Crepes

I like crepes. I wish I could remember the name of the first place in France I tried a crepe. It was on the north side of Notre Dame towards the back. Erica and I split a sugar crepe; it was warm, sweet, and just the ticket. I don’t want to say that a simple creation of batter was the highlight of my day considering I toured the Notre Dame Chapel, walked around the Latin Quarter, the Pantheon (not the Pantheon) and went to the Luxemburg Palace…but perhaps it was. Notre dame was pretty awesome, the ornamentation and architecture on the inside was so intricate and the height that the cathedral spanned was pretty incredible…I can’t imagine how something like that was built so long ago. We made sandwiches with fresh baguettes we got this morning and had half of our lunch in front of Notre Dame and the rest of our lunch at Luxemburg Palace, which was very pretty. We ended up going back to the Eiffel Tower so we could see it during the day. It was still made of iron, still lots of people, still cool.

Bonjour, Oui, and Merci…. And That’s About It

To start out the day we headed to Avenue des Champ Elysees, the main road where most of the iconic sites of Paris are, minus the most famous the Eiffel Tower. We began at the Arc de Triumph and walked all the way to the Louvre from there, zig-zagging around along the way. When we came up from the metro station in front of the Arc de Triumph the size of it all was what hit us first. It was really cool being able to look up and down Champ Elysees and see straight from one end of the city to the other. On our way towards the Louvre we walked by the Place do Concorde where an Egyptian Obelisk in honor of pharaoh Ramses II is located. We diverted away from Champ Elysees for a while and walked along the Seine River for a while before finally reaching the Louvre. The grounds at the Louvre are ginormous and there are statues all over the place. The Louvre Mesuem is huge, you could take a whole week to go through it if you wanted. We saw the major items there like the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the Seated Statue of Ramses II highlighted our time in the museum. After the museum we decided to head back to Cecilia’s to get dinner before going to the Eiffel tower. On the way to the Metro station we came across a guy who tried to pull the Paris gold ring scam (google it) on us, but we would not be fooled.

Tonight after making spaghetti for dinner at Cecilia’s we headed to the Eiffel Tower. We definitely got plenty of pictures there; I’ll try not to post too many of them. We did self-portrait shots, timed shots from various distances to ensure getting at least one good picture in front of the famous tower. It was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t entirely what I expected. The atmosphere at the Eiffel Tower is almost like the county fair. There’s a bunch of long lines to go on a ride that isn’t as exciting as the ten bucks you’re willing to shell out for it, ice cream and churro stands on every corner, and a bunch of guys pedaling crappy souvenirs that no one (well almost no one) is going to buy. Don’t get me wrong the tower was cool and I’ll never forget being there, especially at night when it was lit and “glittered” as Cecilia likes to describe it. I was just a little surprised at the carnival-like spectacle that it is, as opposed to a more intimate and relaxed type of environment. All in all, definitely still worth the trip, and while I didn’t go up in the tower I still might not recommend it, the view you really want to have for your pictures is of the tower itself.