Today started off like every other day in Paris that we have had so far, chocolate croissants from the boulangerie around the corner. We then took the metro to the Orangerie museum to see Claude Monet's water lillies. These are my absolute favorites. I love the colors and essentially everything about the paintings so I was really happy to see them. After The Orangerie museum, we went across the bridge to the Orsay museum and saw the impressionist/post-impressionist paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and others. We had wine at the restaurant at the top of the museum that was very fancy and elegant which was fun. We then took a taxi to the main boutique shopping area of the Left Bank and went to Bon Marche which is apparently the oldest department store in Paris, and the Parisians are known for inventing department stores (what we know today as Nordstrom, etc.). We walked along the strip of fancy shops and ended up at Paris' most well known pastry shop and had lunch and a few different treats, all of which were to die for. After shopping, we went back to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed to the top of it because we werent able to the night before. The view from atop was pretty spectacular and the ordeal of climbing up many flights of stairs to get there was worth it.
In the afternoon, we went to a neighborhood knows as Rue Cler that is traffic free and known for being a large market for locals to buy their daily groceries. We had champagne at the corner cafe and people watched as locals filled their luggage (*everyone in Europe carries luggage everywhere, instead of a backpack or something. It's the weirdest thing) with organic fruits, vegetables, cheeses and meats. It was fun to explore down the street and see what kinds of foods were most common among Parisian eating. We had dinner and wine at the most well-known restaurant at the end of the block and enjoyed our french bread with vinegar and olive oil (both served in perfume like spray bottles). After dinner, we wandered toward the Eiffel Tower and took many pictures as we got closer. We waited in line to ride to the top of the tower for about ten minutes before there was a complete evacuation by the french police due to a possible bomb threat in the tower. Awesome. After waiting it out and hearing a big bang, the tower opened up again and people ran like the wind to get in line. I left the bag with mom and pushed people out of the way so we could get closer to the front of the line (I would feel slightly worse about this if the lines werent hours long). So we waited a small amount of time, got tickets and rode the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower. It looks tall, but when you are riding an elevator up to the top and looking down at simple wires holding you up, man alive was I nauseous. So yeah, it was really high up there and being afraid of heights, I did my best to not be scared shitless but a girl can only do so much. When we arrived at the top, the view was incredible. We watched the sun go down over all of Paris while atop the Eiffel Tower, not to mention there was a champagne bar that mom and I of course indulged in as we took in the view. It was insanely windy and freezing but no one cared because we were at the top of the Eiffel Tower. We took many pictures at every angle of the beautiful views of Paris and just as we were about to ride the elevator back down, the Tower was lit up and started sparkling with flickering christmas lights all over. It was pretty remarkable and a wonderful way to spend our last day in Paris. When we got back to earth, we walked to the metro and saw the twinkling lights of the tower from a distance, we took the metro to our station and took the elevator to the top (learning from previous mistakes, look at us go). What a wonderful last night in Paris.
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