The Scroop's European Holiday: Paris

This morning the weather is cold and overcast. We want to go up the Eiffel Tower today and unlike our last holiday, this time we are going to the top. Our tickets for the open top bus tour have expired so we decide to walk to the Eiffel Tower. It is a fairly straight forward walk, it just involves walking a few km’s. We start out at around 9:00am in the direction of the Louvre. Once we get to the Louvre we continue on through the Tuileries Gardens. We have no idea what time it is except for the fact we know its cake time so we continue on over the Place de la Concorde onto the Champs Elysees hoping that there will be a nice patisserie along the way. We take a side street which has a patisserie and we stop for our favourite, the Citron Tartelette. We eat and walk as we head down another side street that takes us back to the Champs Elysees. When we reach the Arc de Triomphe we jump in line for a ticket. The Arc de Triomphe is one of my favourites and it is reasonably priced with the kids getting in for free. We take the 284 steps to the top and the views are awesome. We wander around at the top taking photos before deciding on going back down and having some lunch. We find a seat on the path alongside the Champs Elysees and pull some rolls out of the backpack. What a place to eat lunch, watching the world go by on the Champs Elysees in Paris. We finish up and continue on down the road to the Eiffel Tower. We pass another patisserie and it reminds us that we are hungry for a cake. This patisserie has a line so the food must be good. We queue up and get our citron tartelettes. We continue walking while scoffing these cakes toward the Esplanade du Tracadero which is the perfect place to view the Eiffel Tower. When we get there we get mobbed by the African dudes with their bunch of Eiffel Tower statues shouting “one euro, one euro”, it’s worse than being in Bali! We make our way down to the Eiffel Tower ticket queue and I’ve promised Kristine that this time I’m going to the top. While we are making our way to the ticket window a man who had just bought 2 tickets asks us if we would like them because he and his wife don’t have the time to go up. Bit weird but cool, free tickets, that’s a €30 saving. We get to the window and we only need to buy the kids tickets now. We make our way to the lift that will take us to the second floor which is 128m up. The lift up to the second floor is a dodgy one. I remember last time we went up it was dodgy and it isn’t any better this time. It feels weird and I’d much prefer to take the steps but the lift takes about 30 seconds and walking takes......forever. So we go up the lift and I’m starting to feel queasy. We get to level 2 and once on the deck it’s much better until I look up and see where we still have to get to. We have a quick look around before making our way to the queue for the lift that will take us to the top. While we are queuing I’m starting to pop bricks out my rear end. Tyler is in tears next to me saying to Kris “I don’t want to go up”. I was starting to wish I was 11 years old so I could start crying but I’m also thinking, yeah this is my way out, I’ll just use Tyler as my excuse. Kris promises Tyler a reward if he gets to the top which brings him around and my exit strategy from this nightmare has just disappeared. My sphincter is working overtime as we get closer to the lift. Kris can see I’m packing it and she’s laughing at me and by this point the kids are both joining in. We get in the lift and the ride is pretty good. I just keep looking at Mia because I don’t want to look out the window. We get to the top safely and I was expecting it to be all open but it is enclosed with windows around the perimeter. This makes me feel better because it is cold and blowing a gale today and the thought of being stuck up there having to wait to get back down didn’t sit well with me before going up. There are some stairs leading up to an open deck above so we venture up and I look out and god damn we are a long way up. The floor slopes outwards so you feel like your leaning toward the guard railing. It was a fantastic view and the kids were loving it. We did the walk around the top of the tower but it was so windy we went back down to the enclosed deck before joining the queue to head back down. We are all very proud of ourselves as we make our way down and we decide to get off at the second level so we can take the stairs to the first level and then to ground. Last time we were here the first floor was great. There was restaurant and a cafe where you could buy food and coffee but this time there is a lot of construction going on and the first floor is pretty much a construction site. Ground level is pretty much the same and we are so glad we have seen the Eiffel Tower before without all this mess. For those people seeing it like this is unfortunate for them as they may not ever see it in its best form. We get to the bottom and decide we need a victory cake so we walk through the Champ des Mars on our way to track down the patisserie we found the other day. We find it without a problem and stock up on cakes for dinner. Just down the street is a bar we are familiar with from our last holiday so we stop in for a drink. While we are relaxing we decide we are done with walking and we should give the Metro a go to get home. I pull out my phone and realise there is a metro stop just down the road and it will get us pretty close to home without having to change lines. We make our way to the Metro, get some tickets and jump on. It’s a rough old ride but we get there in one piece. We surface from the Metro and a 10 minute walk has us home. It is about 6:30 by now and it has been a long day. The walk to the Eiffel tower was around 9km and the walk from the Metro to our apartment another 1 ½ km (map of our walk). To make things worse our bakery downstairs was closed so Tyler and I had to search for another one that sold baguettes which led us on another 1 ½ km trek. So that’s it for us today, we are spent. The kids have been fantastic today walking those long distances and we have not had one whinge. It’s been a great day but we call it quits.