Day 2: Walkabout We had planned to take advantage of the nice weather, before it turned around, and decided that, on our second day, we'd make the trip to Versailles, to visit the Imperial Palace of Luis XV and Marie Antoinette. So, even though we were very tired, I set my cell phone's alarm clock for 6 o'clock (you know, because apparently placing a wake up call in a hotel didn't seem like a good idea – mainly because I'm an idiot).
So, we woke up fully rested, even though we only slept a little over 4 hours, and we even did so before the alarm went off! Yeah, I know, something wasn't adding up. I reached for my phone, only to find it dead (without giving up as much as a single warning, mind you), and a little glance at my watch later, we were making new plans – you know, plans that could be done by leaving the hotel at 10 a.m. (note to self, PLACE WAKE UP CALLS, MORON!!).
We went down for breakfast, and it was really nice, since I could have all the authentic Brazilian orange juice I wanted – oh, wait… Well, at least I COULD have all the Nutella Chocolate Crepes I wanted (which ended up being around 7-8), but their coffee sucked horribly, so I ended up having Crepes with Evian water basically every morning – mind you, still awesome.
We settled on going to the Louvre, and afterwards taking the walk through Avenue
du Champs Elysée to the Arc
du Triomphe (going through the Louvre's Garden, the Square and the Egyptian Obelisk in the process), for a start (after all, we checked the map and it was only, like, 500-700 meters).
We made it to the Louvre, and after a really fast-moving line, we had tickets to go inside the World's Greatest Art Sanctuary.
We spent the rest of the morning, as well as most of the afternoon, admiring the beautiful pieces, as well as the beautiful Museum itself – best-lit museum I've ever seen, even without a flash the photos came out great.
We made it to the Mona Lisa's room, where after dodging the 200,000 Japanese tourists and the 450,000 Arab ones, we got to be really close to it (5 meters away), and a nice German chap offered to take our picture, which came out great, by the way.
Later, I was about to take a picture of Luis XV's crown (amazing, by the way, google it up) when my batteries died. "No problem", I thought, "just go to the museum store – one of the 5-6 ones they have in there – and by some new ones" (we'd forgotten the fully charged ones in the hotel, due to leaving in a rush). So, OF COURSE, not a single one of them sold batteries. We ended up settling for buying new ones AFTER we left the place, since our feet were killing us enough already to hike all the way back to the entrance, out, and back in again.
We left the Louvre at stopped at Starbucks (guaranteed to get you decent coffee anywhere in the world and I was in dire need of some White Mocha), got a frappuccino to go (and a White Mocha on site) and went gift shopping on the street right behind the Museum, while we went around it to get to the Gardens and the Small Arch.
What a marvelous place! The gardens are something completely alien to me, to actually see THAT many people just chilling on a square, reading by a fountain, and the sculptures!
Anyway, we locked our target in (the Great Arch), using the Egyptian Obelisk midway as aim, and got to walking. When we made it to the Obelisk, we had ALREADY walked half a mile, and the Arch wasn't even bigger on our sight yet! SERIOUSLY, maps need ACCURATE SCALES!
We at last made it to Champs Elysée, and of course the missus took over there, driving me into a 75% off sale at the Gap (nothing good, in the end), and then to a 30-minute line (slowest one in all
our time in France) for visiting the mothership (which is Louis Vitton), to see a bunch of arab women buying 3-4 2,000 euro purses each – in cash! Oh, yeah, and apparently, one of them had a D&D Dungeon, since she was buying what I can only describe as a large Louis Vitton treasure chest, for about 60,000 euros (yes, that many zeros, she'd probably need her own plane to fly it home).
Another half mile later, we were still a few yards away, so we decided to stop and eat. My wife has this thing, she has to try the local McDonald's cuisine wherever we go, so we settled for some VERY good french cheese sandwiches, and had a nice meal, though I was almost lynched for trying to take a picture of their menu (I was TOTALLY suspicious, carrying bags, a camera and dressed comfortably while talking to my wife in another language, OF COURSE I was a spy and not a tourist!).
We at last made it to the Great Arch, and our feet were KILLING us. Naturally, we had to climb about 300 more stairs (Seriously, WHY write it down at the entrance? We're climbing anyway, it's just sadistic!).
The view from the arch, IMHO, was even better than the one from the Tower (since, well, you can see the Tower), and we enjoyed some sightseeing while sitting comfortably on the floor and liking it. No water for sale in a 300 ft. radius, of course (French people need some classes on tourism-exploiting, except maybe the cab drivers).
Since it was still 7 p.m., we sat down, opened our map, and settle for going to the Sacre-Coeur Church, in Mont-Martre. We took the subway, and had to climb yet another freakingly huge set of stairs. Beautiful church, and the merry-go-round at the base is very pretty. From there, we took the strangest walk of our lives to the Moulin Rouge, about 500 meters away (shockingly, accurately depicted this time). The entire street from the church to the Mouling Rouge was almost only comprised of sex shops. With glass windows. And not the tainted type. So, after seeing some awesomely funny T-Shirts, dildos and coffee mugs, we got to the beautiful place that is the Moulin Rouge's facade.
By then, it was almost 10 o'clock, so we hiked back to Café Cambronne (ALWAYS open), dined again there and called it a day (and what a LONG day), with quite the collection of blisters on our feet. Totally worth it.
Topic: Wedding (Read 2577 times)
