Paris, France

Our last day doesn’t start too well weather-wise. The clouds and rain are still hanging around.

We had nothing really planned for today, but decided that seeing as though we’d been to the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay, we would go to the next museum in chronological order – Musee d’Art Contemporary. We caught the Metro over to the station and arrived to find the museum was under renovation and not re-opening until November.

We are, however, within sight of Notre Dame, so we head down there to see if the scaffolding has disappeared. On the way we found a cheap Italian place, so stopped for lunch.

Notre Dame is still covered in scaffolding so we opted to head for the Eiffel Tower – we can’t come to Paris and not climb the tower. On the way we stopped at numerous souvenir and book/magazine stalls along the Seine River, where we picked up a couple of presents for people. By the time we got half way to the tower, it started to rain, so we opted to catch the Metro back to our hotel and do some reading, writing and relaxing.

This we did until about eight pm when we decided to go back and try our luck at the Tower again. We picked up a dozen spring rolls along the way for dinner and walked the 15 minutes through Champs du Mars before making it to the Eiffel Tower. We were in line for about 20 minutes before catching the elevator up the eastern leg to the second level. We had to get out here to change elevators, and it was absolutely freezing. We got straight in the next elevator and made it to the top of the 310-meter tower where, to my relief, the area was enclosed in glass. The view here at night is spectacular, with the best being the view down the Seine to the Louvre and Notre Dame, as well as looking at the Trocadero with the Arc di Triomphe in the background. We didn’t stay up there for too long, as my love of heights got the better of me, but enough to have a perfect view of Paris.

Roberta & I, Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Afterwards we walked back home for our last sleep on the continent.