We started off Sunday with breakfast at a street cafe called Le Beauville on the Champs Elysees. We had bread, toast, croissants and juice, plus the best hot chocolate in the world ever (and I’m not exaggerating).
After that, we walked down Av. George V to Pont de l’Alma and over the bridge to the Tour Eiffel. We took a long way around to get out of the (already quite warm) sun and approached the tower through Champs du Mars. We took lots of photos from a distance then sat underneath it and took some more. It was too busy to actually go up though which was a shame.
Similarly the queue for the Batobus – the only hop-on-hop-off boat tour on the Seine – was too long for us to bother with that: we would have spent half of the afternoon queuing. Instead, we crossed back to the right bank of the river and walked up to Pont de l’Alma again – and I made Mum photograph me dancing at the entrance to the tunnel :). After my little jig, we went on a Bateau Mouches cruise, which was a bargain at just E7 each. It took an hour and a half in total, going down past Notre Dame and Ile de Saint Louis and back passed the Tour Eiffel again.
After that, we walked back to the small garden area near the Grand and Petit Palais where we had sat the day before. After a rest and a phone call home, we walked back up the Champs Elysees. We wanted to find a little patissere to pick up some cakes but because by this point it was quite late afternoon, on a Sunday, that was also a bank holiday, we didn’t have much luck. We went back to the hotel and ordered drinks from room service instead.
We couldn’t decide what to do for dinner. We thought about eating at the hotel, to save our strength for a last night-time wander but the restaurant was worringly deserted so we abandoned the plan at the last minute. We walked back to the Champs Elysees to find a random restaurant and after looking at a few random tourist traps, we settled on L’Appart, just up a little side street.
Really, we could not have been more lucky: the food was amazing. Mum started with a cucumber gazpacho with a Curacao shot (which seemed strange but she said was very tasty) and I had strips of aubergine with sundried tomato and olive pesto, with a rocket salad. For our main meals, Mum had salmon with filo wrapped crispy veg (ie, spring rolls) and I had lamb with chorizo, on a really tasty mash base. It was more expensive than Finzi, costing about E66 in total but it was really excellent.
Afterwards, we walked down rue Pierre Charron to Av. George V, then back to our favourite haunt by now, Pont de l’Alma. (No pun intended re: haunting Pont de l’Alma.) I wanted to see the Tour Eiffel twinkling, as it does between each hour, from the hour until ten past, and it was worth the sore feet to see it. We got chatting to a woman from London who had lived in Paris for a couple of years. We chatted for about an hour then walked back to the hotel up Av. George V and Rue Balzac.
Oh, my little feet were grateful when they were freed from their leather-booted prison and allowed to roam free on a bed!
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