France pt 2: Paris sightseeing

The photo on the left says it all. This is Jardin du Luxembourg, a park that Rick Steve's travel guide suggested as a place to unwind and let your children run free. Instead, it looked like Belmar beach on Labor Day weekend. The whole city was jam packed with tourists from the Eiffel Tower all the way over to Notre Dame cathedral. Although we stayed in Paris for three nights, we only toured Paris for one day.

Here are the highlights.


Arc de Triomphe (left) was just down the road from our hotel room so we got there around 8am before it was overrun by tourists. You could just see the Eiffel tower peaking out from the horizon. Next we met up with Dan's parents and sister and took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower. People told me "get ready to be impressed, the Eiffel tower is so huge". Well, I think people oversold it. I was expecting a tower the size of the Empire State Building, so it seemed kinda small. Still it was worth the hour wait and the €8 per person to take the elevator up to the second floor and have a look out over the city. Gianna really liked the "big tower" (center), so that made us happy. After the tower, we decided to walk to Luxembourg Garden, and see the Seine River and Notre Dame Cathedral (right) along the way. The walk was much longer than it looked on the map or sounded in Rick Steve's Paris guide, and we never got to the garden until 4pm. Along the way, we stopped at the Musée du Louvre and Tuileries park. The Tuileries were jam packed with people and we did not have any intention of waiting to go inside the Louvre. Instead, we had fun playing in the fountains outside.












In my opinion, if you have one city in Europe to go see, don't pick Paris. It's expensive, touristy, and dirty. Like I said, we slept in Paris for three nights but only toured one day. The other days we got out of the city to see some beautiful gardens, but you will have to wait until I post France pt. 3 to see those photos. The gardens were definitely the highlight of the trip! You can see the Paris album by clicking here.