Day 5

First stop today was at the Catacombs in the underground tunnels of Paris. The Catacombs were creepy but also intriguing the way the bones are arranged in such an orderly and decorative fashion. I don't think I've ever really been around human bones before...and it wasn't that relaxing. The history of these tunnels is so interesting. A lot of the bones belonged to people who were involved in an important time in French history.





Afterwards, we decided to walk around above ground through the surrounding neighborhood. We came across an outdoor street market with a lot of good food (fancy cheese, produce, etc.). We got a few things and walked to the park to eat. A nice homeless woman talked to us for a while in French. My French is limited but I'm pretty sure she said that her brother is a pilot at the White House.



Next stop after lunch was the Champs-Elysee. It's near the Arc De Triumph, but we didn't really get to see it much the day before because of the rain. We had fun shopping here but didn't make a lot of purchases since we still have a long trip ahead of us that we are budgeting for.





After the Champs-Elysee we walked to the Golden Spike and then down along the Siene River for quite a ways. I love walking along the river!





While we were strolling along I happened to catch Lindsay making this pose while she was snapping a photo:





It inspired this body of work that I will be adding to throughout the trip:









Also along the river we came across this Segway tour which made me kind of jealous:



Then we crossed over to the gardens and started a little walking tour that a Frenchman (who is the husband of a friend of a roomate) gave us. It walked us through a beautiful part of Paris called the Tulleries. All of the buildings in this part of Paris are beautiful and the stores are really fancy and expensive. Most of them were closed by this time of day but we did some window shopping, and enjoyed seeing the Opera house, etc.









We finally made it to the Eiffel tower around 10:00. It's easy to stay out all night in Paris in the Spring because even at 10:00 at night it is still isn't fully dark outside. In the evenings there is a light show at the Eiffel Tower every hour.





We watched the lights and then Lindsay and I walked up the stairs to the second platform of the Eiffel Tower. We would have probably preferred the elevators, but the line was really really long. Malorie couldn't fathom walking up that many stairs after a long day of walking and so she waited for us at the bottom.



It was a lot of stairs but it really wasn't that bad. Maybe I'm just getting used to walking for 10 hours a day.



This is the view from the top: We've been told that the best view of the Eiffel Tower is actually from the Trocadero so we walked over to it to check out the view from there.