Paris (part 2)

The following day, Reed was feeling a bit better but wasn't totally sure if he'd be up for anything, so I got all prepared to go out and see stuff by myself, but, at the last minute, he decided to come too.  The first place that we went was the Eiffel Tower.  The last time I saw it was at night, so I wanted to go during the day to see the views better.

The lines there are huge! (as seen from above):

My aunt had told me that we should buy tickets online, ahead of time, to skip some of the lines but I forgot.  I was kind of confused when we got there, so we accidentally got in the wrong line -- the no elevator line... I felt really bad too because I wasn't sure if Reed was quite feeling up to climbing a million stairs but he said he was fine so we headed up.  It was a very very long way.

Some views off of the first floor of the Eiffel Tower:

At that point, we decided to go back down.  We could have climbed to the second floor but I had been up there before and really didn't think that it was much better than the first floor.  Besides that, I was starting to feel a bit icky and neither of us really wanted to climb all the extra stairs to get there.  I subsequently took more pictures:

After the Eiffel Tower we decided that we should find something to eat so we headed over to the Louvre.  Underneath the Louvre, there is an underground mall where we ate at the food court.  The food court had many different places, each selling a different culture of food.  (It reminded me of Seasons at ISU).  There was a stand for French food, Italian food, Moroccan food, and many others.  Oh, and of course the US was represented with McDonalds off in the corner.  We decided to get a museum pass for all of the stuff that we wanted to see because it was a better deal than paying entry into every sight.  Reed wanted to see the Mona Lisa and Venus di Milo, and I figured I could find something interesting too, so we went into the Louvre.  It was very crowded there, as was the rest of Paris.

Reed isn't that interested in art so, after we saw those major works, he just basically followed me around while I tried to find some of the works that I studied in my art history class.  After that, we went up around the outside through the pyramid.

After the Louvre, we went to the Notre Dame de Paris.  With the museum pass that we had, we were able to go up to the top where the bells are which was probably one of my favorite things that we did in Paris.  I preferred the view from the top of Notre Dame, as opposed to the view from the Eiffel Tower, because the Eiffel Tower is actually part of the view.

The gargoyles were really cool to see up close.

From there we went up even further. to the bell tower itself.

Although I said that this was my favorite thing that we did, we had to climb several hundred stairs to get to the top and, as I wasn't feeling good already, I was feeling worse by the time we got down to the bottom.  Anyway, I sat down outside while Reed went in to see what the inside was like.

After Notre Dame, we walked along the Champs-Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe.  The Arc de Triomphe is surrounded by a giant round-a-bout with crazy drivers and no lanes (although it doesn't look like it in the photo), so we had to go in an underground tunnel to get there.

We went up into the Arc de Triomphe which meant another couple hundred stairs.  I was really dragging by that time.  It was cool to see the view again from the top.

After that I was ready to go back to the hostel because I really wasn't feeling well.  The worst part of that is riding the metro squished into a tiny, tiny, hot place with a million other people there.  Anyway, that was the end of our second day there.  I went to bed really hoping to feel better tomorrow.