One Day in Paris

Friday, August 20th Paris

After the buffet breakfast in our hotel (not bad), we walked a few minutes up the Champs Elysee to the Arc de Triomphe, the Paris war memorial. Lots of history here. One can just imagine all the military parades that have taken place up the Champs Elysee. Like many of the other main boulevards, the Champs Elysee is very wide and has lots of trees. If I ever get any influence on municipal planning, I'll say, "Plant lots of trees". We've really noticed how much more liveable even huge cities can be if there's lots of trees and some green spaces. Paris has tons of both.

Tree-lined boulevards radiate out from the Arc de Triomphe like spokes of a wheel. Our plan was to walk in a big triangle from the Arc de Triomphe, taking in the Eiffel Tower, the Hotel des Invalides and back across the Seine by another bridge to the Champs Elysee near Place Concorde. We walked down Avenue Kleber to the Place Trocadero where there are a couple of museums in the semi-circular Palais de Chaillot, on the right bank of the Seine opposite the Eiffel Tower. More beautiful gardens, fountains and buildings. It's also a great spot for a view of the Eiffel Tower. which you can see from bottom to top. Very impressive. It's odd to think that this was meant to be a temporary exhibit for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 and some architects, who hated it, campaigned to have it quickly torn down afterward. But Parisians liked it, so it stayed.

When we walked across the bridge to the Eiffel Tower, we saw long lines of tourists waiting to buy tickets for the tower elevator or stairs. Really long lines of tourists. It must have taken hours to go up. We knew it would be like this so we never planned to go up. We walked down through the Parc Du Champs de Mars, which used to be an old military parade ground, to the Ecole Militaire. From there we walked a few blocks east to the Hotel des Invalides.

The Hotel des Invalides was built in 1670 to house old or crippled officers hurt in France's wars. It held 4,000 at a time, so it's a big place. This is also the place where the French revolutionaries broke in and stole rifles before storming the Bastille. There's a lot of military history here. At the south side is the Eglise du Dome, a cathedral that contains Napoleon's tomb.

After exploring there, we walked northeast through the Esplanade des Invalides, another huge garden with boulevards on each side to the Pont Alexandre III, a beautiful bridge which we took back over the Seine to the Palais de la Decouverte and the Champs Elysee. At that point we weren't too far from the Place Concorde and a walk to the Louvre but we're going to do that tomorrow. We walked back up the Champs Elysee from there.

For lunch, we walked up to a restaurant on the Champs Elysee that had been recommended by the hotel desk person. As we walked we checked menus on all the restaurants. Paris is expensive. One could sit in cafes and enjoy fabulous meals but one had better be prepared to melt down one's Visa card with the charges. We did manage to have a very nice lunch (salad and roast duck) without any wine or beer for 29 euros total for both of us. It would be easy to spend 40 or 50 euros per person at every meal and it would be great food, but on a nine week trip that is just beyond our budget. However, we're not suffering at all. We had a great lunch. We just had to be somewhat careful about the restaurant and the order.

Today was a beautiful sunny day in the high 20s. By the time we finished lunch about 3:30 we were ready for a cooling shower and a nap. Now we're ready again to go back out and enjoy an evening stroll down the Champs Elysee. Paris really is beautiful.