France - Part the Second

In addition to spending a half day at the Louvre, we spent a day or so just walking around seeing the city and sights. There is much to see and we had precious little time. The first thing on our list was to go to the Eiffel Tower.


As will become a theme in future posts, there were many monuments/sights that I wasn't too excited about seeing. I wasn't against seeing them, but they just seemed overly-touristy. The Eiffel Tower was one of them. However, it kinda blew me away. It is a very visible part of the city even from far away. But it's very physically imposing up close. Much more impressive than I anticipated.


We managed to find one of the "bagillion" tourists walking by to take a family picture for us. Ended up being a pretty good group picture.


Near the tower there is a little park where a lot of people just kinda hang out. This is a candid shot of my mom in said park.


The other main thing I really wanted to do while in Paris was walk the Champs-Elysées. It starts at the Louvre and ends at the Arc de Triomphe. So we went back to the Louvre (it was the only place we could find with open parking) and walked from the Louvre to the Arc. Here's my mother and I standing in front of the iconic Louvre pyramid.


This is what the first part of the walk down the Champs-Elysées looks like. It was really beautiful and full of runners. I really wished that I could have had a nice run through the park. My parents are wearing jackets here because it was already chilly in the beginning of September.


View from the park looking down toward the Arc.


My parents and I got a kick out of this statue since it looks like he's covering his head in shame from the bird nestled cozily on his head.


Getting closer to the Arc. It was pretty amazing to walk this strip of road when you think about the amazing history that had past through this one street. I had to brave the traffic to get this shot.


Here I am in front of the Arc de Triomphe.


Very wide shot of the front of the Arc de Triomphe. Very neat.


Bonus Picture: This is a picture of the single smallest hotel room I've ever stayed in. It was a "budget" hotel room in Paris that we stayed at one night. It was good for sleeping in and nothing else. Thankfully that's all we needed it for. I got the top bunk.

I wanted to include a panoramic of the front of the Louvre with this post, but I can't get photoshop to do the layering properly. If I get it working, I'll post it later.