Slightly rested from the last few days of excitement and adventure, we woke up as the Eurostar was arriving in Paris and headed out into the Parisian capital. This was to be a test not only of our traveling endurance, but also our French language skills. Both of us had taken lots of French in high school, and we enjoyed giving it a go after so many years. Long story short, we were terrible but much better than we thought we would be! We gave French a fair effort throughout the day, but almost all those we spoke to reverted to English for us.
The plan was to start the day with our bucket list in mind by climbing the steps of the Eiffel Tower. We figured that if we went straight there, we wouldn't have to worry too much about queues. We arrived, realized how cold it was, saw there was no line, and left in search of warmer clothes! This was the day that Laleinia forsook her fashion over function mentality (although she still looked really cute). That's what cold, wet feet can do for you. In Paris of all places!
We found ourselves close to Notre Dame, and so we bumped that up our nonexistent itinerary. We were really impressed with how beautiful everything was inside. The stained glass windows were something else, really amazing. We remembered a conversation with a good friend in China about stained glass windows in churches, and thought about what those windows must have looked like to people who had never seen color like that before. To them, it would have been a miracle in and of itself. Absolutely amazing.
We bought our postcards and as we were paying, we saw padlocks for sale. We realized that we must have been close to those padlock bridges where people write their names on a lock, put it on the bridge fence, throw away the key, and live happily ever after. Of course we had to do it. Our next adventure then was to find the bridge!
We found it literally in the shadow of Notre Dame. We spent our time locking it up, taking pictures, and all that jazz, and were just about ready to start the rest of our happy lives when we realized that some TV camera crew had been filming the whole thing! They stopped us and asked us a few questions about where we were from why we did the padlock thing, and if we thought it was harming the bridge. Alastair said that it probably was harming the bridge, since all those locks are probably really heavy, but that if the bridge collapsed and we survived the fall into the river, it would be a great story to tell, so it was all good. Who knows if that is what they wanted to hear and if it made it on TV somewhere.
Prepped a little more for the Eiffel Tower, we headed back to make the climb. Laleinia isn't a big fan of stairs, but has managed to climb up and along the Great Wall of China, and if she can do that, she can do anything. Onward and upward we went, all the way up the 669 steps to the second level. We admired the views, and took plenty of pictures, but we knew that there was more. Unfortunately for Alastair, and thankfully for Laleinia, you can't climb stairs all the way to the summit, only to the second level. We jumped in to an elevator and within a moment or two, we found ourselves on top of the Eiffel Tower! We spent some time in the cold at the top of the tower, taking pictures and soaking everything in. It was another blessed experience for us, less than a month short of our third anniversary.
We went over to the Arc de Triomphe and found it with some scaffolding on a section of the top. Not to worry, since we will be living a short flight away in Barcelona in the near future. We will be back! We went to a McDonalds to get warm and wait for the sun to set.
We heard that the best views of the Eiffel Tower, and Paris in general, were from Tour Montparnasse, a tall, modern building with a viewing deck on the top with 360 degrees of panoramic views. We arrived on the roof, the 59th floor, right at the top of the hour, and saw the tower sparkle. It was quite the sight! It was hard to get pictures that did the view any justice, but we spent a while giving it our best shot. We took our time warming up inside Tour Montparnasse before heading out for our last mission, more pictures of the tower at night.
It was on this excursion that we finally got our French crepe and croissant from a street side restaurant. Pretty good, we must say! We took our time getting some more pictures and trying not to freeze, and then headed back to our home for the night, Charles De Gaulle airport terminal two.
Our flight back to San Francisco was due to take off at 10:40 the next morning, so eleven hours shivering on an airport floor couldn't be that bad, could it? Well, it was! But the suffering was in the name of travel, and so it was worth it, for sure. Charles De Gaulle now ranks an unfortunate third in our list of airports for sleeping, below metal, cushion-less ShenZhen, China in second, and excellent Hong Kong, where we discovered the pod and had free wifi in first. After a long, long, cold, and long night, we headed back to the USA, with no more international travel plans in the pipeline for the next little while.