July 4th in Paris

Carson went back to Salzburg recently for a week-long symposium. While he was there, I met a friend in Frankfurt and together we took the train to Paris! We left on Tuesday, July 4, which is Independence Day in the US, but definitely not in Germany or France. There were no fireworks or special things for our American holiday, but the flag was still red, white and blue and the French were pretty significant in our independence, so we were as patriotic as we could be, given the fact that we're in Europe!

 It took us less than four hours to get from Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof to Gare de l'Est, and from there, about a twenty minute walk to our hotel. The day was hot, and we'd lugged our bags up several flights of stairs on the walk over, so we sat in the hotel for a little bit just to cool off (even though there was no air conditioning). After we'd found ourselves sufficiently cooled off, and changed into shorts, we headed for the metro to take us to the Eiffel Tower.

Jaime stopped for a crepe on the way there. I wasn't hungry, just thirsty, but it did look delicious.

You can take an elevator up to the very top of the Eiffel Tower, or you can take the stairs to the second level. The stairs were cheaper and had a shorter line, so you can guess which we chose. We waited maybe ten minutes in line but then basically had the stairs to ourselves. It wasn't crowded at all, and although it was a TON of stairs and not so fun in the heat, I'm glad we chose to walk up instead of take a crowded elevator. The views on the way up were worth it, even though the climb exhausted us more than we expected (again, we blame the heat, mostly).

To cool off, we treated ourselves to these icey drinks on the first level. They weren't so cheap, but they felt like a well-deserved treat, and they cooled us off as we walked back down the stairs.

After we'd taken approximately 38,000 pictures of the Eiffel Tower, we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe. We contemplated grabbing dinner on the way, but honestly I think the heat just took the desire for food out of us, because all we wanted was water.

We didn't go up to the top because it was close to closing (it may not look like it, but it was around 10pm in these pictures), so we just walked around and took pictures.

The Arc de Triomphe stands at one end of the Champs-Elysee, so we walked down a small portion of that (everything was closed for the evening) and then purchased bottled water.

They had Lamborghinis available to rent for half an hour (for 90 Euro!), and all sorts of people just looking at them.

Another thing we noticed in Paris, and you'll see in pictures to come was the traffic light people. They were very skinny, and not all alike, and we really enjoyed pointing them out to one another.

We successfully located the metro station at the Arc de Triomphe, and made our journey back to the hotel, where we discovered that the wifi was terrible, and the noise outside the window was pretty loud (the metro went right by our hotel). We showered and went to sleep pretty quickly, especially considering we had such an early morning the next day!