We woke up a bit tired from our night out in Brussels; might have had something to do with the couple bottles of wine we drank. We noticed our hotel offered check-in from 9 until noon or from 4pm to 9pm. It was only 8am but the GPS was saying it was a 3.5 hour drive; time to go!
We packed the car, paid the 25 euros for parking (good thing work is paying that bill) and checked out; two thumbs up for the Warwick which is very fancy for our tastes. Traffic was crazy busy and the traffic patterns are irregular. We see why it is not recommended to drive in the centre-town areas.
We got on the highway and enjoyed the 120 kilometres per hour speed limit in Belgium and 130 kph limit in France. The tole highway cost about 14 euros, although a bit expensive it is worth it if you are pressed for time.
Driving into Paris was a bit nerve wracking. The streets often to not line up forcing a shift in the traffic and at the best of what we experience, most people shift in time not to cut you off. We made it to our hotel without hitting anyone/anything and found parking directly in-front of the hotel (18 euros a day, ouch).
The 'student apartments' are very clean and located pretty close to the tram. After a quick rest we set out for the tourist area. We took the metro but although we thought we were well read on it, we some how wasted our first tickets. We are still unsure if it was because we exited somewhere we should not have, or if it was because we changed zones, but it cost us 2 tickets to get downtown (about 3 euro each).
We arrived directly at the Eiffel Tower. Our luck for this holiday; construction. I guess thats what you can expect travelling off season.
Dude rented a Lamborghini for some glamour shots.
After walking around for a bit, buying a shot glass and a couple other small things we made our way to the Triumphal Arch. Its is definitely a lot larger than we had imagine; we felt very small standing at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
After walking around for another hour on Champs-Elysees Avenue, we were both tired and hungry. We took the train back to our hotel, bought some provisions and had a very tasty dinner.
