Part II will be up tomorrow, I think. I hope anyway….
Well, not quite. Obviously. I spend more time reading. Sleeping. Setting up my new 2-in-1 tablet / laptop, which was a sort of Christmas / end of the year present from me to me. The old(er) one just wasn’t up to what I wanted to use it for. Tomorrow I’ll plan an outing with the other “present” I gave myself: a new proper zoom lens for my camera. I also spent some time making plans for my trip to Scotland next September, which in a way of course will be another travelling fangirl stint. But it will also so much more before that. But now back to Paris.
We left the Louvre after a few hours once we found an exit. No kidding. We came out to lovely blue sky.
While I was trying to snap a few photos my camera battery ran out and I realized I had left my extra charged camera batteries in the hotel. I guess the lack of sleep, exhaustion and excess of sensory input in the museum led to me having a tiny meltdown. I guess because my battery had obviously also run out. I managed to handle it quite well though, I think. Some deep breath, some “me-time” while my friend was looking for yet another gig-buddy we had made plans to meet up with. After that tiny – internal – meltdown I then just went with the flow, because there was nothing, I could do about it. I had to make do with my phone camera for the rest of the day and that was fine as well. I’ve come a long way. Go me!
We (friend, gig-buddy & gig-buddy’s friend) strolled around for a bit looking for place to have lunch before they were heading on to the next stop on their tour. Even so many years in – this fandom – I sometimes still marvel about how many people I’ve met and stayed on friendly terms with. I haven’t seen this one since 2018 (!! mostly due to the pandemic of course) and it was so nice to catch up for a bit.
The rest of the day we spent walking across the Seine…
…and across the Île de la Cité, the central island. With of course Notre Dame as the main interest of ours. It was about 3 weeks before the official re-opening and it still looked (and probably looks) not quite finished on the outside. All the more reason to go back at some point soon.
We kept strolling further along on the island, had coffee and crepes someplace and then went to check off another item of the “must see” list. Champs-Élysées and of course Arc de Triomphe.
We took the metro to our final destination / highlight, but got off one stop too early, which meant more walking. I don’t really want to moan, but we walked quite a bit on that day.
That final highlight: Taking the elevator up the Eiffel Tower. At night. Which was as amazing as it sounds and it was the moment I got a tiny bit mad at myself for forgetting to bring the extra batteries. My phone camera works ok at night, but not really well. Another reason to come back, though I doubt I’ll do the elevator thing once again. It was cool, but also very crowded and it took soooo long to get up. You’re taking various elevators in fact. It was a great experience. But once in a lifetime, I think. I will definitely come back for more photos from the ground though.
After that we … yes, walked to the closest metro stop on our line, which was not as close as we had liked, but nothing we could do about that. When we finally got back to our hotel I ended up with 27.00o steps (~ 21,5 km) on my Garmin watch. It was worth it though and I’ll definitely be back. Some day (soon).
