L'Open Tour and the other Tour

L'Open Tour is one of the bus ride providers in Paris, and as I have been such a strong advocate of riding the bus to see the sights in London, I thought it would be worthwhile to do the same in Paris. I have to say that the verdict is still out on that - the experience is a little different, and so I'm not certain that I would do the bus in Paris. Nonetheless, the L'Open Tour is what we did on the third day.

We started by heading out to Place St. Michel and finding the nearest stop, and then getting on the bus. Perhaps part of my problem with the buses in Paris was that Michelle and I seemed to be having difficulty finding any bus that would play the English commentary without ten zillion tons of static. The time or two that we did, it was Dalton who fussed so much about wanting to listen to it that in the end, he was the one listening to the headphones, while Mich and I just sat and watched the city go by. So we rode around by the Grand Palais, the Petit Palais, Place de la Concorde, and several other Parisian landmarks before stopping for lunch near La Madeleine. We went down the street and found a little shop that had sandwiches and the like, and bought Dalton a pizza, while the rest of us had baguette sandwiches.

After lunch, we went back up and got on another L'Open Tour bus. The L'Open Tour has four lines, but quite honestly, it could probably consolidate down to two, or maybe one. We got on the line which goes by the Basilique Sacre-Coeur, and ending up riding around twice, since both the kids fell asleep and we didn't want to wake them. I will say that of everything I saw in Paris, the areas we rode through on that bus were the least exciting - and the most "tourist trap" like. The Basilica is neat, but for me, there were other things which I would see first - probably the best thing about it is the views over the rest of the city.

Having been to the Sacre-Coeur, we finally headed over to the "other Tour", as I call it above - the Tour Eiffel (that's Eiffel Tower for all you non-French speakers), but not before stopping off at McDonald's for Dalton and Maggie. The Eiffel Tower was the highlight of our visit for Dalton. I'm not sure about Maggie ...she keeps saying she liked it all. The lines to get to the top were long - and it was six o'clock at night when we got there. However, you can also take the stairs to the second floor, and so that's what we did, walking up 700 steps to the second level. We did stop and rest on the first floor, which is a mere 200 - some odd steps.

At night, the Tower is lit for the first ten minutes of each hour - so when it was close to nine, we started to head back down. Dalton, Maggie and I managed to get out in time to see the lights for about twenty seconds or so. Unfortunately, Michelle got stuck behind a slow person on the stairs though, so she missed the lights. So, after poking around a bit, we decided to hang out and watch the lights come on again. We took a video, and depending on how it looks on here, I may just try to post it. In case any reader ever goes to Paris, you can now safely skip seeing the lights, as you can just refer to this blog.

I wasn't particularly expecting to be impressed by the Tower, but I was, against my inclinations. If you do make it to Paris, I would recommend going - just go later at night, take a bottle of wine, and lay back on the Champ de Mars and watch the lights.