Europe Day 2 – August 21

35 Celsius and Sunny

This is the second of twenty posts documenting Margaret-Ann and John’s 2011 trip to Europe.

Margaret-Ann and John arrived for breakfast at the hotel and were surprised with roses and a private dinning area, arranged by Barbara and Rudi to celebrate Margaret-Ann and John’s 40th wedding anniversary (and John’s 62nd birthday, as well) – a very nice touch! After a hearty meal (you wouldn’t believe how many baguettes Barbara can eat for breakfast), Margaret-Ann and John placed the roses in a vase in their room then joined Barbara and Rudi for the day’s adventures:

• Walked to Place des Vosges, Paris’s oldest square, and the gardens of the Hôtel de Bethune-Sully.
• Crossed the Seine and walked around Île St-Louis, then on to Île de la Cité and the magnificent Notre Dame Cathedral.
• Rode les Cars Rouges, the hop-on-hop-off tour bus, to Trocadero, then walked by the Palais de Chaillot and through the Jardins de Trocadero before crossing the Seine on Pont d'Iéna to the base of the Tour Eiffel.
• The walk east from the Tour Eiffel through the Champ de Mars, formerly used as drilling and marching grounds by the French military, was interrupted by local police and gendarmes running through the grounds looking for protesters/terrorists (some molotov cocktails, which the group thought were ceremonial cannon fire, were earlier thrown in a traffic circle on the grounds).
• Walked by the École Militaire (Royal Military Academy) at the east end of the Champ de Mars and through the Hôtel des Invalides.
• Stopped for ice cream at Pavillion de la Fontain in the Jardin du Luxembourg, the second largest public park in Paris.
• Took the metro back to the hotel to freshen up, then headed out to the Centre Georges Pompidou (a vast public library,and the largest museum for modern art in Europe)
• Dined at le Petit Boulevard on Chemin Rambouteau and on the way back to the hotel passed the Tour Saint-Jacques and Hôtel de Ville (Paris City Hall).

And so ended day two of Margaret-Ann and John’s 2011 European trip. Keep checking the blog for more postings of this trip.

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