Today was our first great outing! We started the day with the normal waking up around 10:00am, taking our time to leave the house. Using the subway we headed over to the Arc de Triomphe as our first major tourist spot. The Arc was just as impressive as I thought it would be. Natalie and I grabbed some tickets for admission and headed to the top. Only 218 steps later, we arrived at the indoor, top exhibit featuring models of the Arc and related statues. A few more steps later, we were treated to an amazing view of the Champs-Élysées.
After the Arc, we caught the subway again and headed for the Eiffel Tower. The trip was easy enough, but once you got off the subway you were bombarded with street peddlers offering you rare, once-in-lifetime key chains of the Tower. In case you missed the rare deal, look no further than two feet away and you find the same item for a different price. The Tower was just as large and magnificent as I thought it would be. The lines to enter the tower, on the other hand, were larger and much more impressive than I thought. The lines were crazy, maybe three hours later you had a chance to enter (and that was for the stairs line). Needless to say, we opted to walk around the garden and take a few pictures enjoying the wonderful weather we had.
After some lunch at a tourist restaurant, which was way over priced and not the greatest food, we headed back along the Champs-Elysees to the Place de la Concorde. This is the famous location for the guillotine during the French Revolution. The same guillotine that took the heads of much of the French aristocracy including Louis XVI in 1793. We arrived at the place just before sunset, so naturally we were treated to the best possible light and skyline conditions for pictures.
