Our final day in France had finally come as we awoke on that
Saturday morning. We packed our bags and
said au revoir to Biarritz. With our
bags stuffed into our car, we drove to the train station and dropped off the
rental car around 7:30 am to catch the train at 8 am. The train ride was again 5 hours but pretty
much everyone fell asleep for the duration of it because no one likes getting
up that early in our family. Upon arrival, we were able to check into the same
Hotel Innova that we had before and were able to score an awesome room that had
a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower from the window. Luckily, that window also had a fire escape
that acted as a balcony so we had some fun taking pictures on it.
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| Our balcony outside our hotel room, pretty nice eh? |
The Turgeon family, albeit exhausted, felt no shame in
seeking one last adventure in Paris. Our
destination: the Museѐ du Louvre. Basically,
it’s a huge museum of tons of different art.
The collection ranged from many famous Greek sculptures and Egyptian
sarcophaguses to paintings like the Wedding at Cana and of course, the Mona
Lisa. The place was super packed and
filled with many cameras flashing non-stop.
It was pretty cool to see all those famous art selections first hand
rather than just seeing pictures of them.
Again, I couldn’t tell you much about the stuff we saw because most of
the signs were only in French. But even
if I did read it all, it would be extremely boring to summarize it to you. At least I can say I went.
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| Mona Lisa |
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| Venus de Maya |
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| Egyptian artifacts |
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| Inside the Louvre |
Another goal of the evening was to eat McDonalds on the
Champs Elysees because of the controversy it caused when it was erected and
because everyone was pretty tired of French food at this point. On our way there, we stopped to buy some
souvenirs. The notable one was Nick’s
black beret that he continued to wear around Paris for the evening with his
tennis shoes and cargo pants. Probably
fit in pretty well, don’t you think?
Once we ordered our food at McDonalds, we sat down and
enjoyed our American meal that tasted pretty much the same as the food from
home. Paris had been able to accurately
portray how us fat Americans like our food J. While eating, we met some people from
Tennessee there that said they did the boat tour on the river as well as
climbed the stairs to the Eiffel Tower that day. This rekindled our interest in climbing at
least to the second level of the tower, even if it cost a few bucks to get up
there. Instead of walking all the way
from McDonalds, however, we decided to take the metro instead.
To our dismay, the Eiffel Tower lines were as long as ever
and no one really wanted to wait that long to walk up some 700 stairs just to
the second level. They only had like one
elevator open and two staircases out of four open. Just our luck. Someday, I will return to climb those stairs
but I will make sure to make reservations several weeks in advance. Until then, I will just imagine what it
probably was like up there, 325 meters above ground.
When we were about to leave, we realized that there was a
few fire trucks and policemen out roping off one area of the tower. We saw tons of tourists looking up at the
tower and pointing at something. After peering
up into the cross beams, we realized that there was a guy on the ledge
attempting to commit suicide – we think.
They had sent a rescue team up to him to get him down and everyone was
rushing over to see it. We stayed for a
bit to see if he was going to do anything but as of right now I do not know his
fate. It must have been pretty scary to
get where he was in the first place, let alone the physical strength it
probably required.
After that debacle, the only logical thing was to get to the
only thing other than the Eiffel Tower in terms of seeing the city from up
high. Yes, you guessed it, the Tour
Montparnasse! This tower boasts 59
floors extending approximately 690 feet above ground. It isn’t as tall as the Eiffel Tower but
still gives quite a view from the rooftop.
We headed up in the elevator (no stairs this time) and hung out on the
very windy rooftop. It was shielded from
most of the wind with glass panels but it still had quite a gust blowing at
that altitude. We could see the Eiffel
Tower perfectly as well as all the other monuments across Paris that we had
been visiting. At 11pm, the Eiffel Tower
sparkled with white lights! It was a
great end to the day as well as my time in France.
When we all headed back to the room, we got to look out the
window at the Eiffel Tower while sitting in our pajamas drinking some red wine
and listening to “Champs Elysees”. One
thing was for sure, this trip was definitely worth it. Getting exposure to France and other cultures
in Europe was a priceless experience in addition to all the sightseeing and
experiences we had here. I was really
glad I got to share the time with my family in France and hope that I will
continue to visit new places down the road – probably after I get some money
first.
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| Back in the hotel with our cool view of the Eiffel Tower |
I’ll write again tomorrow, but it will probably be only a
paragraph or two about travelling back unless something out of the ordinary
happens. Let’s cross our fingers that it
doesn’t.
Day 11: Au Revoir France, Hello America
Fortunately, nothing out of the ordinary happened on the
trip back to America from France. We
woke up at 8 am and had some croissants for breakfast before we embarked upon
on trip home. Our plane left Paris
around 12:30pm France-time for our 8 hour flight across 7 time zones. The only difference was that we were gaining
hours this time instead of losing them.
We had to go through seemingly pointless customs in Chicago – pick up
our bags from one carousel to put them on another.
Three hours later, we got on our plane to Cleveland from
Chicago. We sat on the runway for about
20 minutes because apparently Airforce One was taking off with President Obama
and no one could go near the runway forever.
That was about the only eventful thing that happened. Again, an awesome trip and I am very glad
that I went. Hope you enjoyed reading
about it!
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| The symbol of Paris |
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