We started the day around 8:00 so we would have plenty of time to see everything we wanted to for our last full day in Paris. To start the day we jumped on the metro to St. Michael’s. When we got off we quickly spotted the beautiful fountain. After we got our pictures we saw a few souvenir shops we wanted to check out. Once we were done looking we made our way to Notre Dame.
The church was beautiful and we got there just in time as it had begun sprinkling! We were even more excited to discover admission was free! My camera decided to die at this point, but luckily Jeana’s was still charged and she took pictures for me :) The inside of the church was beautiful. After we finished exploring we made our way outside. It was still sprinkling, but nothing we hadn’t dealt with before!
After seeing Notre Dame, we didn’t really have any set plans. We decided to go inside a few more shops and decide along the way what to do next. We just wanted to get out of the rain before we were completely drenched! Since we didn’t know what to do next, I pulled out my Rick Steves book to discover we had missed so much! He had a guided walk around Notre Dame so we headed back that way to follow his guide. From the book we found out that right in front of Notre Dame is a mark on the ground showing the center of Paris. The book them told us neat elements to look for on the church. These are things we definitely would not have noticed before!
After admiring the detailed sculpture work of the church we continued the walk in the book. It led us to a memorial for soldiers w ho had died in the war. It was a really neat place that we easily would have missed without the book. Next it led us to Saint Chapelle. The church holds the crown of thorns but was not currently there. We decided not to go in because that was really the only thing we were interested in seeing and there was a long wait in the rain to get in.
From there that pretty much ended the walk we were following. We were both free3zing so we decided to search for a place to have a cappuccino and warm up. It took us a while to find one, so we were extremely happy once we did. Our server wasn’t the most helpful or friendly guy but we got our cappuccino!
When we were done we headed back to the main road as we were quite a ways off. From there we decided to go to the Rodin museum. It was a bit of a walk but we made it. The museum has a garden with statues outside, plus a gallery inside. What we were really interested in seeing was the “Thinker” which is in the gardens. Unfortunately it was still raining out, but we were toughing it out. After all, how often are you in Paris!
We took our time walking around the garden (again guided by Rick Steves book). It was getting late so we decided to start heading to the Eifel Tower for one last look before making our way to our hostel for the night. The rain picked up as we walked to the Eifel Tower so by the time we got there we were nice and soaked. We walked up the opposite side of the Eifel Tower this time and took some fun pictures. Before leaving we got some Eifel Tower souvenirs from the people selling them everywhere. I even ended up bargaining a really good deal thinking we had less money left over than we did :) These people who sell all the Eifel Towers are not legally allowed to and on our walk to our hostel we saw the cops catch one of them. It made our long walk back to our hostel a bit more interesting!
We had a long ways to go to get to our hostel and I was more than ready to be there. I was exhausted, hungry and ready to be dry. Since we had a few Euros left to spend, we stopped in a bakery and got a loaf of break. I didn’t really feel like stopping but when I took a bite of that bread boy was I glad we did. Without realizing it we were only about a block from our hostel. We were relieved to be back!
It wasn’t until we got back that we tired out break and discovered it was warm! We at the whole baguette as well as our random collection of food we had for dinner. Being able to sit and relax after a long, great day felt wonderful. We had to leave in the morning though so we packed up our bags and turned in early!
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