November 7, 2011

Today was eventful! We left the hotel after yet another croissant/baguette breakfast (avec hot chocolate for me) and headed to the metro. We first visited the Place de la Bastille, the former site of the Bastille Prison, and now the home of a memorial column and the modern, 2,700+ seat Opera Bastille, built a little over two decades ago to make operas and ballets more accessible to the masses. After our visit, we walked to the Place des Vosges, a residential area that forms a square around a small park. An apartment there was once the home of author Victor Hugo, and was named after a department of France, Vosges, that was the first to pay its taxes to Napoleon's revolutionary army in 1799. After lunch, we made our third visit of the day at the Sainte-Chapelle, a cathedral built by King Louis IX which contains one of the greatest stained glass collections in the world. After our visit, we took the metro to our final destination of the day: La Tour Eiffel. Built for the World's Fair in 1889. Although we had to wait some time before we could climb the tower, the view was beautiful (if cloudy), and in the opinion of this writer, the structure itself is stunning. After we made our descent, we made the cold trek back to the hotel (and dinner).