Around the World in 330 Days: Brian's Fulbright Journey in China and Elsewhere: Day 322: Paris, Day 12: Italian Food, Le Tour Eiffel

We began the day with a nice Italian meal early on. There's a place called Caffe Caesar near L'Arc de Triomphe. The people in there were pretty nice; online it says it's a family-run business. It was nice to be able to eat inside with no one smoking. We had a 1/2 bottle of Bourdeaux red wine; with this, I had the spaghetti Bolognese and Kerry had some lasagna. It was pretty good, although I wish my spaghetti had had more parm cheese and Kerry's portion could have been larger. We split a green salad with parmesan cheese and walnuts with the entrees; that was pretty tasty, too. They're very big on vinaigrette dressings here in Paris, so it came with balsamic vinaigrette and some olive oil, which we also had with the bread that they served. For dessert, I had something called the coupe amarena: amarena cherries, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream. It was pretty sweet, but also yummy; I like cherries a lot (being from Michigan, of course). Kerry had the warm chocolate cake. Even though it was pricey (about 69 euros overall), we really didn't spend much yesterday at all, so things even themselves out. We ran into a couple looking at their menu outside as we were leaving. "Try it--it was really good," I told them. They went inside.

Afterwards, we took Le Metro Line 6 (a first for us) to the stop of the Eiffel Tower: Bir-Hakeim, named after a French war battle. Then we walked to the tower. Soooo many souvenir places along the way. Many of them entailed African men just sitting on the ground selling statues of the Eiffel Tower. We did cave and bought two fans from one of them. Once we got to the Tower area, we noticed there were two lines: one for people without tickets, and one for people with tickets. Since we had our printed-out ticket, we got in the "people with tickets" line. It wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it would be and we got through very quickly. It was about 3 pm by this point and our "time" for the Eiffel Tower wasn't until 5:30 pm. They told us not go get in line for our time "until 5 minutes before." So we hung out for a bit and looked around. One thing that surprised me is that there were beautiful ponds, with ducks, around--lots of nature. And, of course, a lot of restaurants and things to eat. It sort of reminded me of a fair atmosphere. Not many places to sit, though; most people just plopped themselves on the ground. However, me being me, I needed a bench, so I managed to grab a seat next to a smelly Asian woman...fortunately, she left pretty soon. So we did a lot of waiting around. Both of us visiting the souvenir shop separately; we saved the bench seat for each other. My back got to hurt after awhile with no support, so I eventually stood up. It helped that they had free WiFi there. Right before our time to depart, I tried to go to the toilets, but there was a HUGE line that had all genders mixed in. But then a security guy decided to let just the women into the women's room on the right, leaving all of us guys stranded. I couldn't wait, so I just left. I figured I'd go later.

So our time came to go up in the tower. When we got there, the 5 pm folks were still lined up, and it was 5:15 by this time. "Wait until 5:30," one woman told me. So, slowly, a queue for the 5:30 line formed. One old woman and her family tried to push in ahead of us from the right (she wouldn't go to the back of the line when told), but we kept cutting in front of her. We learned how to be pushy in Shanghai! Eventually, we made it through ANOTHER security line and then got to go into a huge elevator that took us to the 2nd floor. We walked all around and took pictures, so that was fun. However, it was also quite hot and VERY crowded there. The views were beautiful, though: you could see the Champs-Elysees and the Hotel des Invalides, in particular. People were playing in a fountain in this hot, 94 degree day, and I got to watch them through a telescope (even though the telescope cost 1 euro for just a 1 minute view). Eventually, we decided to walk down to the 1st floor. It was a bit of a hike, but we did get there. Here the view wasn't as great because everything was blocked with wires...but you could definitely see some things closer up. And on this platform they had such things as information about the structure and Parisian movies...so that was kind of cool. They also had a very expensive restaurant on this floor (well, in Paris, very expensive is kind of redundant), but it was too much for us. We took an elevator down to the ground floor and exited.

We bought some hot dogs for dinner, along with one Coke Zero that we shared (5 euro for one...yes I'm still complaining about the prices!). The hot dogs were more like huge french baguettes with two hot dogs in the each...and some ketchup. They were bigger than we anticipated...and actually pretty good. We sat on a bench to eat them and fed the pigeons baguette bread. Very Parisian. Before going home, we noticed that Line 6 was having delays; we couldn't believe it. The Metro trains here don't seem to be NEARLY as reliable as the ones in Shanghai, which were ALWAYS on time and fast. So we walked back, thinking we'd have to take an Uber. We stopped at a souvenir place first: Kerry and I miscommunicated and somehow the cashier shortchanged us 5 euro. We were miffed about this. Oddly enough, I noticed that the girl at the hot dog stand also shortchanged us 1 euro. Deliberate? Food for thought..pun intended. I don't know, but it was weird that both of these incidents happened the same day. Fortunately, when we got to Line 6, the subway train actually came pretty quickly, and we had no problems getting home. As usual, before going back to the room, we stopped at "our" convenience store for water and soda.

Tomorrow we plan to use our two-day museum passes and go back to the Musee d'Orsay.