Day 7
I had put laundry in the washer/dryer last night (european style, its all one machine), and this morning the cleaner came to clean the apartment next door, who we share the laundry with, and took out our clothes from the dryer (damp still) to put a load of laundry on. No problem except for all our warm clothes were in the wash! I tried to open the door last night when it finished but I couldn't get it open, so left it. The cleaner had difficulty too this morning I could hear them pushing all the buttons and fighting with the door. Finally their load finished and I could put ours back into the dryer - I pulled their load out and it was 3 cleaning clothes and a fabric swiffer sweeper, are you KIDDING me?!? Now we have to layer with 15 sets of clothes to stay warm today because 4 cleaning things had to be cleaned and our clothes removed? Yeah right.
The girls were happy though because we had to buy them sweaters, well ponchos. And good news for me they got a text from Maria this morning that said that she would buy them a souvenir and they used their money from Maria to buy their ponchos!
Then I edited out the guy picking his nose behind them.
They’re those popular flippy ones where the sequins are one colour and you can switch them to another colour if you push them up or down.
We walked towards where we are meeting the bike tour we're doing today, not sure if we were going to walk the entire way or hop on a bus or take a cab part way. We left from the apartment towards the Tuileries Garden, on the way Paige saw some paintings.
She wanted to buy one for home with some of her remaining travel fund, and knowing the way that she shops I asked her if she wanted to think about it and come back later knowing she would say yes and she did. So the guy offered her 2Eu off for a total price of 18Eu for the painting and she was able to make a decision!
From here we walked past the Grand Palais and Petit Palais.
I don’t know why the fountains were green.
The Eiffel Tower peaks out from everywhere.
We stopped on the way for baguette sandwiches at a little shop near the Eiffel Tower so that we could sit in the park and eat. Mom and I got ham, cheese and butter, Jason got chicken and cheese, Sophie got ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato and Paige didn't want anything and Sophie didn't eat much of hers anyway.
Mom chatted up a couple from the States on her bench while we ate. They had walked 10 miles yesterday and were just enjoying the view of the Tower in the sun.
We walked the rest of the way to where our tour was meeting and were about 15 minutes early so we went across the street to a little cafe and ordered some coffee and hot chocolate so that we could use the washroom. Mom ordered me a decaf espresso instead of a coffee...too strong for me, she said live a little, she got an eye roll and head shake for that.
We walked the rest of the way to where our tour was meeting and were about 15 minutes early so we went across the street to a little cafe and ordered some coffee and hot chocolate so that we could use the washroom. Mom ordered me a decaf espresso instead of a coffee...too strong for me, she said live a little, she got an eye roll and head shake for that.
When we saw the group across the street we headed over, the guide (Thomas) verified everyone was there and off we went to the rental office a few blocks away. Paige saw everyone there and said "Who are all these other people?" They're here for the tour, its not private - that disappointed her a bit. lol.
Thomas went around and asked people where they were from and a couple, with an 18 month old daughter, said they were from the Toronto area. I asked where they were from and they said Waterloo. The wife had been working here for a week and her husband and baby joined her, he said the Toronto to Frankfurt was ok because they were in Economy Plus but Frankfurt to Nice was pretty terrible. Lol. Mom asked if she had been working in Nice and she said “No, Cannes”. I said we had just been in Cannes as well, at a conference. She asked which one and I told her Sunlife - she works for Sunlife as one of the conference organizers! Small world.
Jay saw this guy and said he shouldn’t be walking around! I told Sophie he was on the bike tour last week.
We all got set up with bikes, helmets for the kids, use of the bathroom again (just in case) and got a few ground rules.
Rules - There are times to be polite and ride in single file and there are times we need to dominate the road and create no spaces for cars to bully us. If a car honks at you, wave and smile, they are only telling you how good you look on a bike. If approached too closely by a car put your arm out with your palm up, the Palm of Power, not the Finger of Frustration.
Our first stop was the Champs de Mars, Mars being the god of War, so basically the Field of War. In it is a Peace Wall (one of several modern buildings that the people of Paris hate), next to the Military school that Napoleon attended. He said that the fact that Napoleon was short is "fake news", that in fact at the time a foot was not 12" but a longer measurement so Napoleon was about 5'7" tall, not so short for those times.
The next stop we made was on a boulevard where a market would be held, he said that in the 20 districts there must be at least one open market at least twice per week, its mandatory. But he said the reality is that there are many more than this and some of them are so large they span between two subway stops. He also said that his idiot friend has a 110 sq ft apartment across from Notre Dame and pays 870Eu per month for that. The smallest apartment you can legally rent is 81 sq ft, and would be found on the top floor of a building where the poorest people usually lived, including mostly students and tour guides. lol. Minimum wage is about 1,200 Eu per month, so at 870Eu his friend is paying about 75% of his wage on the apartment, which he couldn't afford, so he lives there with his girlfriend! From this boulevard we could also see Montparnasse Tower, the only high rise in the City of Paris. It was built in 1977 and because everyone hated it so much it was then decided there would be no more high rises allowed within the city limits. He said that most people refer to Montparnasse as the box the Eiffel Tower came in and that some say the best view of the city can be seen from the viewing level at the top of Montparnasse, but that's likely because you can't see the Tower from there.
We continued to ride on and stopped across from the Dome Church, the dome is guilded in real gold, about 70kg and was just redone in 1989 at the cost of the taxpayers. On the opposite side was a boulevard with some sheep in it, he asked if we knew what they were there for and I said "lawnmowers". Exactly right, the company is called Ecosheep and they have signs up on the fences that say "Do not feed the sheep or they won't work".
Our pack of riders pedalled to in front of the Les Invalides. We parked the bikes and walked onto the lawn in front of the Museum, Sophie must be feeling better, these are the first handstands she has done in a week.
The Invalides was built by King Louis XIV after the war to house the war veterans (really to hide them away and get them off the streets), he left to conquer Russia with 400,000 men and came back with 20,000 and those cannons you can see on the lawn. The shrubs are also shaped like bullets.
Its funny getting started on these bikes, everyone does a few shoves off with their feet Fred Flintstone style to get going.
Next we stopped on one of the Bridges next to the Grand and Petit Palaise. He pointed out a restaurant and nightclub that are under the bridge and told us that last year there was a flood where the water level was 6.5M higher than normal and the entire door was underwater.
Next we went to Place de Concorde and stopped in front of the square. Now to get INTO this square we lined up in front of cars waiting to go into the round about - 18 bikes moved from the bike lane on the right into formation along the pedestrian crosswalk in front of them then as soon as the light turned green we all moved forward in "Domination Formation", to the right and out the first exit on the street.
We were going over to the building you can see the roof of on the right. To get there we had to go through this intersection.
This square was where, during the revolution, all of the executions by guillotine were held. In fact the last public execution was in 1939 and the last execution in France, which was still by guillotine, was in 1977! The Obelisk in the center of the square was received in 1833. It came from Luxor. There is some controversy over it - was it a gift or was is stolen? The French think of it as a gift, but the Egyptian government sends a letter every year requesting it back. It was stolen by someone during the Ottoman Empire and gifted to Paris, therefore it is a gift. In this square is also the most expensive hotel in Paris, L'Hotel de Crillon. The winner of the Tour de France gets to stay in the Presidential Suite (10,000Eur per night) for a week as part of their prize. Lance Armstrong, after the doping scandal, received a bill for 70,000Eur a week for 7 years from the hotel!
We traveled from here to the Louvre pyramids. The purpose of the pyramids were to let natural light into part of the museum and also passive heat from the sun. Parisiennes don't like the modern pyramids, but really don't like the price tag, which was estimated at 50MEur but ended up costing 1.3Billion Euros because of the discovery of remnants of an old fort under the excavation site which then had to be recovered archeologically.
(That’s Thomas in the blue jacket).
Finally we made our way to the Eiffel Tower. It was the winning design in a contest to design a gate into the 1890 World's Fair, who's theme was Industrial Revolution. There were 3 parameters 1) You had to be French to enter a design 2) It had to be made completely of Iron 3) It had to be the tallest building in the world. This structure was supposed to be torn down 6 months after the Fair, but the designer asked if he could own it privately instead of it being paid for by the State, and if he could try to make money off of it for the next 20 years after and then he would donate it back to the State. The State didn't believe he would make any money, the cost to build it was the equivalent of 30M Eur today and he made that back selling tickets and having weather stations on it in the first year. Its believed that he made a 5000% profit in the 20 years he owned the Tower. Because it is made of Iron it is prone to rust, so every 7 years it has to be repainted. It takes 60 tonnes of paint and takes 40 people 18 months to finish.
We're done, the tour was awesome, funny and informative - also exercise, we rode bikes for probably 2 of the 3 hours all around Paris. Jay asked Thomas where he would recommend we eat close by. We want to eat near here because we are near the Eiffel Tower and its 5:30pm and it is lit up at around 6pm and from 6pm onwards it sparkles every hour on the hour for 5 minutes. So we went to Thomas' recommendation of a little local pub called Au Dernier Metro (right behind the metro station) and it was very cool. Our server was great and recommended food for us. Thomas had been asked on the tour by someone what French Beer he would recommend and he said "none, but we do have Picon, an orange liqueur that we put in our beer" - - we arrived at the Bar at Happy Hour and you could get a pint of Picon Biere for 4,60Eu so we all tried one, I really liked it. Jay had steak frites, Mom and I both had the beef bourguignon on pasta and the girls had pasta and fries, very beige. We left a big tip and he gave us a shot on the house before we left and joined us in drinking it!
From there it was less than a 10 minute walk back to the Eiffel Tower and we had about 20 minutes to wait before the magic happens, so I took a few photos as the sun set and the girls played around in the park. It was definitely worth the wait to see it, Mom and I never saw the Tower lit up when we came 6 years ago.
We took a cab back to near the apartment, bought some water from the MonoPrix and headed back to the house. The girls FaceTimed Myah and Avery, finally, they've been trying all week but the time change has screwed them up. Mom and I are updating the blogs, Jay is reading his book or watching Netflix, I'm not sure. Now its 10:00pm and I'm done. We walked 17,548 steps today and that doesn't include all the ground we covered on the bikes during our 3.5hour tour. We've averaged 12,000 steps a day since we got to Europe and 8.1km per day. Lots of walking, I love that about being here.
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