French Monuments

30.12.2011 – Friday, day 11

First full day in Paris today and we climbed aboard yet another big red bus tour!  First stop was the Arc de Triomphe, an amazing monument built by Napoleon to commemorate his victories and honour the soldiers that fell during his campaigns. The engravings on this thing are absolutely stunning! So much detail has been put into it. We skipped the line (thanks to the Paris Pass) and I even managed to climb all 284 stairs to the very top, at which the view of the city is amazing.

There is only one more view that can top that and that’s the view from the Eiffel Tower, which was our second stop today. Shortly after arriving at this enormous tower we realised that it was going to take a fair while to get out tickets as the line ups were absolutely crazy long! Plan B – get some food and drink and scout for the shortest ticket line! After about 90 minutes of waiting in queue to get our tickets, we finally managed to set foot inside the lifts. Thank goodness there is heating in there because it was starting to get cold waiting outside, and we soon found out it wasn’t any better being up so high and having to wait outside yet again in another massive line to get to the top observation deck! There were hundreds of people up there and I can honestly say I don’t think there was one person who didn’t feel the cold. It would have to be the absolute coldest I have ever been in my life! We couldn’t feel our fingers or noses, and after another 45 minutes of waiting we couldn’t feel our toes either.

Thankfully the wait and the cold was worth it because the view from the top is beyond compare. Tip for next time though – you can pre-book your tickets thus avoiding the massive queues! Once you are up there though there’s a queue to get down so there really is no escaping it. It took us a total of over 3 hours to do the whole thing and we were probably only on the observation deck for around 45 minutes. There is a ice rink, café and restaurant on the 1^st floor that we made a quick stop at while we were on the tower… they think of everything these days!

Anyways, we went to the Opera House as our final stop for the day and it closed just as we were walking in… so unfortunately we missed out on that. None the less it was a great day, freezing but well worth it.

Underneath the Arc de Triomphe

Me freezing on the top floor of the Eiffel Tower

 

Views from the top of the Eiffel Tower