Paris Trip - Day 6

Day 6 was a very long day, packed with Paris icons. We started it off with a short walk over to Notre Dame. We first waited in line to get inside the cathedral. The church is simply stunning inside. We sat there for a bit and took in the atmosphere, and we lit some candles for our friends and family back home. We then took a taxi over to the Louvre museum. The Louvre is a huge museum, and there's no way you can see everything in a day, so we narrowed our efforts on some of the must-sees. We saw the Venus de Milo, some of the Renaissance painters, and we of course fought the masses to get a glimpse of the Mona Lisa. I pushed my way to the front and got Ben a front row view of the famous painting. I'm not sure he understood why everyone was fussing over such a small painting, but he liked the painting, and he seemed interested in Da Vinci.
After fighting the masses in the Louvre we went outside and walked the long "Tuileries," which is like a long narrow park filled with statues and fountains. The Tuileries leads to the "Place de la Concorde," which is the center of a large boulevard. In the center is a large obelisk that was given to France by the Egyptian government in the 1800's. During the revolution the square was called "Place de la Revolution" and there was a large guillotine in the middle nicknamed "the Black Widow." (The kids thought all of this lore was interesting.) Anyway, the square has a lot of history.
In the evening we had dinner at a small bistro near the hotel called "La Rose de France." The staff was very nice and went out of their way to give us a nice meal. From there we took a taxi over to the Eiffel Tower. Typically, to get to the top you wait in line at the very bottom and wait for the elevator. But...at the time we got there the line for the elevator was extremely long. So instead...we bought the cheap tickets and "walked" up the 700 steps to the second floor. The second floor is that second platform you see in the pictures. At that point there is a second elevator that takes you all the way to the top, so that's what we ended up doing. The climb was a challenge, but the kids did great...and they were very excited to get to the top. Ben got very skiddish about being at the top, but he was also excited. The view of Paris at night from the top of the tower is breathtaking, as you can see in the pictures below. Then we rode the elevator all the way back down and watched the light display on the tower. On the top of every hour the illuminated tower "sparkles," which makes for a stunning scene. It was then at that point that a street vendor came up to us and tried to get us to buy a cheap Eiffel Tower miniature that lights up. We of course said no and started to walk away, but then Megan shouted out "Mommy! I want that!" The vendor called the miniature "bling bling," so as you can see...Megan eventually got her "bling bling."
Anyway, like I said before it was another long day, but we accomplished a lot so it was worth it.