This morning we headed to the Eiffel Tower, which was what the girls in particular, had really been looking forward to. The queues were not too bad but it didn’t matter anyway as we had timed tickets to go all the way to the top.
We went through security and up the lift to the second floor before proceeding straight to the lift for the top floor. We had a good look around from there spotting all the landmarks of Paris before heading back down to the second floor, where I think the view is actually probably better. We walked down from the second floor – a fairly easy 600 odd steps.
The Eiffel Tower is currently undergoing significant works – the biggest in 40 years – to get it ready for the Olympic Games next year. It is crazy to think the tower was only originally supposed to be a temporary structure.
We went and took some photos from the gardens below although there is a lot of fencing up as part of the renovations.
We wandered to try and find somewhere for lunch (not always easy with five people) and eventually ended up at a little sandwich shop near Place des Invalides where we each got a baguette and a drink and the gorgeous old man in the shop gave us a packet of crisps. We sat outside and ate it watching the world go by.
We continued wandering until we got to Musee d’Orsay. We looked at the sculptures and the impressionist artists works. By this stage I was really struggling as I had woken up feeling even worse than the day before. We had timed tickets to the Van Gogh exhibition for 3:30pm so we took half an hour to rest on the benches in the museum.
The exhibition was devoted to the last two months of Van Gogh’s life in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. It had only opened the day before so was incredibly busy (I was very thankful for our timed tickets).
We walked back to a metro via a boulangerie to pick up a treat and something for breakfast in the morning and then headed home on the Metro.
Once home, I crashed on the sofa until Mark sent me to bed with a Sudafed. He went and got some meats and food from the market across the road for dinner for him and the kids.