Paris Day 5 - EIFFEL TOWER

Bonjour! Today we head for the metro stop Nation (I believe this is the route we took) to walk to the 7th arr and the most famous symbol of Paris - the Eiffel Tower. Walking the grounds on this gorgeous day we see families, groups of tourists and other couples enjoying the area below the tower and the adjacent Parc du Champ de Mars. In typical Paris fashion many locals are using the park area as extensions of their homes: setting up for a picnic, reading,children playing and solitary figures simply sitting and relaxing with their own thoughts. Since most Parisians don't have yards like we do they use the plentiful parks and they use them often. It seems to us that they are more likely to be outdoors than the typical American and they have the added benefit of actually enjoying these spaces not spending precious time weeding and mowing and watering etc!(Don't get me wrong, I love to garden). This is one way, among many, that the French embrace joie de vivre. We don't bother with going to the top of the tower, long lines and it just doesn't interest us. Instead we stroll back to Blvd Grenelle for lunch at a cafe, sitting outside in the sunshine, and enjoy a delicious asparagus soup and caesar salad while partaking in one of our favorite Parisian pastimes: people watching. Fabulous. Afterward we hop a double decker bus and meet a brother-sister combo who now reside in England but were raised in France. The bus is a great way to see the city. Heading back to the 5th and our hotel for a break and to regroup. We spend the rest of our day in the Latin Quarter: the Pantheon area in particular; we wander and take a few photos in "our" area of the city. Now begins the portion of our trip that requires the most patience - the air traffic controllers are on strike! We are scheduled to fly to Beziers in the south of France tomorrow morning but have received an email from Ryanair that the flight is cancelled. The email does not explain the reason for the cancellation and so we book another flight, this one to Rome - we'll simply arrive a few days early and surprise our daughter who is there on a school trip. Ehhhh, not so fast. The domino effect is that the next morning we are halfway to the airport when we realize the reason behind the cancellation and that we won't be flying anywhere!! Back to our hotel, now full, but the great staff gets us a room (the last one available) a few blocks away. Well, there are worse places to be stuck than in Paris - we will make the most of this no matter what! Tomorrow we'll go the the Marais. xo, La