Paris, Day 2: Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Petite Palais

It is taking FOREVER to get through all of my photos from Paris. I previously posted my favorites from Day 1 (The Seine and Saint Chappelle, Notre Dame, and a wrap up), and then everything else we've done for the past month took precedent and I barely had a chance to look at them. Some of my favorite photos from our entire trip were my Eiffel Tower at night photos, which were from Day 2, and then I didn't get to look at any of those photos for a while. Last night I finally got through them! I'm going to post my favorite ones shortly on my photography blog, but as a quick insight into what we did that day, here's a recap using some of my photos and some of the ones Evan took on his phone.

First thing we did was take the Batobus (a riverboat taxicab basically) from near our hotel to the Eiffel Tower. The weather was overcast, but the scenery was still beautiful!

 Across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower is the Palais du Trocadero, a beautifully curved building that currently houses a number of museums. Evan is a big fan of the building, and on a later date went back there himself (while Kathy and I went to Montmarte) to go to the Architecture Museum.

 The great thing about the location is that it makes for beautiful shots of the Eiffel Tower (it's where we took the Eiffel Tower shots at night). I love this one of Kathy and Eric!

 We then continued across the northern part of the city to the Arc de Triomphe. I had to get a shot of the metro station - all of the entrances are this decorative! It's like this throughout Paris - so much decoration on the simplest of things. Beautiful!

 After about a 20 minute walk, we came to the Arc de Triomphe.

To get to the Arc, you have to go through a tunnel under the street (as it's in the middle of a giant traffic circle), and to get to the top you walk up about 280 stairs, mostly on a small curved staircase. My thighs were NOT happy with me after that, but it was worth it for the view.

The Champs Elysees is the wide street to the right; we continued our walk down that street after leaving the Arc.
Below is a view to the north east; at the top of that hill is the village of Montmarte, which we visited a couple of days later.

 Street shot of the Champs Elysees, after we stopped for lunch (we were famished!). I had my lens hood on to protect the lens, and zoomed out as wide as it would go ended up with this unintended vignette around the photo. I like it!

 I took tons of photos along the Champs Elysees, mostly of the crazy gold gilt all over various buildings, including something as simple as a Marriott hotel. Too many to share here!

We still had quite a bit of the afternoon left, and we had seen the Grand Palais (another museum) from the Batobus; as we weren't too far away we thought we'd walk over to it and see what was on display.

 Turned out that it was closed as they installed the latest art exhibition, so we couldn't go in. Instead, we headed across the street to the Petit Palais, which turned out to be gorgeous inside and out!

 The main hall inside with close-up of the beautiful ceiling.

One whole wing of the Petit Palais is an art museum, with various statues, paintings, and works of art such as this vase. It's pink!!

 Inside of the Petit Palais was a lovely courtyard, just beginning to bloom.

Evan got this shot of the two of us in the courtyard.

 We were getting quite tired at that point, so decided to hop on the Batobus and take it all the way around to our stop. It took far longer than if we'd walked, but we were tired, it was cold, and the Batobus was warm and did the work for us. Plus, it went around the Ile de Cite where Notre Dame is located, so we were able to get some beautiful shots of the cathedral.

 And Evan took this great one of Kathy and I; this is the pose we found ourselves in most of the trip!