Sunday, October 13, 2019: Paris, Notre Dame, Bastille, Hard Rock

No schedules to meet today. Today was completely open and it turned out to be one of the nicest days of the trip, weather wise. While yesterday we put in 8.75 miles, today we logged 12.2 miles. I had popped all my blisters from yesterday so my walking was a bit less painful today.

The plan was to walk over to Notre Dame to see how the reconstruction is going, then on to the memorial of the Bastille, then, if we were up to it, over to the Hard Rock Cafe. We got all of that accomplished and were back at the hotel by 1:30 pm.

For breakfast, we again went to the dungeon and had a good hot meal. I did a bit more exploring and found there is a bar and some lounge areas. For breakfast, they use the bar for the juice table.

We left the hotel about 9:00 am and walked toward Notre Dame. On the way, we swung by the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxembourg Gardens). The gardens were beautiful and the flowers were amazing.

Dahlias, a favorite of Maria's

We then continued on toward Notre Dame, passing one of the few MacDonald's along the way.



We stopped briefly at the Saint-Severin Church and lit a candle for Terri.

Then we were at Notre Dame. It was difficult to recognize it without the steeple. We could see the wooden supports beneath the flying buttresses. We assume so that they can repair the buttresses.

Next we were off to the Place de la Bastille. This is a square in Paris where the Bastille prison stood until the storming of the Bastille and its subsequent physical destruction between 14 July 1789 and 14 July 1790 during the French Revolution. No vestige of the prison remains. Now there is a memorial.

We were feeling pretty good, so we ventured on to find the Hard Rock.

We both had burgers, of course and I got some tee shirts for the kids. Then we headed back to the hotel.

There was a half marathon going on as we walked by.

When we returned to the hotel, we around 1:30 pm, our room had not yet been "refreshed", so we sat down on the patio for the next three hours or so. They were extremely busy with guests checking out.

We decided to take in the Eiffel Tower after dark. They turn on the lights at sunset every day and they stay on until 1:00 am. Today, sunset is at 7:04 pm so we headed that direction about 6:30 pm. We stopped at a sushi place for dinner.

We ordered a boat to share. It was OK.

When we got to the tower, around 7:30 pm, it was lit. For five minutes every hour on the hour, they have a light show so we hung around until to see the one at 8:00 pm. During our wait, we walked the whole perimeter of the tower to see where the best observation point would be.

We finally settled here.

At 8:00 pm the show started.

This little hike back over to the tower added about 4 miles to today's total mileage. My feet are sore now.

Our flight leaves CDG at 12:25 pm tomorrow so we should be able to have a good breakfast at the hotel and leave for the airport around 9:00 am. Stephen wants to see if we can get the driver to stop at the Arc de Triomphe for a quick photo.