looked at the map once and the hotel and began walking. The streets of Paris are like a spiderweb. If I would have been alone I probably would have walked in circles for hours, but after a good long walk I looked around a corner, and there it was… The Effiel Tower. I have heard that it is not that impressive and I must completely disagree. What an outstanding structure. It was just so cool to see. We took pictures and walked around it, but we didn’t go in. Our plan was to come back later and enter during the daylight and be up for the sun to go down and see it dark, which we did, but you’ll hear about that later. I must go astray for a moment to tell you that as I type this I am sitting in the Eurostar train on the way to London and it is beautiful to see the French country side. They just gave me a free little bottle of wine and beer for Adam. How fun! Sorry… Getting back to the Effiel tower… we took some pictures and decided to go to our next stop, the Musse’d Orsay.

Snack on the Seine
We walked and walked some more and realized that we were hungry and we came across a bakery and went in and got a bottle of water and a baguette. It is quite customary to see people walking down the street eating a baguette in Paris. We walked to the Sienne River, sat on a bench and had a little rest and piece of bread. What a great memory. It was so peaceful and relaxing. As we walked to the Musse’d Orsay we walked by Hotel d’ Invaiilides (a super expensive hotel where Napolean’s tomb is, the Grand Palace, a Thomas Jefferson Statue, the Lourve and many other opulent buildings.

Muse’ D Orsay
We get in line and we get the Paris Museum Pass- a good deal if you want to do a lot and be able to skip the lines- and we go inside. Now I can really appreciate art but in a place like that I don’t know what to do. We walked around a bit and looked at some sculptures, photos, and paintings, but really I was looking for the one think I came to see…. The oringal Starry Night by Van Gogh. Van Gogh by far is my most favorite painter and when we found it and walked in the room I got chills. It was just so cool to see the original and know that Van Gogh painted that picture and now I’m standing directly in front of it. We looked at his other paintings and then looked at Monet’s, which was cool too. I was so happy to remember stuff about Monet from a paper I wrote in high school! I taught Adam something! After the Musse’ D Orsay we, yes, walked some more to Notre Dame. On the way we were looking for a place to have lunch… after looking at menu’s from many café’s we finally stopped at a place where Adam saw “hamburger” and we looked to see that it was a Canadian Bar. Yeah Cananda! One thing we noticed is that it is customary to have a beer or wine with lunch… So we thought we would have one drink. We were sweaty and overheated. Another thing to note is that it is just as much money to have a coke, which sucks for me as a diet coke lover. So Adam had a German beer and I had a Corona- how refreshing. It was 1pm Paris time which made it 6 am Florida time. Funny! Lunch was good- standard American Food. After lunch we found Notre Dame.

Notre Dame
Again, as all buildings are in Paris it was quite impressive. We walked through- now I love the look of gothic churches and this is the most gothic church I have ever seen… so gothic that there are gargoyle statues next to Saint’s on the outside of the building. It is actually quite freaky. Inside, the stained glass windows are uncomparable to any stained glass window I have ever seen. There are a lot of Cardinal’s tombs in the cathedral. You could do a tour of the two towers, but the line was so long and we didn’t really feel like waiting in line so we went under to the crypts which is where there are a lot of rocks that used to be a city… I don’t really know… it was hot and stinky and we didn’t stay long. Moving along… then we walked some more and found the St. Germain Area-

St. Germaine/ Pantheon
full of Greek restaurants and bars in little streets. Really neat area to walk through. We walked through St. Germain and a few other areas and found ourselves at the Pantheon- another big beautiful building… but I don’t know the history… I think if I knew more of French history I would appreciate it more. We saw a bunch of tombs… my favorite…. Jean Paul Marat!!!!! Marat… fetch Bah!!!!! (anyone who saw or was a part of Marat-Sade will appreciate that) Rousseu was there and Victor Hugo and Voltaire and some other really famous French guy whose name I can’t remember at the moment. After the Pantheon we were really overheated and sat at a café for a bit, before making our way back to Notre Dame. We went to some big building… the Hotel De’ville and they were giving out free water!!!! Then we proceeded to walk back to the Effiel tower…

Effiel Tower Part 2
I thought it would take about an hour to walk… Adam said a half an hour… it took over and hour!!!!! We walked passed the river… people were laying out and there were misting stations… At the Effiel tower we had our first Coke and Diet Coke of the trip. When it is expensive and you wait until you really need it, after all the walking we did… that was the best diet coke I ever had! So we got in line and took the first lift to the first floor… then to the second floor as we began to ascend higher I notice that Adam is humming Amazing Grace quite loudly... I was even getting a bit nervous.. oh my God!!!!! We walked out and Adam was so scared that he could barely walk. He didn’t want to get close to the edge. I thought it was so cool to be able to see the entire city. After some time Adam became more comfortable and we were looking out and finding every where we walked to that day. We took a bunch of pictures but the sun was going down to we had to get to the top… Yes, we went even higher. Now I don’t think I’m stupid… but for some reason I did not think that the next level was much higher than we already were… there is a video of us going to the top--- it is soooooooo soooooooo sooooooo sooooooo high! Even I was scared and I have never been afraid of heights. I actually think the adrenaline rush is cool. The top was enclosed so you did feel safe but I didn’t like the enclosed area cause there was no air and being that high and overheated is not a good combo. We took some pictures and went back to the 2nd level to await the dark. As it got dark it was so cool to see the lights turn on. Every few minutes we would walk to another side and by the time you made it back, there were more lights. Our time at the Effiel tower was another great experience and great memory.

Champs D’Ellysses
We went back to the Champs D-Ellysses and had dinner… dinner was around 11pm- that’s another thing we learned… they eat late! We went to Pizza Pino and had a lovely dinner. The only slightly scary thing happened there… we were in line to wait for an outside table and Adam went inside to go the bathroom when I heard a man screaming behind me. I turned around to see this man and a woman and a car… the car and was backing up and the man was pushing his woman to the side. The car hit the man, not too hard but he did drop his ice cream cone, then the man ran to the car and kicked a big ass dent into the car. Then the yelling started- The guy drove off and the man was really pissed. Luckily no one was hurt. Dinner was great! Sitting here typing this it almost seems impossible that we did all of this in one day… but we did!!!! A long, fantastic day in Paris.

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