Luke in Paris

Woke up after a pretty bad sleep, was sharing the bed with Aidan. Had brekky and got dressed. Was a max temperature today of 4 degrees. At 9:30 we set out to meet our walking tour guide, a dude called Paul (who looked like Jason Momoa) and his wife Paula. We started at the Notre Dame cathedral, which has a fascinating history surviving through kings, religions, revolutions, abandonment, rebuilding and wars. It was black until about 2000 when they cleaned it all up. 

Also, all around everywhere were fully armed French guards who were a bit unnerving. Paul showed us a spot on the ground where apparently the number of times you turn around on top of it is the number of times you will return to Paris. We then walked to a flower market named after Queen Elizabeth II, and saw a grand old chapel which apparently had crazy stain glass windows inside it. (UPDATE we went inside and had a look the next day-was unbelievable!) We heard about King Louis VII who thought he had healing powers, and also the traditional Christmas markets that take place. I also spotted an extremely creepy suss dude in a trench coat following our group - pick pocket alert. We walked along some famous bridges including the bridge from the “kiss racing” segment Hamish and Andy did, and also the famous “Lock Bridge”. It used to have all the padlocks for love on it, until it started falling apart and it was found that it had 42 tonnes of locks on it. Now it just has plexiglass instead.

We went to outside the Louvre with its’ famous glass pyramid which has a ridiculous amount of artefacts in it. It used to be a palace for King Louis XIV (the Versailles man). Turns out Louis XIV also thought he was a sun god and he dressed in golden leotards. We walked to the massive Egyptian obelisk which was in the middle of a roundabout/town square thing, which is the obelisk out of the Matthew Reilly book ‘Seven Ancient Wonders’-so cool! Turns out it was also the place where all the executions in the revolution using the guillotine took place, where thousands of people were chopped in an extremely short time. It was basically a free for all with heads flying everywhere for a few years there. We then saw the underpass where Diana died, and also a big statue of Winston Churchill. Out the front of the army hospital/war museum/Napoleon’s grave, Paul told us the captivating, dramatic, thrilling tale of the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

Napoleon came to power out of the ashes of the revolution, crowned himself Emperor, was a champion for the people, charismatic and eccentric and ambitious, was a brilliant army general, transformed the army into the best fighters in all of Europe, expanded the French Empire all the way to Russia and Egypt, was exiled once but escaped, came back and took power in France again, grew the Empire again, got beaten at Waterloo, exiled a 2^nd time, and then died in exile. What a man!

We finished the tour at the Eiffel tower which was made in 1899, almost destroyed, and is now one of the most recognisable buildings in the world. It was a fantastic tour, so we said goodbye to Paul and then went and got baguettes for lunch. I had an amazing tuna salad one. We then walked through some Christmas markets and made our way to the Eiffel tower. We passed through a multitude of security checks all under the watchful eye of the French military, and suddenly we were there under the tower. It was unbelievably big-huge actually. It was strange to actually be at such an iconic place. We bought tickets to go up-Ethan and Mum got elevator tickets and the rest of us took the stairs, all 700ish of them. It was lots of fun but still pretty tiring, and it astounded me how high we got so quickly. 

Once we got to the 2^nd level the view was awesome-360 degrees of the city of Paris. It was dusk as we were up there, and understandably took loads of photos! It was pretty chilly as well. Max and I freaked Aidan out by standing on a plexiglass section on the floor that you could see through straight 100 meters-ish straight to the ground.

After about 40min we climbed down and walked across the road, past heaps of tacky street seller people. We got heaps more good shots of the tower, especially as it became night time. We saw another dog like the terrifying one in Hong Kong, except this one was friendly. By now it was dark and the tower was all lit up which was beautiful, so we decided to walk all the way home. 

We walked along the Seine the majority of the way home, and it was just us which was pretty special. We found a 100m track and also a wall climbing thing on the path that the river rescue people use for training or something. We made our way back past the Louve and back home, stopping at the supermarket on the way to get microwavables and soup for dinner. Overall the walk back home took about an hour-we were exhausted! We had dinner and then went to bed.