A day for a meander and a night to go up the Eiffel tower

Today I slept in until 10:30am. Well actually the last few days it's been that pattern : )
So this is what a vacation feels like!

I'm glad that when I ate breakfast at the Hampton Inn on the 19th that I shamelessly pocketed 5 mini-boxes of cereal at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet. I've been having those for breakfast several days now, as well as gleefully enjoying coconut-flavored yogurt that comes in little glass pots with gold foil lids that you peel off. I'm saving all the glass pots to make some sort of use out of them back home.

We finally figured out how to heat something up on the stove--these people who own the apartment seem to like their fancy appliances that are not intuitive whatsoever. We felt like happy cavemen when the element started to warm up so we could enjoy soup for lunch. We are still astonished that the laundry machine takes 2.5 hours to do a load of laundry.

As well--buying milk at the grocery store is completely confusing. Some of it's refrigerated, some of it isn't but the bottles look the same. They're stocked in 6-packs that are shrink-wrapped and if you want an individual bottle from the pack you just tear open the pack and customers pick their milk jugs out of it. There's "demi-creme" and other confusing names but nothing seems to be 1% or 2% etc. I will have to google the milk situation. I think I might have accidentally bought a lactose free dairy product since I neglected to notice that it doesn't say "lait" anywhere on it.

Today I googled the Top 5 passages in France and noticed that Passage du Grand Cerf (pronounced as "sare") was just down the block. So I showed Gran the exciting tool that is Google Streetview to help us visualize our route and we took a walk, arm-in-arm down to Passage du Grand Cerf. It was okay, very pretty to look at but not as lively as Passage du Jouffroy (pronunced "zh-oh-froy"). However when we came out the other end we found that across the alley was another Passage, so we went through that and when we came out the end of that, suddenly we were in the midst of a very popular, mostly-pedestrian market street called Rue du Montorgueil. Here we cris-crossed from store to store, bought the most succulent croissants I've had yet, enjoyed watching some Brasilian Capoeira buskers in the street and just had an amazing time feeling that sense of discovery. It is primarily a food market street with lots of meat, fish, cheese stores, bakeries, of course a couple of pharmacies, bistros, toy stores etc.

Later in the afternoon, I took a walk over to Les Forums des Halles which is a mall that is primarily below street level and extremely confusing. It's also where we can catch the Metro and RER trains.


Tonight was our night to go up the Eiffel Tower. I had actually booked the tickets up the tower a few weeks ago when the 11pm slot was all that was left. I had been wondering over the last few days what the best way to spend our time was to ensure that we were in the area for our 11pm elevator ride. We ended up booking a custom 1-hour tour with our favorite driver, Vincent of 4-Roues Sous 1Parapluie. It was technically his night off, but when he was contacted by his company and they explained who we were, he gladly agreed to drive us around. I thought it would be best to have Vincent, not only because he's a delicous Frenchman with sparkling blue eyes and an engaging personality, but because..............I forget now.  Oh yes--because he would already know where he has taken us.

He took us over on the East side (10th and 11th arrondissements) where there are more immigrant communities and along the Canal St. Martin. He drove us past where he lives, along past Pere Lachaise Cemetary etc and we saw another side of Paris with lots of graffiti and people who hardly ever see a vintage Citroen driving tourists in Paris through.  When I mentioned the time, he started back towards the other side of the city where the Eiffel tower is and under the very same tunnel where Princess Diana died in that horrible car crash (August 31, 1997) against one of the supporting beams.

It started to rain a little bit and there was no time for him to pull over and put the cover over the car, so I opened my newly-bought, cheesy "Paris" umbrella and held it up over the open top of the car---just like the logo shows!

Once at the tower, we had a very short and fast-moving line to stand in and we ascended to the second floor. We got out and looked around the city, took some pictures and a little video and enjoyed the view. If you ever go up the Eiffel tower, go to the very top as I'm sure the view would be even more stunning. Since it was late, we didn't stay long or seek out any historical education while we were up there--the 2nd floor is a little underwhelming but still an experience to enjoy.

On our way home, Molly said she enjoyed it more than she expected to, but raved more about the tour through the area of Paris no tourists seek to check out.