December 30, 2023

The ongoing joke that one day I’d bring my wife to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower finally came to fruition. December 30th, 2023, as our children had plans to celebrate New Year’s Eve with their cousins, a quick escape to the city of lights was planned. Leaving the 30th to arrive on New Year’s Eve was ideal to participate in the festivities along the Arc de Triomphe to ring in the New Year. A comfortable and smooth flight via Detroit gets us into Paris early morning of the 31st. Relaxing train ride to the city centre and our countless steps start. Over 47000 steps to be exact for that day.

Having watched the series on Netflix of Emily in Paris, we made it a point to visit several of the areas in which were filmed.

We continue our walk to see the obvious tourist sites and come to realize on how fortunate we are in given the opportunity to explore these wonderful locations.  

We walk around the Champs-Elysees and see all work being done for the evening festivities. The celebration centered along the boulevard, where the Arc de Triomphe crowned the fireworks and showered in full lights and video projections. We’ve come to find out that 1 million people were celebrating that evening making us part of that moment in history.

With over 47000 steps completed that day, we head back to our cozy hotel. Definitely no more steps were added as the hotel we were in was only 1 step from the bed, turn around, 1 step the bathroom. Small but surely cozy.

A nice breakfast and day 2 starts. We complete more tourist sites and a little disappointed as the Opera house we wanted to visit along with the shopping gallery were closed on January 1. Oh well, a reason to plan another trip to Paris.

Anna decides to hold up traffic on the most busiest of boulevards while we get a nice Nutella banana crepe from a corner food vendor.

One point of interest that was quite somber was the location in which Lady Diana had the accident that ultimately took her life . 

One can’t go to Paris without taking a romantic river cruise along the Seine River. Looking at the points of interests and bridges from another view, gives you a true appreciation of the architecture. 

A nice supper, some more walking and we’re back at the hotel packing up for our flight back home. A great long weekend spent in Paris that will forever be part of our memories.

Dec-2023