Ada, Alice and Meredith in Paris, Cont'd

Thursday morning we got up with the idea of walking the Champs Elysees.  So we took the Metro once again to the Place de la Concord.  On one side of us was the Arc de Triumph and on the other, the Louvre. We headed toward the arc. The Champs Elysees is known as a great shopping street, but before that, it has a lot of monumental buildings like the Grand Palais.  It was built as part of the exhibition of 1900.  It has a glass roof and some startling statues on each corner.

We did quite a bit of shopping along the way, even stopping at the Paris version of Marks and Spencer (did I mention I love that store) and a children's place called Petite Bateau (small boat).  Great things in there!  We also stopped at a number of souvenir stores looking for a floaty pen that Ada collects.

We finally got to the Arc de Triumph.

We got in line to go up and then I chickened out because of all the steps.  Only later did we find out we could have taken the elevator for all but 46 of them.  By then, we were ready to move on.  In fact, we had decided to try to go up the Eiffel Tower. We saw this building on our way.

Completely covered with plants.  I wonder if that helps with utility bills.

Anyway, we got to the Tower and decided the line was too long and we would come back first thing in the morning and go up then.

We wanted to take the bus back since the Metro was so far away from the Tower.  And very near the bus stop were two very wise looking horses tied to a fence.

The carriage driver was there too, preparing the carriage for the horses.  It was a while before the bus came, but we just missed the horses being tied up to the carriage.

We went home and rested a bit then went out to dinner in our neighborhood.  There was an amazing number of people just hanging out by the canal.  We decided it was a "meat market" where young men and women find each other.  These pictures were taken just about 50 steps from our place.

We really like the restaurant for a number of reasons.  One, it was cheaper than we had been paying in the center of Paris and second, it had Wifi (the waiter (owner?) gave us the code).  Here is Ada watching Philadelphia TV on her mobile through slingbox in a sidewalk cafe in Paris!

We said we were going to go to bed early to get up early for the Eiffel Tower and then we stayed up too late talking.