Paris, November 1
It’s our last day in Paris, and we had not yet gone to see the EIffel Tower. Not quite true; we’ve seen it from the Champs D’Elysee, but we had not yet seen it from up close, so that was the goal for the day.
We spent the morning and the early part of the afternoon uploading pictures and just generally catching up on the world. To be more accurate, Bethany spent several hours resizing, uploading and labelling pictures while I just surfed. Should be some nice pictures from our walk through the latin quarter yesterday. A picture of her that I took in a Jardin was quickly labelled a favourite of somebody who calls himself “Cannibal Clown”. The things you have to put up with when you have a good looking girlfriend!
There was an elevator that started from ground level to go to the top. But one of our guide books said that we should take the stairs up two levels and take the elevator from there to the top to avoid the line-ups. Even so we had a 40 minute queue at the bottom before we could enter the stairs. And according to the sign, the queue for the elevator was 45 minutes long. But the stairs were fun, only 600 steps or so, I don’t feel I was cheated.
Because of the very early sunset this time of year, we were able to get shots of Eiffel tower and Paris during both the daylight and after dark.
One interesting observation Bethany made was that the EIffel tower is painted brown. I just assumed that it was black. It looks black in photographs, but it is really brown. They have some sort of really cool flash lighting system that they turn on after dark for brief periods.
After the Eiffel tower, we used our lonely planet guide book to find us a recommended restaurant. The description said “popular with the locals”, but the restaurant was fairly empty, and the Brits next to us had a Lonely Planet guide book on their table! The plat du jour was lamb, which I ordered. The Brit lady next to sent hers back to cook some more. I silently cursed her because I knew that the cook would probably also cook mine a little bit longer too. Sure enough, mine came back pretty much well-done rather than the rare I like it as. I guess I should learn the French word for rare so I can get my lamb the way I like it!
Actually, the meal was quite good. My entree (appetizer) was raw oysters with a very delicious vinegar sauce. Bethany had a fabulous pumpkin soup followed by chicken in a mushroom sauce.
After dinner we went to see the show at Moulin Rouge. For me, this was definitely the highlight of the trip. The dancers were fabulous, and the show was very well choreographed. Besides the fabulous chorus line dance numbers, they broke up the show with a couple of comedy acts and acrobatics shows. The costumes were fabulous, and very plentiful. Thee were 60 dancers, but they went through more than 1000 costumes during the course of the 2 hour show. I’m sure the girls loved the costumes, but as a guy, I probably appreciaed the brevity of most of them more!
Each pair of tickets came with a bottle of champagne. Somehow, I think Bethany ended up with the majority of the bottle. She rarely drinks, so it certainly surprised me to find our bottle empty at the end of the show!
Tomorrow we will be taking the train out of Paris. Where, I don’t know yet, but it will be nice to get back on the bicycles.
