So by Thursday we were getting pretty pooped out, and we didn't end up leaving the hotel until around 11am! We headed off for the Sacre Coeur basilica on Montmartre, and got some yummy sandwiches from a little boulangerie at the foot of the enormous hill that the Sacre Coeur sits on top of. We ran (literally) up the first (and longest) part of the steps up, and then collapsed on a curb to catch our breaths and eat our sandwiches. After being suffiently rested and refueled, we walked up the rest of the way to see the basilica. It's so high up on a hill that you can look over the whole of Paris! We also discovered that you can go into the basilica free, so we walked around inside and even sat in the pews for a bit to take in all the art and architecture.
Just behind the Sacre Coeur is the Place du Tertre, where a lot of artists set up their easels and paint pretty scenes of Paris! I think we even found the artist who painted the painting that my friend Meaghan gave to us for our wedding present! I thought about buying another from the artist to go with the one we have already, since it's the only thing hanging on our living room walls right now, but in the end we were too cheap and couldn't make a decision.
We left having decided to explore more of the city center of Paris. We started off at the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, which look a lot cooler from far away when you can see the Grand Palais' very beautiful roof. The palaces were designed and built for the 1900 World's Fair there in Pairs. Then we walked across the Seine to Les Invalides, another cool building with a big pretty lawn. Needless to say we didn't go into any of the museums that these places housed. That would have cost money!
Rene wanted to see the Ecole Militaire so we walked down to see that, and then we made our way over to the Eiffel Tower again, coming in from the Champ de Mars, the big lawn/park behind it, instead of from the Seine. The lawn was pretty, but by that time we both needed a bathroom, so we hurried over to the Eiffel Tower, where we knew there was one behind it. We found a whole hoard of people waiting outside, and through a lot of guessing at what was being said in French, figured out that the bathrooms were being closed for cleaning. So we all waited around for more than 20 minutes, and as the woman guarding the gate started motioning to have the mothers with small children come down first, another woman came out and started yelling at everyone. Everyone got angry and then walked away! We had no idea what had happened, but apparently the bathrooms were now permanantly closed, since she locked up the gate and pulled down the inner gate too! We had to go into a restaurant and order a coffee so we could use the bathroom. At that point we were really annoyed, and it was a pretty cloudy day so the view wouldn't have been great from the top of the Eiffel Tour, so we just left. We went back over to the Notre Dame (again) on our way to what is supposed to be the quietest park in Paris, where we found those kid's playground things where you sit on something with a huge spring underneath, and you rock back and forth and back and forth! It was so much fun (as always), and after we had walked around the park a little bit we noticed that a couple that had been sitting on a bench nearby the springy thingy were trying it out too!! We were near the Latin Quarter so we then just walked over to find some dinner where we found a Korean restaurant that was appealing and I got me some bibimbop!
From there is was time to call it a day!
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