Last day in Paris!

As we had forecasted yesterday, today was the most footsore day we have had since coming to Paris. I shudder to think of how many miles we have now walked. We started out the day by taking a train out to L'Arc de Triomphe. We walked around the plaza area beneath the arch for a while, checking out the hundreds of names etched into the walls. We then came upon La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu (the tomb of the unknown soldier) where burns a flame in memorial. We bought tickets to go all the way to the top, so we started making our way up the unending flights of spiral stairs. We were dizzy and tired by the time we reached the top, but the view was certainly worth it. Seeing all of the streets converge beneath us was really interesting, and we got a chance to see all of the historical sites from above, as well as formulate our plan of attack for the Champs-Élysées. While we were in the area, we tried to find the street that Grandpa lived on when he lived in Paris but were unable to find it anywhere. My guess is that the street name has changed since he was in the service.

We decided that we would take a good chunk of time to walk down the famous shopping avenue of the Champs-Élysées. Our first stop was in the store for Louis Vuitton to see how the 5% live. We were both blown away. Simple things that you could get at Target for $20 were oftentimes upward of 3500 euro. We even saw Louis Vuitton's infant clothing line, with the least expensive item we saw running about 375 euro. We also visited Lacoste and Tommy Hilfigure's stores, both equally expensive. We took a brief jaunt into Abercrombie and Fitch because they had a giant golden gate and two French guys standing out front pretending to be Americans, inviting us in with a "Hey! Whass goeing on?" They also had a shirtless black man in the front door taking pictures with giddy tourists.

The Louvre was our final destination, but the walk there was a lot longer in reality than it looked when we saw it from above that morning. By the time we got to the famous museum, our feet were already in pain, as the walk took so long. We spent a good part of the afternoon walking around the giant palace-turned-museum. We began by going through the Egyptian wing but later decided to check out the collection of Italian Renaissance art. Due to the crowds, we decided to pass on seeing the Mona Lisa, which from past experience was rather underwhelming anyway.

Because of the sheer enormity of the Louvre and the fact that we will be returning with our study abroad group in just a couple of months, we decided to skip out after two wings. We headed back to our hotel to change before heading out for a night the Eiffel Tower, only to find the small road packed with firetrucks and bustling fire crews. Our hotel was not on fire, thankfully, but a shop in the same building a few doors down had apparently had some gas issues or something. We sat and watched pigeons attacking each other for a while as the finished cleaning up the scene. We both put on our spiffy clothes and headed over to Paris' most iconic attraction.

Thankfully, this late in the evening, the lines were relatively short (during the day, the lines can be as long as 2-3 hours to get up to even the first two levels) and we actually arrived at a very good time. We saw the tower right before it turned on the evening lights, which was a cool change. To enjoy the full experience, we bought our tickets to walk all the way up, rather than take the elevator. It was a lot of work, and we were both huffing and puffing by the time we reached the second level. Sadly, the summit was closed, so we couldn't go all the way to the top, which was actually fine by me because I prefer the open-air second level to the glass and plastic enclosed summit, anyway.  This was my first time being on the Eiffel Tower at night, and it proved to be a fantastic experience. While it certainly is a marvel during the day, the bright city lights make the city glow at night, and therefore the view was even more wonderful. We even had the pleasure of being up top when the tower started sparkling (its worth looking this phenomenon up on youtube, as it is really fantastic). The weather was perfect and the breeze felt wonderful so high up.

However, no trip to Paris would be complete without something romantic and momentous happening. With the city lights glowing all around us, I got down on one knee and asked my wonderful and beautiful best friend if she would be my wife. With tears of joy in her eyes, she said yes, and I slid her engagement ring on. At this point we were met with some applause from people who had been paying attention. Suffice to say, the two of us could not be happier, and Hayley's ring looks gorgeous on her hand. We stayed and enjoyed the view for a while afterwards, but we decided to begin the descent, as tomorrow we will be getting up really early to head to Rouen, the first town in our Normandy part of the trip. On the way back to the hotel, we grabbed some incredibly delicious strawberry-vanilla ice cream.

Hopefully, I will be able to post again tomorrow night, but I'm not sure if our next hotel has wifi, so we will see. Thanks for reading!