Our final sight of the day was the Arc de Triumph! We walked from Tuileries Gardens to Place de la Concorde, caught the metro to the Arc de Triumph and met Olia and her kids. She was very busy that day as she had her birthday party later that evening, but she was kind enough to come meet us to hang out at the Arc.
The triumph of the Watsons.
Built by Napoleon in 1806 to commemorate France's military power, the 50 meter/164 foot tall arch crowns the west end of the Champs-Elysees, the city's most famous avenue. We didn’t want to simply look at the Arc. We wanted to go up the stairs to the very top to see the spectacular view of the Champs-Elysees and crazy traffic down below. We had to climb 284 steps to the top. Great work out, I am telling you.
And the view was great!
Katya was using the close up lens.
It might seem that all we did was climb up tall buildings and looked at Paris from the top. Okay, maybe this particular trip we did climbing more than usually.
The view of the famous Ferris wheel by the Concorde monument, the crazy traffic and Champs-Elysees lined with white tents/stalls that constitute one of Paris’ Christmas markets.
We spent maybe fifteen-twenty minutes on top, taking a ton of pictures. Then the kids took a look at the exhibit dedicated to the Unknown Soldier. And then we were done. The outside was beautiful!
Here is the eternal fire.
The Arc de Triumph is huge!
From the Arc, we walked along the very famous and crowded Champs-Elysees towards the Christmas market. It was a longer walk than we expected because it was so crowded. By the way, walking in a crowd and having someone just smoke in your face in front of you is not a very pleasant experience. In fact, I don’t remember seeing this many people smoking on the street as I did in Paris. Smokers were everywhere! And lots of women smoking too.
Finally, we reached the first stalls of the market. Since Olia said her kids were very hungry, we bought some waffles as a snack (although 5 euros a piece, it was more like a dinner…somehow Belgian waffles were 1 euro in Brussels, but whatever). Unfortunately, Olia had to run back home to get ready for her party, so we had to say goodbye then. The rest of us continued on our adventures through the Christmas market, fighting off the crowds, but persevering to the end-haha. We didn’t get any souvenirs, just looked at some fun things, but we did get some really great food that became our dinner. It was a great finish to our two full days of sightseeing in Paris.
That night, our apartment was hopping…and not because we were dancing or rough housing. We had two crazy parties going on ALL NIGHT LONG!! (well, till 3 am to be precise). It was crazy! One party was across the balcony from us and another one was underneath us. Needless to say, the grown ups hardly had any sleep, luckily the kids had fallen asleep before the parties started.
By noon next day we had dropped off my mom at Olia’s, picked up our car and were navigating our way out of Paris. Fantastic trip! Great to see family and feel the spirit of Thanksgiving.
We’ll be staying in England for a while now….well, till January. So it’s time to get ready for Christmas now.
Cheers,
Lyana.
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