Date: January 3rd, 2009
The Plan: See Paris, Drive to Frankfurt
We stayed in the La Defense area of Paris, and to get to the city center we had to take a bus to the La Defense Metro station and then take the Metro to the city center. The staff at the hotel were very helpful and told us what bus to take, what metro stations to get on and off.
Our first stop was Arc de Triomphe, we walked around the arc, marveled at the workmanship and took pictures (like every other tourist).
Arc de Triomph
Arc de Triomphe is at the western end of Champs Elysees. As we are not huge shoppers we just walked down Champs Elysees, only going into one cafe to get a pastry and coffee. Champs Elysees has been featured in so many movies, I remember seeing it in Devil Wears Prada. So like true cliche we held our hands and walked down Paris (it wasn’t as romantic as it sounds as Sherry was going off to take pictures, of course not pictures of me).
Champs-Élysées - I
Champs-Élysées - II
Building along Champs-Élysées
Arc de Triumph from Champs-Élysées
It was very cold that day, the windchill was worse, so that walking was making me all pissy (I know, I’m in Paris that should make me happy, but it was really really cold). So we passed through Place de la Concorde, the monuments around this area were breathtaking. Lot of history (though I was not aware of it then) is associated with Obelisk and the Churches around this area.
Place de la Concorde
Obelisk in Place de la Concorde
Place de la Concorde
The next stop was to The Louvre Museum, and to see all of the Louvre, it takes a person 2-3 days at least. We mainly spent time in Denon wing that housed Italian paintings (seeing Mona Lisa was on the top of the list).
The Louvre - Outside
The Louvre - from Inside
After we got out of the Louvre, we walked around Place du Carrousel. Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel is located in this square.
Arc de Triomph du Carrousel
Next stop was Eiffel Tower, so we walked to the Metro Station, asked the lady at the ticket window and she told that, we had to switch trains and told us what station to get off. We followed her direction and got off the correct station. By this time we both were very hungry and stopped at a small cafe and had lunch. Then we walked to Eiffel Tower, it was not as impressive as it was the night before.
Eiffel Tower - I
Eiffel Tower - II
Eiffel Tower - III
After spending some time walking around, we decided to head back to the hotel as we had to drive back to Frankfurt that evening. We got to the Metro station and waited for our train.
View of Paris City from the Metro Station
We got off our station and then took the bus numbers that the hotel staff had told us and we got off at the right station. We went to the hotel had some cappuccino and started our trip to Frankfurt. It was a 5 hour drive and we did not leave Paris till 5.00 PM. Driving to Frankfurt we knew there were no mountains and snow so we were not worried.
We got to drive on Autobahn, which Sherry was very excited about.
Temperature in Frankfurt
We finally got to the hotel around midnight, checked in, got all our luggage out as we had to pack. This was the last night in Europe, our flight was at 11.00 AM the next morning. So we did some packing (moved stuff around so we did not exceed the weight limit), and finally got to bed around 1.00AM. We both were sad that our trip had come to an end.
