Paris Day Two: Arc de Triomphe and Tour Eiffel

Today was a day involving climbing lots of stairs and doing lots of queuing up. 

The negatives:

• There were lots of dodgy looking foreign men selling tacky Eiffel tower keyrings. I'm pretty sure what they were doing was illegal as they would quickly scamper when they saw the police arrive. My mum took a picture of one of these men as she's annoying like that, and boy, he looked like he wanted to attack her or something and he did. He grabbed my mum by her arm and my mum quickly retaliated with some verbal abuse and then we were on our way. 

• The queues were really quite long for both the Eiffel tower and Arc de Triomphe. However, considering it was the Easter weekend, it was shorter than I anticipated. When we reached the 1st floor of the Eiffel tower I realised just how long the snaking queues were. 

• I forgot to take over the picture taking, so I only have the ones my rents took. This photo could've been so good if my mum didn't cut off the bottoms of the cars.  

• After the Arc de Tromphe and Tour Eiffel, we reached this museum called Grand Palais, and went to this exhibition called "Beauté animale". It was honestly very underwhelming, as there wasn't much on display and the entry tickets were quite expensive. I do not recommend anyone to go visit it, unless you have a museum pass of some sort. 
• I had a citron and fraises flavoured ice cream and was very yummy. However it was also a bit of a rip-off at 4euros. Oh well, it's now in my tummy. 
• We also walked around Champs-Élysées and there was a huge H&M that I simply had to go in as my local one is absolute rubbish. I didn't buy anything though, which was sad. 

The positives:

• The weather was pretty good to begin with, although it did soon deteriorate. We walked up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower and then took the elevator (you couldn't walk any further from here on) all the way to the top. We reached 281m above the ground and I was very concerned about the amount of radiation I was receiving from being so close to the satellite dishes at the top of the tower. The aerial view was pretty good though and I was surprised to find that all the new developments in Paris were pretty much confined to a small area, and much of the uniform marble architecture has been retained. 

My dad's camera's white balance is a bit off. 

• There was also all these people in this huge conga line chanting this French song underneath the Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure what they were singing about, but it sounded like it could've either been a protest, or some sort of scout group. 

• We also reached the top of Arc de Triomphe (I keep thinking its Marble Arch), although it seemed way less high, after the Eiffel Tower. 

• I reckon I now have thighs of steel after all this climbing. 

That's all for today! If I'm back tomorrow early again, and have time, see you tomorrow for another post. 

Rebecca x

Reading my map. For some reason my hair looks far more red than it actually is now. Oh well.