This morning was a late start to the day. Instead of the 6am wake up calls that we were use to while In London, my mom and I decided that we would just wake up without the use of a phone call. So this morning our day started at 8am. I was very thankful to get an extra few hours of sleep.
Today would be the first day that my mom and I would get to go exploring Paris on our own. We originally planned that we would visit Basilique du Sacré-Cœur which is a large Roman Catholic Church.
This is a photo I took of Basilique du Sacré-Cœur from the Eiffel Tower.
While we were mapping out the metro (subway) lines we realized that we only have time to either visit Basilique du Sacré-Cœur or the Eiffel Tower, so the Eiffel Tower won.
My mom and I left our hotel shortly after 9:30am and made our way to the metro station (subway). By 10:20am we had arrived at the Eiffel Tower and we were waiting in the ticket line. The line moved rather quickly, with us only waiting about an hour. There was only a very short line for stairs and our line for the elevator, so I was glad to have it move rather quickly. I’ve heard horror stories of waiting up to 3 hours in line.
Once we purchased our tickets it only took another 10 mins or so for us to reach the elevator that would take us up to the second floor. Here we were greeted with a pickpocket warning sign. We were also told to keep our purses in front of us and to remove anything from our back pockets.
By noon my mom and I were walking around the 2nd floor.
By 12:35pm we were at the Summit; which is the top of the Eiffel Tower.
My mom and I walked around, took a ton of photos and then made our way back down the Eiffel Tower using the elevator.
Bye bye Eiffel Tower.
Once we left the Eiffel Tower we walked along and looked for a place to eat. We ended up stopping at Pizzaria Iolanda. I had rigatoni for 10 euros; which tasted somewhat undercooked, and a sprite which cost me 4 Euros. Now I know why we were told not to order pop. Talk about a rip off.
After lunch my mom and I made our way back to the hotel. We made it back in good time since it was only 3pm. We were doing our second excursion that evening so we wanted to shower and rest up before catching the coach bus at 6pm. I ended up taking a little nap while my mom watched some news, and then we got ready to make our way to Moulin Rouge.
Now normally I don’t complain about hotel rooms since I cant really find any fault with them, but the hotel that my mom and I stayed in while we were in Paris had some issues. The major issue was no plug in the bathroom. There was a blow dryer in the bathroom which was attached to the wall so that was great, but when it came time to straighten my hair I had to rig up my own mirror using my iphone 4.
Back to Moulin Rouge. I can’t really describe it any other way then to say it was amazing. We had a table that was right in front of the stage, so we had a great view of everything. I purchased a charm for my key chair and the program for my scrapbook. You aren’t allowed to take photos inside the Moulin Rouge, but I did manage to snap 1 before getting yelled at. Oops.
On the way home from Moulin Rouge our coach bus made a special trip to show us the Louve Museum. I was having issues taking a good photo through the window glass so I used the night vision feature on my Nikon D5100 and nailed a pretty nice shot.
Then it was back to the hotel to sleep. I crawled into bed while my mom figured out the the metro lines that we would need to take tomorrow. There were some stops she wanted to make in the morning prior to the sights I still wanted to see.