Paris is an amazing city!

Yesterday was day 2 in Paris - really our only full day - and we made the most of it.  We headed to the Eiffel Tower from our hotel and decided to walk, which was so wonderful.  Everywhere we went there were new amazing buildings to see and bridges to walk over. 
When we arrived at the Eiffel Tower, there was a crowd bigger than I have seen in a long time.  Apparently you have to have purchased tickets days in advance to go up the Eiffel Tower, but it was magnificent just to stand beneath the tower and marvel at it's gargantuan architecture.  Mike has pictures up on his Picasa site of yesterday: Mike's Pictures

This was the only one I could get to load into the blog, but this was a great one from the Eiffel Tower:

After we marveled at the huge structure, we decided we wanted to take a boat back to the hotel.  So we found the "Hop on Hop off" Boats, which allow you buy a ticket and then you can hop on and hop off all day long.  It was a great way to see Paris.  We just took the short ride from the Eiffel Tower to the Musse d'Orsay, but planned on doing some more boat riding in the evening. 

We stopped at the Tulleries Park and ate lunch at a cafe in the park.  I had a Croque Monsieur (please forgive my spelling...I really do not speak French).  We went back to the hotel and took a siesta (I know it is France, not Spain, but a siesta was definitely in order).  

After we woke up, we decided to go out to dinner.  We went to another café the other direction from our hotel.  I, yet again had an amazing steak tartare – this tartare was more traditional than the previous night’s tartare.

We then walked back to the boat pickup from earlier in the day and rode the boat down to Notre Dame.  The iconic building was astonishing all lit up in the night.

We walked back to our hotel from the Louvre boat stop, which was not very far and had champagne and ice cream.   Guess who had what!

Then this morning we woke up and headed across the river again to the Musse d'Orsay.  The line was big, but yet did not take that long to get inside.  The most shocking thing was we were unable to take photographs in the museum.  Something that was not the case 16 years ago when I was here.  But it was still enjoyable nonetheless. 

We then walked back to the hotel and it was time to go pick up the rental car.  So Dan, Mike and I went on the hunt for the Hertz Rental Car agency.  This was pretty funny because Mike had an address, but we could not find it.  It said it was in the Carrousel de Louvre, but of course we had no idea what that was.  What we came to find out, post-walking all over, was that it was in a "mall" beneath the Louvre.  So Mike and Dan found a car that barely fit all of us and our stuff and we headed back to the hotel to pack the car up and hit the road for Cambrai.

Of course Mike's knees did not really work that well in the car because it was so small and it is a manual transmission so he could barely steer and shift with his knees against the dash...so Dan had the honor of driving our troop out of Paris.  He did a great job navigating through the city with Mike right there telling him where to go.  It is no wonder they work well together!

So now we sit in our room at a quaint bed and breakfast and this town is definitely more low key than Paris.  I feel very relaxed here.  I look forward to exploring the town a bit tomorrow and maybe seeing the warehouse that Mike came so many years ago to help build. 

Cheers to Paris being such a wonderful city!
Cheers to our new adventures in Cambrai!