Paris, Part III

This was, without a doubt, our heaviest walking day. And what better way to start out a day of walking than with...

Soldes!!

This means sales. Sales, sales, sales. SALES EVERYWHERE, and in every store in Paris. Or rather, all over France. Apparently, twice every year, clothes get marked down up to 50%-75% OFF!

Let me just tell ya: It was a free-for-all. I promised myself I wasn't going to buy anything while abroad (clothes-wise) but I just couldn't help myself. I bought new jeans, which I needed, and an amazing jacket, all of which I'm constantly wearing, so it was worth the "investment." It was so inexpensive, I'd hardly call it that, but H&M was quite a cheap place to shop, let me tell ya.

The Eiffel Tower

From shopping, we took the Metro down to the train station for Jessie and Kailey to make ticket purchases and from there we navigated ourselves towards the Eiffel Tower. This was rather difficult. Seeing as how the Tower is so big, it actually seems much closer than it is when you're looking at it over buildings.

We walked forever, it felt like. Through several arrondissements. This is a picture of it from near the Notre Dame, over-looking the Seine. You may not be able to tell, but seriously: it is a very very very long ways away.

Eventually, we made it there.

We decided it would be appropriate to take fancy-shmancy pictures of ourselves in front of it. And of it, in general.

It was really enjoyable to just sit on the grass and look at it for a while. It really is an amazing thing to see in person. I still felt as though it had been super-imposed, like it wasn't quite real. Crazy.

The weird thing was when we finally went up to it, the amount of people waiting in line to pay to go up to the top was... well... insane. We were really lucky that we approached the Tower from the backside in the park, because there were thousands of people on the other side, in tour buses, with cameras, lining the pavement, all the way into the distance. I didn't take a picture of it, 'cause, well, I was lazy.

L'Arc de Triomphe

To be honest, we basically just walked to it (more walking) and then walked around it. I was so tired by that time, and once again wanted to avoid the hoards of people paying just to go inside.

It was worth a picture though.

We parted ways with Kailey, and having walked as much as we did and wanted to save money, Jess and I decided to call it a day and head back to the hostel, grab some food, and some banoffee ice cream from Haagan Daaz for Jessie, of course (which they don't even have in the States). She's obsessed.

But who wouldn't be?

One day to go...