Paris, Day 1
We took an early train to Paris from Brussels, which only took a little over an hour. Then at the Paris train station we had to take a metro to our hotel, which took another 45 minutes. Willow fell asleep on the metro holding her ticket.
We dropped our bags off at the hotel and went straight to the Eiffel Tower. Zoey has been asking and asking to see the Eiffel Tower, so we made that our first stop. We had tickets to go up to the top…the elevator for JonPaul, Willow, and my mom, and the stairs for Zoey, Ronin, and me.
While the elevator riders had to wait in a line, the stair climbers got to start right away. The good part was getting to see the tower from inside the legs of the tower. Zoey, Ronin, and I got to stop at level 1 (350 steps), which the elevator skips. we walked around and took some pictures, then made our way up to level 2, which was another 350 steps. Believe me, the kids did better with the steps than I did. I seriously felt out of shape!
The top of the tower is closed for renovations right now, so this was as high has we could get. It was still pretty spectacular. We had great views of the city, although to be honest the skyline of Paris wasn’t as great as the skyline of other places.
Coming down the stairs, we saw the big hydraulic pumps that bring the elevator up and down. They were pretty cool. We then walked across the river to get a picture of the Eiffel Tower from the other side of the Seine. We waited until the light at the crosswalk changed then ran to the middle of the street to get a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower before the light changed again.
From here we walked along the Seine until we got to the Paris Sewer Museum, which takes you down into the Sewers like in Les Misérables. However, they were closed until mid-January, so we didn’t get to visit. I was really looking forward to this stinky museum, but maybe next time. We did end up finding two invaders on our way there. Invaders are these mosaic aliens placed on buildings; it is an app game where you scan the invaders and get points for finding them. This was really fun for the kids, and we ended up looking for invaders all over Paris.
Since we couldn’t go to the Sewer Museum we walked to the Musée de l'Armée, a military museum that also houses Napoleon’s tomb. The place was impressive, with lots of military memorabilia outside in the courtyards.
We walked all the way to the other side of the complex where the tomb is. The building looked like a church on the outside and inside. There were small (in comparison) alcoves with other tombs, and a big altar in the back. Napoleon’s tomb is in the basement, and his son’s tomb is in an alcove in the basement. We had a lot of ‘compensating for something’ jokes when looking at the tomb and building.
We walked through a small part of the military museum. I gave Ronin my phone to take pictures because he was so excited about all of the exhibits. The rest of us found it pretty boring, so we only did some of the museum.
Next to the Musée de l'Armée is the Rodin Museum. We didn’t have enough time to do this museum justice, but went through the exhibits quickly. I really like the marble pieces, and there was a video that showed the process of creating the different sized pieces in different materials.
The museum has a large garden, which is where the completed final pieces are held. The kids got to have fun posing like the statues. Willow got bored after a few, but Ronin and Zoey wanted to copy all of them.
It was getting a little late, so we began our walk to the Arc de Triomphe. We walked through the Palace de la Concorde, which is where the guillotine was set up and is where all the famous executions took place. Unfortunately the obelisk was covered up, probably for renovations (like a lot of things in the winter when most tourists aren’t visiting).
We walked down the Champs Elysees at dusk, and the kids were starving. So we stopped at a crepe kiosk and got the kids crepes with Nutella. So yummy. The Champs Elysees was all lit up with red lights on the trees and blue spotlights on the Arc.
It is over one mile walk down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe, and we had already walked a lot today. We were all really tired, and I was hoping that there was an elevator to the top of the Arc. Unfortunately, there was no elevator and we walked up and up and up the steps. It was still less than the stairs up the Eiffel Tower though!
I really liked the view from the top of the Arc even better than the one from the Eiffel Tower (probably because you can see the Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc). The Champs Elysees looks pretty from up here. Pretty and very bright!
We were meeting our friend Merik and her family for dinner, so we took the metro to the restaurant (and found another invader on the walk). Merik was hosted by my aunt as an exchange student in high school to the United States, and she has kept in touch with my aunt. She even came to Vienna when we were there back in September to hang out with us. Merik and her husband have two girls, aged 4 and 7. Although they don’t speak much English and my kids speak no French, they were able to play some games while the adults got to talk at dinner. Merik ordered a bunch of French food, including sangria, wine, foie gras, and escargot. It was a delicious meal! I really liked both the foie gras and the escargot, but as you can see, Zoey was not a fan! It was really late by the time we got back to the hotel, but was well worth it for a fabulous evening.
