Taking It All In

Returning from our trip satiated with travel (and a bad cold) it is good to be home. While all of my photos prior to Monte Carlo are stuck on a laptop until I can extract them, I'll begin with the end of our Spring Holiday, our last days in Paris before coming home.

With so many things to do and see in Paris, how do you see the main attractions while still experiencing the city of light on a personal level? Somehow I believe we accomplished just that. First of all, our Hotel de Notre Dame was perfectly situated in the 5th Arrondissement. we woke up every morning with their continental breakfast delivered to our room, which came complete with a marvelous view of Notre Dame, illuminated at night for our pleasure. I'm sure Will got much better photos of the gargoyles, but I managed to get close enough to snap a few of them. So it was that on our final day we headed to the Tour Eiffel via the Metro. And after popping into a tobacco shop for a Cuban cigar and some beverages, we rounded a corner and there it was. As excited as we could be we headed for the monument, stepped under it's monstrous belly, and cutting through the labyrinthine lines at the ticket booths, crossed the street and found a shady patch of park to have our picnic and feed the pigeons.Once sufficiently grubbed we headed back under the Eiffel and took our place in the cue to get our tickets to the observation decks of the tower. The sun had spent some time this afternoon out from behind the clouds for our benefit but once we were grounded again and walking along the Parc du Champ de Mars it began raining again. We ducked under the canopy of trees that lined the park and by the time we made it to Rue Cler it was coming down pretty steady. We found a little shop and went inside to see if they carried umbrellas. We found two that suited us and as soon as we stepped outside and opened those umbrellas up, dang if the rain didn't just stop.

We wound our way back to the Metro and the Hotel de Notre Dame. That evening we had planned on taking the Metro to Montmartre which is situated on a hill that is supposed to have great views of Paris at night, but deciding that was too much effort (my cold had kicked in pretty good at this point) we changed the plan and went back to the Shakespeare and Co. book store with its own du Chat Noir, found a little cafe for dinner, where Will enjoyed that Cuban cigar, and had a lovely walk through the cobbled streets of Paris before retiring for the night. Our last night in Paris before coming home.