The rest of the day...

After the cemetery, we headed to Gare du Nord to get my Eurostar ticket to London on Friday. Yippee skippee!

 

Thennn, we went to the Sacre Coeur Basilica, a Roman Catholic church in Montmarte.  It is a landmark of Paris because it's rumored to be the highest point in the city (though we read somewhere that it's actually not).  It is pretty to look at from Paris, and it also has a great view of Paris. The outside of it is made from travertine stone which gets white as it gets older.  The mosaic in the apse was a big one of Jesus, and it was beautiful!  One of the best parts about this church was that we got there while services were going on so we got to hear the choir/congregation singing and see priests in action. I've been in a LOT of churches on my trip, but I have yet to see anything real happening in them. It was interesting to me that they had their services but kept the church open to tourists...so the tourists are walking around the oustide while they're worshipping in the nave. It was weird, but really cool!

Dad and the Sacre Coeur from below

Sacre Coeur and me in the corner

Sacre Coeur from below

Beautiful!

Sorry about the camera strap...I took this while walking. This is the view from Sacre Coeur.

Next, we took the metro over to the Tuileries Garden to go to the Army Museum/Napolean's Tomb. We walked across Pont Alexandre which is the prettiest bridge in Paris. We ate lunch in the little park area in front of the museum. We had to gear up/energize for it.

 

 

The bridge

Pont Alexandre

Grand Palais from Pont Alexandre

Army Museum from Ponte Alexandre

The Army Museum had tons of suits of armor, weapons, cannons, and military uniforms. We started in the ancient times when the Louis' were kings and made our way to WWI and WWII. I liked the WW stuff the best since it was more real to me. The knights in shining armor just seem so Hollywood. We got to see videos of different things during the wars including D-day...that was especially cool since we just walked on the beaches a few days ago!

 

 

We walked into the church where Napolean is buried, and the first tomb on the right says Joseph Napolean...so we were like, "is that it?" We didn't know what to expect so we took pictures of it thinking that was it. Then we walked down the stairs and saw the real thing and felt like idiots for photographing the wrong thing. The real thing is magnificent. There is a giant "hole" in the floor that looks down on a big, red tomb. You can go downstairs and walk around the tomb where there are carvings of Napolean in the wall and statues surrounding the tomb. There is a giant statue of Napolean, and I think I read that that is where his son is buried (Napolean II). The whole church was pretty awesome, especially the gold dome.

 

Wrong tomb

26 pounds of gold in dome

Right tomb

Foch's tomb

Altar

Dad with tomb and altar

Napolean's son

Napolean's son's tomb

Me with tomb and altar

Les Invalides Eglise

We walked over to the Champs de Mars...the park in front of the Eiffel Tower. It was nice to finally get close to the Eiffel Tower since I have only seen it from afar. It's really, really, really tall and really, really, really awesome. We laid in the park for about an hour just enjoying the sunshine and grass and tower.

Stupid lamp post

After relaxing, we decided it was time to tackle the monument and head on up. I was surprised that dad wanted to take the stairs after the past two days of stairs/walking for miles, but the line for the elevator was 4 times as long so we climbed all 674 steps to the second level. We will be sore tomorrow, that is for sure. We stopped and walked around the first level as well as the second level to see the view and read some signs. Dad thought we had more stairs to climb to get to the top, but I informed him that only an elevator takes you up there. What a relief! Right when we went to buy the ticket to go all the way to the top, the lady at the desk had to close because one of the elevators had broken and they weren't supposed to sell anymore tickets until it was working again. Just our luck. I was ticked. One elevator was still working so people that already had tickets got to go up. I thought that was pretty stupid because this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, and I had just as much of a right as those people did. I tried to get on the internet with dad's phone to buy tickets, but it wouldn't get service. About 15 minutes later, the ticket booth opened up and we jumped in the long line and got to go up! Hooray! When you first get in the elevator, it is dark, but just two seconds later you pop out over the entry and get to watch yourself go higher and higher into the sky. It was a hazy day here in Paris, but I bet that's pretty normal with the ten million people that live here. The views were great, and we watched the sunset halfway before heading back down. I got a picture with the view especially because when I went to the Empire State Building ten years ago there was 0% visibility. This was a lot better. :) I'm really glad we were able to go all the way up and see the views. We can now saw we have climbed the Iron Lady.

 

Our original plans after that were to go to dinner and do a Seine river cruise...but...I didn't take a coat with me because it was such a nice day when we left, and I thought I'd be okay. But it was cold, and I wouldn't have been happy the rest of the night freezing to death. So we came back to our neighborhood, stopped by our favorite bakery, grabbed some groceries, and went home for some dinner. Surprise! More potato surpise. Haha. We had a leftover ingredients. We'll go out tomorrow and/or the next day. We enjoyed the bakery bread with cheese and jam and also our desserts (fruit tart and chocolate something).

 

What a great day in Paris!