An afternoon at la Tour Eiffel et l'école militaire

Woke up at noon and got going around 2. Taylor and I headed over to the local boulangerie for a fresh baguette with the intention of heading over the Tour Eiffel for a picnic with 2 other friends. Except when we walked over to the local fromagère, we noticed that he, like many other stores in Paris, was closed on Sunday. We thought that the Monoprix would be open, so we walked down there, but it was closed, too. When we were looking at the city map to figure out where to head next, out of nowhere came a flash mob of roller-bladers folled by ambulences and police men. There must have been 3,000 of them!

In fact there were about 3,000, or so the man who explained the situation to us estimated. He told us that the group sometimes reaches 10,000 bladers and that they regularly skate from the Bastille all around Paris every Sunday. Apparently the French police has a special division for police officers on roller-blades and they, along with ambulances, and police vehicles, escort this massive group every week. We were so excited and decided that we would have to try this before leaving Paris.

We hopped on the subway, having already eaten our baguette (oops!), and headed toward the Tour Eiffel. When we got off the subway, it was already in plain sight -- a massive beast sticking out of the trees. We let out our usual girlish screams before preceding to the tower's base.

It was a beautiful day in Paris, and so we headed out the lawn to enjoy the sun and sights. On our way, however, we were bombarded by about 30 Parisians dressed in what seemed to be body armour. They were passing out nerf guns and pulled us over, asking if we wanted to join in their game. I decided to stay with our bags and take photos but encouraged Taylor to take part in the fun! She jumped right in and seemed to have a blast! Nerf guns under the Eiffel Tower? Only in Paris.

We finally met up with the 2 other girls and hung out for a while at the park just in front of the tower. We were slightly uncomfortable with the sheer number of couples publicly displaying their affection (and perhaps procreating? sometimes it looked that intense), but we understood that this was a beautiful day in Paris and romance was in the air -- there were even 4 couples getting married.

At the end of the day, we saw a group of cyclists coming into the lawn who said that they just finished a charity ride all the way from London. Two of them were on a bicycle-built-for-two and came dressed as batman and robin. We congratulated them as they popped open a bottle of champagne in front of the Tower.

The evening came to a close as Taylor and I returned to our apt. and cooked up some dinner (spaghetti with meat and tomatoes in olive oil, and peas on the side). For dessert: Ben and Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough. A day well spent with no money spent.

Total Damages:

0,00 EUR