Today probably had about as much walking as day 1 did, but it was a heck of a lot more organized. I started out by having a croissant and coffee from the cafeteria breakfast here at the hotel. I think I will be charged for it but I can’t guess how much just yet. I’m going to skip it the rest of the stay I am pretty sure. I got going a bit later than I normally would partially because I slept late due to being very tired from the air travel and partially because my neighbors kept me awake much longer than I had hoped to be due to their speaking German at very high volume across the hotel to each other (so far as I can tell).
After breakfast I walked up to Gare du Nord and found any sort of Paris map I could find. For reasons I don’t pretend to understand this city just does not have a lot of versions of city maps available with advertising on them and all that like most other cities do. At least not that I can find. The one I was able to get is a brochure for the hop on, hop off bus tours. I used that to plan my route down Lafayette to Opera and then a few twists and turns and I was on Champs Elysees. I walked up to the Arc de Triomphe and found that you can actually go up to the top for 9 Euro I think it was. You have to get to it through tunnels as it is surrounded by a large roundabout (rotary for those of you back home). The climb to the top was a heck of a lot of stairs up a spiral staircase and I had to pass a lot of people trying to catch their breath. By the time I got into the first floor, there were two inside before getting to the top, I had to catch my breath as well. The problem was it was warmer than outside and very humid so I didn’t stop in there for very long before making my way all the way to the top. I spent a few minutes there and took in the cool breeze before heading down. The walk down the stairs was much easier than the way up.
From the Arch I made my way back to the Eiffel Tower and when I got there I bought an apple donut and a big bottle of water. After finishing both of those off I got in line for the elevator ride up to the second floor of the Tower. The line was about as long as they were on Saturday but I figured it appeared to be moving quick. I think all totaled it took me about 45 minutes to get into the elevator. The ride was quick but there were some women who apparently were more bothered by heights than I am and though I think they were speaking Italian there is no doubt about the nervousness they projected. Personally, for a change, this ride didn’t bother me at all. I suppose if I had gone all the way to the top I would have been bothered by that one but partially due to that line waiting to go up and the fact I didn’t even reach the top of Tokyo Tower I decided not to get all the way up there. I did however walked the stairs down instead of taking the elevator on my way out after spending a while taking pictures and just looking out. The first floor had a restaurant and a cafeteria but I opted to press on from there after checking out the views some more. There were a ton of stairs from the second floor all the way down to ground level but since it was downward and I took a fairly leisurely pace I managed to do it ok.
From the Tower I walked to the Seine and got on a Batobus boat after buying an all day pass. This I rode once around their route then got off at Musee d’Orsay (which was actually the first stop after the Eiffel Tower. The boat was enclosed and at times got a bit warm but often a cool breeze blew through and I sat near a door that was opened. I figure the whole ride was probably about an hour and a half or so. When I got off at last I decided to head for the hotel. It appears that a lot of restaurants are closed on Sunday. I got to the hotel by about 4:40pm and decided instead of getting food first I would go in and write some of this and relax for a few minutes. I suspect they eat supper late and don’t start serving until later than American restaurants over here.
My cell battery decided it had had enough work for the time being and I had a small scare thinking I forgot the USB charger for it but fortunately I was just dumb enough to put it in the wrong place but it did go with me.
After a short rest where I almost fell asleep a couple times I set out to find Gare de L’Est and get dinner. Gare de L’Est is really about the same distance as Gare du Nord which is great. I will be using Gare de L’est to get to Provins on Monday hopefully and definitely to get to Amiens on Tuesday. The worst case scenario is that I figure it all out on Monday but hopefully things will go smoothly.
After finding Gare de L’Est I needed to get dinner and sort of wandered around for a short bit (as I said before a lot of places appear to be closed on Sundays) and then settled on the Indiana Café (no I’m not making it up. It was supposed to be TexMex but I ended up ordering Steak Au Poivre and a couple more Belgian beers then having a coffee (which turned out to be an espresso and some Ben and Jerry’s caramel ice cream. After settling up I headed straight to the hotel to crash even though it was only around 8:30pm. My legs and feet were very tired.
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