And here we are, at the last an final post about our mother daughter trip to Paris. It was a wonderful trip, the first of many annual adventures in what is now dubbed "The Stokley Girls Adventure Series." We haven't decided where we will go next year, but we're leaning toward Italy or Spain.
We ended our last day in Paris with what turned out to be a leisurely afternoon in the park with plans to go up to the the second landing of the Eiffel tower that evening.
The first thing we did was ride the ferris wheel in the carnival at the Tuileries garden. We saw Paris from a different angle, and it was like a preview for the Eiffel tower evening we had planned.
We then walked over to this little fountain pond where vendors rent out little wooden sail boats to kids and they push them around in the water with sticks. It reminded us of Will (the nephew and grandson) and we imagined him standing at the edge of the fountain pointing and saying, "boat! sail boat!" in the cute little way he says it.
As the evening drew near, so did our Eiffel tower "appointment" with the second landing. We got there thirty minutes early, and that was probably our big mistake. It gave me time to realize how crowded it was, around the bottom of the tower and up on the landings, and that if I was going to get a whiff of stinky people, this was going to be the place. I also realized that if I was up there, on the Eiffel tower, and wanted to get down, there was not going to be any urgency associated with that process.
So we didn't do it. It's my fault. Instead, we did the boat tour again, which is what we did on the first night. But it was different this time. The first night, it was dark and we couldn't really see anything and the things we could see, we didn't know what they were yet. But we were in Paris! We were excited. The last night, it wasn't dark yet, so we could see everything around us, we knew what the buildings were, noticed when we passed the museums we went to. They were both very different boat rides.
Afterwards, we sat on the patio of a little boat cafe and waited to watch the Eiffel tower sparkle again. But really, that tower is most beautiful from a distance I think, when you've had a little wine and you catch glimpses of it through the trees while riding in the back seat of a taxi listening to Tracy Chapman.
We got back to the hotel that night, and guess what?
We ate burgers. At the hotel. On our last night in Paris. But they we so good. And I ate all of those fries with the two tiny ketchup bottles I was given and a glass of pinot noir. And I ate them with my fingers, not a fork. And I got ketchup on my face several times. And it was perfect.
1 comments:
- Erica said...
- Good ending. :-) Love that picture of the tower. I'll have to take a boat tour the next time I go to Paris, I think.
- August 27, 2010 6:44 AM
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