Day Fiftysix - Jul 16, 2012
Paris, France
Daily Didactic
Our day started reasonably mid morning. We had breakfast in our kitchen/bedroom/shower and headed out for a modest day of touristing. We made a quick stop at our first (and the most impressively professional) umbrella shop, it was incredibly entertaining. Armed with a new umbrella, we headed subterranean and resurfaced at the Centre Pompidou, which houses France's National Museum of Modern Art. It was a pleasant change from the antiquities of the Louvre and the first contemporary art museum we've been in since the Sophia in Madrid. We browsed for three or four hours and in the mid to late afternoon explored next step touristing possibilities. We eventually decided that the Eiffel Tower was a reasonable addition to the day, but decided to make it an evening adventure. We metro'd back to a grocery near our flat and grabbed some dinner makings. Armed with meat and produce we returned to our flat, cooked up some dinner, and relaxed for a few hours before heading back to the metro for a late night excursion to the tower. We got there around 10:30 and (true to description) it was beautifully lit up and the lines were short. We paid our euros to climb to the second level, the highest place you can hike with out queueing and cramming into an elevator and where we had read the good views were. We got to the top of the 674 steps just in time for the hourly Eiffel strobe light extravaganza. The whole thing starts blinking in what you might worry is a seizure inducing frenzy. Seizure free, we wandered around and took in the view from all four sides. Just spectacular views of Paris all lit up at night. Eventually we took the elevator back down (because it looked more like a funicular and, as a result, looked fun), caught the metro back to Luxembourg, and called it a late night about half past midnight.
Today's Photos
