14 Oct

Day 2 – Paris!

We slept in a little today and it was glorious!

We got ready and then walked to the metro.

Hi, Eiffel Tower!

In the metro station!

We got right off at the Arc de Triomphe!

But we needed food before we went there. So we walked down Champs de Elysee.

We couldn’t quite find what we were looking for and Ally wasn’t feeling well. She had just started some medication that wasn’t sitting well with her and she was going downhill fast. I was starting to worry we weren’t going to see much today.

Random nice cars:

I finally decided we needed food fast and we went into the next café we saw.

Success!

Food helped Ally immensely, and we walked back to the Arc de Triomphe.

We bought Museum passes which would get us into many Paris sites and walked around the outside for a while.

We then went inside to climb to the top.

The staircase was a small stone spiral staircase inside. We started climbing and I was messing with putting our tickets back in the backpack, so I didn’t think about it much the first few stories.

Then I was done and realized we were still climbing.

Then I looked up to see how far we had to go – and Oh. My. Word. There were sooooo many stairs!

The tower is about 167 feet tall, so roughly 15 stories of stairs.

I was not prepared for this.

I made it, but my word I was dying. I had to sit as soon as we got to the top!

I was not the only one who bolted for the benches at the top though! Ally did chuckle at me though.

Totally worth it though!

The walk down was not nearly as arduous, thank goodness!

After that, we walked and shopped!

Not there. We did not shop at Cartier.

We did shop in the giant Sephora! Nothing will make Ally happier than a giant Sephora!

Ally said that Sephora must be what heaven is like.

Haagen-Dazs was closed! Sadness.

I stopped inside a shop and bought some French Macarons for Heather the Macaron lover.

And look what we found!

Really, Mom? Do we really need to take a picture of every Disney store?

I looooove local merchandise! I bought some of course!

Next we caught the metro to the Louvre!

Now there you will see two lines. On the right is the line for regular tickets. On the left? The line for the Museum Pass holders! Woohoo! Worth every penny.

We were in almost immediately.

Our main goal was the Mona Lisa, of course.

The view to the outside:

The Louvre is absolutely massive. Just massive!

We found the Mona Lisa room! The line was not as bad as I feared!

Almost there!

Made it!

Then we wandered for an hour or so.

We found the Venus De Milo:

I didn’t quite get the point of a video of a statue?

At this point we were absolutely starving. We left in search of food.

On the way out, we found it!

Oh my word it was so good.

Around this time, Ally said something offhand about Disneyland Paris. Like, “I wish we could have gone to Disneyland Paris.”

Whaaa?

Now about 6 months before we left, I had told Ally we would go to Disneyland Paris and stay a night or two. Ally was like, “Seriously? We’re spending time in Paris going to Disneyland?”

So I was sufficiently shamed. And then when I went to buy plane tickets and realized how much money we were spending, I decided we would just have to miss it.

And now? The day before we leave Paris she tells me she wanted to go?!!

She had no memory of the first conversation of course.

So my mind was racing. Could we make this work? We did have almost a whole day in Paris before our train back the next night. But we would miss Saint-Chapelle! And I never went back to the Eiffel Tower with my real camera!!!! What would I put on my picture wall at home?!!!!

But Disneyland Paris.

Okay we would look into this when we got back to the hotel!

We took the metro back to our hotel. This cute little market was right near our hotel.

This was Ally’s favorite snack.

I also stopped in Starbucks for my Paris mug!

We walked around the mall by our hotel.

Hey!  There was a Chipotle there!

For the record, we did not eat there.  

We did get ice cream at Haagen Daz though!

One last selfie!

When we got back to the room, I started some serious research on Disneyland Paris. We would have about 6 hours in the park. I warned Ally we may only ride one or two rides and I was going to spend half the time taking pictures.

She was good with that. 

Oh my goodness! We were going to go to Disneyland Paris!! Yay!!

We were exhausted and needed to go to sleep to rest up for our last day abroad!

 

Disneyland Paris – Couldn’t Not go to Disneyland Paris! June 17-20, 2016 
Day 1 – Traveling to Paris 
Day 2 – Paris! 
Day 3 – Disneyland Paris! Finally!