There was a group of men having a party under my window until way past 4 am, I guess I was next door to a little market that sold alcohol and they didn't want to go to far from it. So I was up early to able to find the place for my day tour of Paris. I had paid a few dollars extra for the breakfast service in the hotel and it really was a few dollars worth. A hard roll, a croissant (and not a great french one either), butter, jam, cheese, coffee and orange juice. It'll do. So I hit the metro to get to the tour place and found it with no problem. Travel tip, it helped me A LOT to use the street view on google maps. When you search an address, you can see what it looks like in a 360 degree view. This was awesome, because I kinda recognized the street I was on and I went right to the place.
1st tour, Historical Paris. We rode in a big bus, top floor, around to the Louvre, the opera house, some churches, some other places and then, took a boat taxi on the Sains River to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was gorgeous and huge. I met 2 ladies on the bus from the US, Joan from Chicago and Nikki from NY via Florida. I stuck with them for the tour of NDC, but I then lost them, when I went to check something out. They were really nice and I enjoyed having others to talk to. Joan and Nikki, if you read this, thank you for being so nice, it was very nice to meet you! So after a whole bunch of pictures, there was a break for lunch. I went to a little brasserie near the tour office. It was good, but expensive, I guess we were only 2 blocks away from the Louvre, so I'm sure it's a tourist area. I ate a really good club sandwich on toasted bread (or half of it really), with an awful Heineken beer and then the most magnificent lemon pie, wow! It cost me about $30 (American), yikes! So back to the tour. This 2nd half was called the "Seinarama", 1st 1 hour was another bus tour, but to the Arc de Triumph and places around there... I know I should have these names somewhere, but oh well! Then, there was another hour of a boat tour down the Seins River again, but this one ended at the Eiffel Tower! It was unbelievable!!! It was so beautiful and looked so delicate, but was so enormously large and sturdy. The was something very elegant about it and peaceful. I was awestruck. We finally got into the elevator at about 5pm, the group got to bypass a very large line, that was awesome. The veiw of Paris was astonishing, I didn't have any clue Paris was SO huge. I took a bunch of pictures and even remembered to take some video. Then, like some obsessed photographer, I waited 4 1/2 hours for the sun to go down!! Luckily I had my 2nd half of the sandwich with, plus I brought the cheese from breakfast! I only bought a bottle of water and then of course, I couldn't help but buy a scoop of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Funny, there is a Ben and Jerry's just around the corner from my office, haha.... real try new stuff like, huh? Anyways, I waited and waited, there are only a few benches on the 2nd floor as well, so a lot of walking! I took pictures of the tower's shadow, growing and growing, I took pictures of the sunset and then the sun was down (mostly) and the light on the Eiffel came on. I thought I wanted pics of the city at night, but something said it was time to go. I'm sure I could have done a lot of things in 5 hours while waiting for the sun to go down, but, this was my only chance to get pics of the tower at night, my last night. So I didn't mind. I did have to forfeit going to see Montmate and Versailles, even thought everyone told me to go see them. This was the point to say, it's my trip and I'm not going to make excuses to here as to why I made my choices. I'm pretty sure, as a photographer (wanna be) that my heart sang when I saw the tower all lite up and then when it sparkled, it was magic. Oh, occasionally, throughout the night, they have special lights on the tower that make it look like it's sparkling! I also wanted to go back to the Arc de Triumph at night, so I did that too!
I made my way back to the hotel via the metro and felt like I had a very long, but successful day. Did I say in this blog that I twisted my ankle at the Hard Rock? LOL I stepped off the stairs wrong, so needless to say, after all my standing and walking today, it was NOT happy! The street was just as loud tonight as it was last night, but I passed out and didn't hear a thing, haha
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