Yesterday we did Notre Dame and tried to tour St. Chappelle but it was closed for a concert. We walked over to the Louvre but we were too tired to go in so we just took in the ginormous mall where the pyramid is. We went back to our hotel and rested up for a while. We soon heard what sounded like a scene from Les Miserable coming from the Ave. de la Motte Picquet (2 blocks away). Looking out our window I could see flags. If we hadn't been so knackered, we would have walked down to check it out. It was a student protest march which seems to be a fairly regular occurence around here. Once we felt like we could move comfortably again, we went around the corner to Rue Cler, got a crepe and walked over to the pier just below the Eifel Tower to see about booking a dinner cruise on the Seine. We were told that the river was too high and the dinner cruise wouldn't be going by Paris but the other way. The only monument the other way was the Statue of Liberty. I wasn't about to spend 95 euro to see the freakin Statue of Liberty. We'll try again before we leave.

We decided to go up the Eifel Tower since we were right there. Each pier has a ticket office. We chose the line that seemed shortest. We chose poorly. It was the "stairs only" line. Somebody didn't believe me when I said repeatedly that I thought escalier meant stairs (the stick figure climbing stairs next to it helped). We got our tickets and proceeded to climb like a million stairs to the first level. I had to stop several times. I guess my pre-trip fitness routine, which consisted of slathering myself with Jergens skin firming lotion every day, fell a little short. When we finally reached the first level we bought lift tickets. The elevator up to the summit was scary but once there it was ... just absolutely ... cold ... and windy ... and crowded. I don't know how, but we always manage to be stuck in a crowd next to the ADHD kid. They have the cattle chute method of line control and this kid was the steer that somehow knows it's about to get castrated. Seriously, it was breathtaking up there.

We ate dinner at a cafe around the corner from the hotel. I spilled a glass of red wine on a velvet upholstered chair as I was trying to sqeeze between tables and not fall over the motorcycle helmet on the floor.

Today, despite being incredibly sore (My hips are bothering me more than anything. What's up with that? Nevermind, I don't want to know) we went to the Musee d'Orsay. Only the main floor was open so it didn't take long. The second floor with the Van Goghs, Monets, and other impressionists was closed.

We walked through the Toullerie to the Musee d'Orangerie and saw a lot of the artists we missed at the Orsay. From there we walked down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. the closer we got to the Arc, the more the area resembled Time Square. We went through a shopping arcade which is like a mall but is actually a covered passage with shops.

The first picture at the top is "Mademoiselle Chanel" by Marie Laurencin. The second is view from the first level of the Eifel Tower with the Sacre Coeur in the distance.