So, now it is Sunday night and I just never got around to finishing Saturday's blog. So following our petit dejeuner (breakfast) Sat AM we decided to head to the Eiffel Tower. Shan wanted to walk, so walk we did.. by the way it is quite a long ways from Ile St Louis to the Eiffel, but we needed to justify eating more croissants and pain au chocolat!
We walked along the Seine then ducked into St Germain des Pres to visit our apartment owner Isabelle so we could deliver our final payment. We played a game with Sandy to see if she could get us back to her shop that we had found the night before, she was close and I made fun, but today (Sunday) I realized I should be quiet as I was totally confused coming out of the metro (more on that later). After meeting Isabelle we were off and conitinued our LONG walk.
We stopped at the Michel Chaudun chocolaterie, boy was it delicious and a nice break along the way. We stumbled, truly accidently, on the Musee Quaibranly which had NO line (amazing) to buy tickets so we took the opportunity to purchase our museum passes and kept on towards Eiffel... Finally we arrived and the gardens around the tower are quite pretty so we took many pictures, used the toilettes and decided going to the top was not worth the wait...
From there we headed to the Arc de Triomphe and with museum passes in hand we headed to the top for the view. I have to agree with Frommers that the view from the Arc is very good - we got to see the Eiffel, the Champs Elysees, Sacre Cour etc... The climb of the spiral staircase was a good one - I was sweating profusely by the top, so NOT french! The way down was CRAZY, Shan has a picture so we will see if you can tell, by the end I was VERY dizzy!
We left the Arc and walked down the Champs Elysees, ogled the fancy shops and all the people and wondered how crazy it must be as the Tour de France ends. We stopped just inside the Rond Point Des Champs Elysees at a small park and copped a squat on a park bench - my feet were killing me. As it turns out I had a nasty blister on the ball of my foot that decided to burst, we had walked over 8 miles by this time, just after we left the bench. I bailed for the metro while Sandy and Shan continued through the Jardins du Tuileries and on home.
We ate a late (for us) dinner, reservation at 9 PM at Auberge de la Reine Blanche on the Ile St Louis, just a couple blocks from the apartment. It was a recommendation from Chris on the Slow Travel website, and we thoroughly enjoyed it! I made a bit of a fool of myself though as I proceeded to mix Sandy's vin blanc into my pastis thinking it was my water... I thought the pastis had a weird citrus flavor, but didn't think it was bad, but I finally asked the waiter when it seemed Sandy and Shan's wine had not shown up - he pointed to the small pitcher and I explained that I was idiote, and had mixed in pastis! He was very sympathetic and brought more wine, which Sandy proceeded to spill on herself and me, he laughed and said c'est probleme avec le vin! We agreed wholeheartedly! Later in the night another woman bumped her table when getting up and dumped a bottle and glass on the floor which they then broke!
Our food was wonderful, I had the duck, Sandy the shrimp special, and Shan had beef burgundy when Sandy took the last of the specials for the night! Shan is learning she needs to talk faster than Sandy since it seems they want to eat the same items and Sandy always gets to them first. It was a great meal and we headed home around midnight after dessert. It was 1:30AM at least before we were finally in bed going to sleep - LONG DAY!
