Time to Go Home

What a wonderfully long, tiring and fruitful day we had today! To start off, we're both not feeling well but despite that, it's our last day and we're not going to lie around our room.

First up, our 5 hour bus & boat tour of Paris. After Clay got us up, hustled us out of the hotel so we could be at the bus boarding place in plenty of time to get an upper decker seat, we were a bit early. Ahhh, we spy a Starbucks and duck in to grab a mocha and croissant. But then it's rush, rush again and drat, I slop some chocolate onto my blouse, khaki pants and sunglasses! That put me in a great mood but we had to get to the bus tour place which we did (it takes about a 10 min. hike from our hotel if we didn't stop for anything). Then, we wait, wait, and wait some more. And when we did get into a European line (a European line is when everybody rushes the front of the line all at the same time whether you're waiting in a single line or not), we all ended up top anyway because the bus was half full.

Okay, then we're off on our tour which turned out to be a bust. Just driving in circles around the city with a pre-taped voice in a zillion languages pointing out this building and that statue. It turned out that almost everything worth a photo was on the opposite side of the bus. When we got to the place where the boat was, we jumped ship or in this case, bus, and took off on our own. That's when the day really took a turn for the better.

We caught a cab and went to visit the Notre Dame Cathedral. Don't laugh but I thought it was going to be like the chapel at Notre Dame University which is absolutely gorgeous. The real deal is beautiful but after visiting many cathedrals and basilicas, it really looked like many of the others, just bigger. But it's still nice to say we've been there.

After we returned to the hotel, Clay confessed he wasn't feeling all that well. Being the trooper that he is, though, we decided to cancel our dinner in the Eiffel Tower (9 p.m. reservations) and see if we couldn't explore the Champs Elysee and get a closer look at the Arc de Triumph. Turns out after taking a cab to the Arc, we arrived in time to see the military honor guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. After figuring out how to cross that crazy traffic circle around the Arc (it's a tunnel but you have to really look for it), we bought what appeared to be tickets to visit it. Also turns out it's a charge to climb the Arc but there's no charge just to visit. Clay did the math and figured it wasn't really all that bad of a climb (not like the Statue of Liberty) so up we went.

I have to tell you that it may not have been as many steps as Ms. Liberty but it was still a lot of steps! Even Clay was beginning to regret this when I looked up to see the exit just a few more steps up. Hooray! The view was spectacular and reminded me of San Francisco with all the cathedrals and hills in the distance, but France just has a lot more greenery and palaces. C'est la vie.

We decided to see if we could pick up a few items walking down the Champs Elysees. Along the way, we stopped for a drink and to people watch along the Boulevard. I can check another thing off my Bucket List. It was so much fun! We continued to walk and decided to walk back to the hotel. Just before we got there, we remembered a Japanese restaurant and, wanting some comfort food instead of the rich food we'd been eating for almost 2 weeks solid, we found it and stopped in. It was empty except for us and was run by Chinese but the food was okay and it was good to eat simple again.

Finally, we got back to our room and decided to use the rest of our rapidly depleting energy to pack what we could since the morning would come soon enough. Ah, it's a good feeling to know we are heading back home!