Today’s trip to Paris started like most of our train travel, where our train car was on the train, but off limits. So we needed to go find another place to “squat” on the train. Luckily we found 5 seats relatively close together and only one of them were claimed by another traveler at others stops along the way. Suffice to say – Matt has not been impressed with train travel.
We arrived in Paris, navigated to our AirBnB, dropped off our bags and were exploring the city before noon. We were a couple blocks from the Grand Palace and Petite Palace (which are across the street from each other) and next to the Seine River. The goals for the day were to see the Arc De Triumph and the Eiffel Tower. So we set down the Rue de Champs-Elysees towards the off to Arc. Along the way we stopped at an Italian restaurant to recharge our batteries and re hydrate. Then we made it to the Arc, which is a very impressive and towering building- which we later found out was commissioned by Napoleon.
After the Arc, we headed in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower. Along the way we saw all sorts of random and interesting sights including a statue of George Washington, a life size doll house, a statue of Athena, that Lily liked, and a gigantic fountain in the Jardins du Trocadero that everyone was using as a pool. It was 97 degF, so we also stopped by the fountain and cooled off in the mist.
Our Eiffel tower tickets were for 5PM, so we made it to the tower and began standing in line. To get to the mid landing on the tower took 30 minutes and to get from the mid-landing to the top took another hour. Apparently they were having some difficulties with the elevators, but Charles was napping and the girls were on their iPads, so we really had nothing better to do than to just wait. The views from the top of the tower was amazing. I am not going to say it was worth the wait, but they were impressive.
We made our way back to the apartment, showered, ate dinner and celebrated Charles 3rd birthday. We didn’t have a cake, but Matt went and got some doughnuts and Charles played along to blow out fake candles on his doughnut cake.
Less trains, more glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs
Ugh on the trains! Glad Charlie seemed to have a good birthday!