With a Disney hangover, we set out to the Eiffel Tower as soon as we awoke. The previous night, we planned to move to another hotel that was closer to central Paris and less costly. We checked out of the hotel, having lived out of a bag containing only my computer and power cord for two days. It was pretty fun cruising into a hotel for a few days with no luggage. At the Tower, we elected to ride the elevator to the top. I had walked the stairs last year and we were on a time crunch so we took the lazy route. At the top, Jason declared that he wanted to live in the apartment at the top. We agree it was probably one of the coolest places to live when Mr. Eiffel lived there.

After the Tower, ate lunch in Kebab Hawkers Alley at a small Asian lunch spot. It was very inexpensive, and there was a lot of it, two key elements to surviving in the money vacuum that is Paris. After lunch, we finally collected our bags from Gare de Lyon and headed to our new hotel. Once checked in, we headed back out to see the Arc de Triomphe. Last year, I was too tired to walk to the top but we did it this year and the view was fantastic. I had expected the view to be similar to the lower level of the Eiffel Tower, but it is completely different. It highlights the grandeur of the Champs Elysees and seeing the Eiffel Tower from a different perspective was nothing short of magical.

After the Arc, we ate a sit down dinner at a horrible tourist oriented restaurant. The bill wasn’t too bad, but the food was awful. Dinner was done around 11:00 PM and we headed back to the hotel to grab a few things and a map. We intended to see Paris at night and we needed to know where we were going. We went to a bar I walked by last year called Footsie. The name is a play on the London FTSE stock exchange. Drink prices change every 3 minutes based on patrons purchasing them. There are reader boards with the prices. Overall, the concept is beyond cool but their execution causes the idea to fall short. The way they have it set up, drink prices really do not change and without that aspect working for them, the bar is fairly boring. I can see something similar working in the U.S. with a few tweaks.

After Footsie, we scrambled to get to the Metro before it closed at 1. We went to a seedy area of Paris called Pigalle, where there were a ton of neon signs advertising non-family-oriented shows. With the Metro closed, we had to walk back to the hotel. After getting lost several times, we got back to our beds around 5 AM. We’ve been a little tired all day J.

Day 4 post to immediately follow.