I wake up at 6:30 am on Tuesday morning, and I’m still pretty groggy. In reality it’s still only 12:30 am at home. So this is still a struggle to wake up and be alive this morning. It’ll take a few days yet to be totally adjusted.
While the family sleeps I write the bulk of the first post of the day. I don’t yet have my workflow down because the wifi here is terrible. So it takes me a while to figure out that disconnecting and just using data is the best idea. I get everyone up at 8:00 and they all look like I felt 90 minutes earlier.
D and I walk across the street for 8 chocolate croissants and a cup of coffee. That sounds like an order from The Blues Brothers but at $3 EU for 3, you get 1 free. So that whole order is $8 EU in the end. Imagine what 8 freshly made chocolate croissants and a cup of coffee cost in the States? We’re in the $20+ ballpark here. It’s actually quite remarkable how cheap the food is. I pay with my credit card which thoroughly confuses the guy at the cash register but we get it done.
The forecast says the day is going to be a hot one, but the temps are comfortably cool this morning. Target is 95 today, but the breeze still runs through the house and it feels great to wake up with. We head out just after 9:00, and hit the subway to start our 2nd full day properly.
The day starts around the corner from the Louvre. There aren’t many people around right now so the whole process is easy and we head off towards the north loop of the city. It’s the smaller of the 2 loops we plan for the day. There is no live guide on this one and the recording starts randomly telling us things about the various landmarks. We pass the Maurice Hotel, where Dali apparently had a bunch of sheep sent to his room and he started shooting blanks at them.
We get off at the Sacre Coeur stop, and make a side trip to the top of the tallest hill in Paris to check it out. The first thing that strikes me is that this resembles the Taj Mahal in a way. The climb is reasonable and we get up in short order, and the views of the city are nice, albeit glazed over by the haze. The top of the climb is loaded with sightseers today, and I imagine every day.
The inside of the chapel is amazing, and harkens back to our visit to Rome almost 7 years ago. The attention to detail is always amazing to me, and this is no different. So much time was spent creating this work of art that it’s hard not to admire it. The ceiling is another part of the masterpiece.
We do a loop inside then head back out to walk around the artist’s village at the top. We score our first magnet of the trip, which is a solid find on the day.
Otherwise, the area on top is pretty much a tourist attraction where people go and have their portrait drawn by local artists. It’s neat but not really what we’re here for. I suppose if we’d been in search of local art we would have spent more time here. But after a quick walk through the area we descend the hill, stopping at a small store for some bread, cheese, meat, and drinks. Today’s lunch is an ad hoc affair, which we eat at the bus stop while we wait to finish out the blue loop.
After the bus drops us back at the office I make them endure a side trip to Cafe Verlet, which is little more than a 5 minute walk. I get a double espresso which is excellent, and D gets a pot of Darjeeling which is also quite good. We go through 2 pitchers of cold water and the best part is that the entire place is air conditioned and comfortably cold. Totally worth the $11 we pay for this side trip. This also provides a much-needed rest on the day, which is something we need to be aware of with 3 kids in tow.
We then get on the red loop of the same bus tour and head towards Notre Dame, which will be just 2 stops down the line.
While the cathedral is obviously closed due to the fire earlier in the year, the architecture and overall visual effect the castle has is still amazing. It is still nothing short of a work of art and if you are here you are doing yourself a disservice not going to see it. We got off and found a walking tour loop in the guide book that D bought earlier in the year which allows us to enjoy the building from all sides.
On the other side of Notre Dame is the Deportation Martyrs Memorial, which recognizes the Jews that were deported and subsequently killed during the second world war. Being here is sobering, and makes me even more aghast and angry at everything that transpired during that time. We as a society would be well-served to never forget what those dark time brought to the world.
After that side trip we sat down again and wrapped up the vittles from the first snack stop, then finished up the walking tour and made a few edits along the way due to the heat of the day. We ended up going around Sainte Chapelle, which is something Sean said we should do but I had totally forgotten until this morning as I was writing this. I suppose we will have a good reason to come back here now.
We finish the walking tour then get back on the bus and ride past some of the things we walked past yesterday. With much of this stuff, I think you could do the same thing day after day, not entirely unlike Kingdom Trails on a mountain bike. It sort of never gets old.
We cross the river again and the bus goes down the Champs-Élysées for quite some time as we approach the Arc de Triomphe, which is really cool and frankly more massive than I thought, but which stands at the junction of 12 avenues in Paris. So it is quite literally the center of the largest traffic congestion problem in the Western Hemisphere, or at least close to it.
After the Arc, the bus takes a b-line to the Eiffel Tower and we get off at the top/overlook to hang out for a bit on the steps, as we have a little time to burn. There’s a drummer here who works with nothing but pots & pans and a bucket, and who is really quite good. He also goes on forever, and is quite impressive in his ability to move his arms like that for so long. D says it is like me riding a bike for 5 hours but this hurts my arms to think about it.
We eventually eat dinner at a place which I think is named Croque A Club but which I cannot find on any map or Google search, so it may be something else. The food is really good and reasonably priced, and I am again pleasantly surprised at how fair the food prices are here.
We walk back to the Eiffel Tower overlook steps and make our way down to start the journey up. On the way Simon sees a water park and he goes with D to dip their feet while Julia, Zac, and myself find some shade to sit in and stare up at the marvel that is this massive antenna. We look up the height, which is about 1000′ total. We also then compare this to the face of El Capitan, which was climbed without ropes in the movie Free Solo, which is almost 3 times the total vertical height. As we sit there and stare up at this structure, this is hard to make sense of.
As predicted by the guide from the previous day, there was almost no line around 7:00 pm, and we walked right up and went through the gate without incident, got our tickets after a 10 minute wait, and before long we were about to head up by foot to the middle level, which is as high as you can get by stairs.
In all, the climb up is an effort but really nothing that difficult if you pace yourself. Well worth it, of course. The views are amazing. But words will not do the views justice, so you’ll have to just come here and see for yourself.
After the descent we embark on a mini wild goose chase to find the subway, then realize that it’s a long way until we get to fill up with water. We manage to get a bottle from a vending machine for $2 which we slaughter in 30 seconds. When we get home, the Carrefour is not open which spikes our plan to buy dessert on the way back to the apartment. This part of the city closes down at 9:00 pm and we missed that by about 20 minutes. It’s been a long day.
We get back to the apartment and cobble together some dessert of milk chocolate and Kinder ice cream bars I had bought the day before, which does the trick. We also drink every drop of available water in the house in about 10 minutes. Then we are off to bed as we wrap up our 2nd full day of vacation.
Traveling Normandy 