Notre Dame et l'Arc de Triomphe

We got a fairly early start on Monday morning, but as it turns out, it wasn’t quite early enough. Mom and I got to Notre Dame around 10:00 to climb the towers, because they open at 10:00, but the line was already really long…only later would we discover how long.

While waiting in line, we were entertained, if you could call it that, by a guy dressed like Quasimodo and his accomplice who was dressed like a fighter pilot with a red clown nose. They would randomly pop up behind people and scare them or mimic them or just creep them out, and then after half an hour or so, they’d stop, take a bow, and collect money from everyone in line. Even though the clown nose guy came specifically up to me trying to ask for money, I refused. I always feel a little guilty about not giving money to the plethora of entertainers, musicians, gypsies, homeless people, etc. in Paris, but I have to keep reminding myself that they are consciously choosing to make this their profession because it’s fairly lucrative for them.

Anywho, mom and I waited in line to climb the towers for almost 2 hours…but I felt like it was totally worth it. It kept trying to rain and sprinkled a few times while we were in line, but it really started to rain just as we popped inside the tower, so we didn’t really get wet at all. The climb itself was like a ridiculous Stairmaster that spiraled forever upwards, but the views from in between the two towers were just stunning, and the views from the top of the tower were even more amazing. And the higher up we got, the narrower the stairs got. There were actually points at which Mom had trouble fitting her foot on the widest part of the stairs!

We also got a chance to go inside the bell tower, which was really cool. I didn’t realize that the insides of the two towers are lined with wooden beams so that (a) the bell doesn’t crack the stone towers and (b) the sound travels better down into the rest of the cathedral.

After having waited in line for hours and then climbed the towers and toured around at the top, we were fairly hungry, so we wandered down a side street and ended up at a cute little café…just before it started to rain again. Talk about more perfect timing! And the waiter gave me the nicest compliment that just absolutely made my day. We had a brief conversation about where we wanted to sit (inside because I was afraid of getting wet) before he came to our table to take our order. Somewhere between when we sat down and when he took our order, he stopped talking, looked at me, and said, “Wait, where are you from?” and when I responded that I was American, he said, “Really? I thought that you were Parisian at first!” Teehee  Obviously, I have a bit of an accent that eventually gave away that I wasn’t French, but hey, I’ll take that compliment!!! He really seemed to enjoy the fact that I wasn’t a stupid American tourist, and we chatted for awhile about how most Americans don’t speak French, how I was studying French at my American university, and then somehow, oddly enough, we got on the topic of the economic crisis and Michael Jackson’s death…We concluded this conversation with him stating that now that Michael Jackson had died, there was nothing good left in America. I retorted that I was left, and he laughed and complimented my comeback. Yay for speaking French with French people!

Since there are a lot of gift stores right near Notre Dame, mom went into a few of them and got some gifties for her friends before we headed back to tour the inside of the cathedral. It was gorgeous, awe-inspiring, and crowded of course, and I took a lot of pictures.

Next on our agenda was the Arc de Triomphe. We took the metro from Notre Dame to the top of the Champs-Elysees because it was my intent to shop our way up to the Arc and then shop our way back. My plan mostly worked. We did shop our way up the left side of the Champs-Elysees and stopped into some really cool stores, including Louis Vuitton and Lancel, as well as stared in the windows of Cartier, but mom ended up being too tired to make it all the way back down the other side of the road, so we hopped on the metro stop halfway down the other side.

I’ve been to the Arc de Triomphe twice before, but I’ve never had a chance to climb it. Fortunately, our Paris Museum Pass (Carte Musée et Monuments in French) gave us priority access, so we didn’t have to wait in line at all. Apparently Monday was the day of spiral staircases, because the inside of the Arc had them too! They were not nearly as narrow or harrowing as the ones at Notre Dame, though, which was great, especially for mom. Inside the top of the Arc was a neat display about the Arc’s history and its transformation over the years. Mom also bought a few cheesy souvenirs (e.g. Eiffel Tower eraser lol) before we climbed up yet another spiral staircase to the top of the Arc. The views were just spectacular. I loved how you could look down the Champs-Elysées as well as down all the other streets surrounding the Arc. There were also perfect views of Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides, and the Grande Arche de la Défense.

Mom and I headed back towards our hotel, took a brief sieste, and then headed out to dinner. We ended up at a café/brasserie near our hotel that was much nicer than we expected. Our table was on the second floor in an alcove overlooking the street, which was really cool. We both ordered salmon from the prix fixe menu, but mom got a mozzarella and tomato entrée with hers while I got a crème brûlée dessert. It was so rich and fabulous. I’ve actually never had a crème brûlée before, and I think that Paris was a pretty decent place to start.