Paris Day 2

Walking along the Seine

So the next day in Paris was our only full day there. We really heavily booked it and I was worried that we wouldn't be able to get it all in (even as the day was progressing). Fortunately, we did get it all in before collapsing in a heap in our hotel room that night.

First we went to the Louvre. We took a moment before going to walk through the Tuileries Garden (behind the big Ferris wheel). It was interesting in its symmetry. While the sculptures all over aren't symmetrical, the matching pairs are very similar so as to give it a symmetrical look. When we got to the museum, we took a moment over a small snack to put together a plan of attack. This place is huge and as we only had the morning (which was quickly speeding by) we needed to make the best use of our time to make sure we didn't miss anything we wanted to see.

Fortunately, they allow photography in their museum (stupid British) so rather than tell you where we went, I'll just show you.

Unfortunately, Jason was experimenting with the settings on our camera so a lot of the pictures turned out blurry if the lighting wasn't right. Now we know not to experiment with camera settings on your first trip to Paris (or anywhere for that matter).

After spending a lot of time in the Louvre (more than we meant to) we walked along the Seine to Notre Dame Cathedral. While it wasn't as impressive as I would have hoped from the outside (I try not to say this but it was smaller than I expected), I was amazed with the inside.
It felt much larger inside and the stained glass was beautiful.
Even Anna appreciated it. Even though it was pretty full of people, I didn't get annoyed at them as I often do in crowds. We looked into taking the tour that takes you to the top of the bell towers but we didn't think we were up to over 300 stairs and decided to do it the next time to go to Paris.

At this point, it was surprisingly not too late so we kept with our plan of going up the Eiffel Tower. We had wanted to see the view in the light and maybe stay up there until it was dark but as it gets dark so dang early (like by 5:00) and it had been overcast all day, we decided to just enjoy it in the dark. Oddly enough, it was lit up blue with a cirle of white stars on it. I realized later that it was for the EU flag but I have no idea why. This was probably one of the most crowded things we did. We had to wait in line for a bit to buy our tickets and then get smashed into the elevator to go up and then it was pretty crowded at the top which isn't very big (as you might have guessed from the proportions in the pictures).

In spite of all of that, it was pretty cool. There are actually three levels where the elevator stops. After the second one, you have to get on another elevator to go to the top. The strange thing was that to the first two levels, the elevator is moving sideways almost as much as it is going up. At first, that took a bit of getting used to. Then I started getting a little bit freaked out with the height (I'm not really afraid of heights but sometimes they make me a bit nervous and after the first floor, I got over it). When we finally got to the top the view was pretty impressive. They have two levels at the top. One is enclosed and the other isn't. The enclosed one has a map of the city and points out what you are looking at. It also has the distance to different cities around the world. We didn't spend too much time on the outside level because it was dark, cold and wet but we went up and looked around.

After that, we even had time to go back to the Louvre and see it all light up. I wanted to see the top of the inverted pyramid like in the movie The DaVinci Code but we didn't see it. After looking at maps later, we think we figured out where it was. It was still pretty cool to walk around the plaza with almost no one else there. It was quite a day. Pretty much if you only have a day to spend in Paris, you should do those things. We fell into our beds exhausted that night.