Day 21–Paris–Eiffel Tower and Walking

Today we got up early because we did not have pre-booked tickets to the Eiffel tower, and we had read that it might be as long as 2 hours in line waiting for “day of” tickets.

We ate breakfast in our apartment from the groceries we retrieved the night before.  We have a small kitchenette and fridge.

We arrived at the Tower about 8:45am and started line surfing…it was not very well laid out at all.  After determining from a few sources that the best bet was to climb the stairs to floor 2 and then take the elevator from there, we ended up in the right line.  There were 670 stairs to the 2nd floor, but it was not bad at all.  Getting on the elevators to the top was not too bad either.  Overall, we completed our tower experience in about 2 hours which we were really happy about given the reports we had heard earlier.

Also, we planned for a mostly cloudy day with no sunscreen, glasses or hats, and it turned out to be a gorgeous day, so we were glad not to be standing in line for hours in the sun.

We have many good pictures from playing around in the park at the bottom of the tower, but here are a few.  First, a few from the top.

After the tower, we had lunch at  - you guessed it – McDonalds.  A famous mis-calculation for Kim and me, we thought we were ordering a chicken wrap and we got – GOAT CHEESE!!!  Kim ended up passing and only having fries, but I ordered another one with chicken. We learned our lesson.  The picture looked like chicken, but we didn’t do the translation.

After lunch, we went to a museum for Rodin a sculpter and artist many think as #2 to Michael Angelo.  He is most famous for the “thinker” statue that had a part in the Night at the Museum II movie.

Having fun with the “Thinker.”

Jessica also found her “boyfriend” in Paris, like she did in Rome 3 years ago.

Remember this from 2009?

Kim said “man it must be hard to sculpt clothes…”  It is true, all of these artists love to sculpt or draw naked people.  So, we had some fun with this one…

At the restroom at the museum, Jack thought the urinals looked like space helmets, so he asked me to take this picture.  Aren't we cultured?  ( I hesitated to get the camera out in the bathroom, but there was no one else in there.)  there are typically few walls and little privacy in the restrooms here, so Kim and Jessica heard all the laughing and we about got yelled at by them to keep it down.  BTW – His head is not nearly as close to the urinal as it looks!

At the end of the day, we hit a “multi-cultural” supermarket that included sections for “USA-Canada” and one of the items we came home with was Lucky Charms.  I think Jack had 3 bowls.  The bread we bought said “American Sandwich"

We finished up a little early tonight since we started so early today.  The girls are so excited that they got me started reading the “Hunger Games” book.  I started reading tonight, but ended up taking a little nap after dinner.

The rest of the evening was spent planning out our last 3 days here in Paris and just hanging out in our rooms.  The kids are still having fun together.  Overall they have done incredibly well, and we are very proud of them.

Tomorrow we may split up for a while as Jack and I want to do a Segway tour and the girls want to go see the shopping streets.  I am waiting on confirmation for the tour, so we will see how that goes.

Good night everyone!

The Whitlock Family