The past two days, I've been pretty terrible at waking up at a reasonable hour -- both days I had good intentions to get up early, and both days I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep. Anyways, I spent yesterday making some travel plans for the end of February, and then I went to swimming last night -- not too exciting of a day! But it was nice to have some time to breathe.
Today, I woke up around 10:30 (I'm continually amazed at how late I can sleep here...), and had a quick breakfast. Luckily, the weather was cooperating and there wasn't a cloud in the sky and so I made up my mind to go up the Eiffel Tower. It took all of 5 minutes to walk over, and at first it looked like the line was really long -- but that was only to take the elevator. I opted to take the stairs and so I only had about a 5 minute wait (if that). I took the stairs up to the first floor which was already pretty impressive, and then from there took the stairs up to the second floor. Unfortunately, the top top was closed today because of work they were doing up there, but it costs an extra 10 euros to go all the way up anyways, and so I just decided to go ahead and go today! I can contemplate if I want to go back or not.
The view, even from the 2nd floor, was pretty spectacular. It was fun to be able to walk all the way around and see Paris from all directions. It was also pretty cool to do it after I already have a good sense of the city and so I know what I'm looking at. But now I can check that off my list! I probably won't go back up to the very top -- I'm sure it would be cool, but I think I could a pretty good view from where I was.
I came back home for lunch with Marilu and her mother -- I had a piece of leftover tomato, pesto, and ricotta quiche that we had had for dinner the other night -- it was absolutely delicious. And for dessert I had one of the chocolate chip madeleines that I made yesterday -- also not too bad if I may say so!
I took the metro to Trocadero to meet my friends Harry and Luke who I persuaded to take part in my day of cultural activities. We decided on the Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine -- which for students under 26 is free! (Well, for the permanent collections). I had been once before to see the Hotel Particulier exhibit for my architecture class last semester -- but hadn't been to the other part. It was really interesting -- basically it's just filled with all of these molds/replicas of incredible structures from all over France. It's so cool. Then, there's more modern architecture upstairs -- but it's a really interesting museum. Not to mention there's a fantastic view out of the windows on the Eiffel Tower...
The rest of my afternoon was relatively uneventful -- relaxed a bit, swam but was feeling particularly unmotivated, etc.
Hard to choose pictures from today -- I got so many great ones from my climb up the Eiffel Tower! Here are a few -- they don't quite do it justice though....
Bon weekend a tout le monde et a bientot!
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