Paris, Day 4 – The Eiffeltower, Crêpes with Midori and a Horrible Evening

Although I wasn’t tired at all on Saturday evening, I was totally broken the next morning and so was my mom. We stayed in bed for a while and then went to have breakfast slowly.
We felt better after eating, so we got dressed and my mom made herself some coffee (she doesn’t like the French coffee, so she takes her own with her). Then, we went on our way to the Eiffeltower!

Our outfits of the day! Red, white and black.
Before we went to Paris, my cousin told me that he, when he was in Paris, had been to the awesome bridge from the movie Inception. When he told me it’s close to the Eiffeltower, I really wanted to see it!
Since we were still a bit tired, we decided to take the long way to station Bir-Hakeim, via station Montparnasse Bienvenüe. That station is huuuge! It’s so big, there are even halls with moving walkways! It was a lot of fun to walk next to one, trying to take pictures while my mom was standing on it!
We took the next line to station Bir-Hakeim and walked down the stairs, after which I immediately saw the awesome bridge! It turns out we actually walked past this bridge at least ten times in the past two years, but we never realised it!
We reached the bridge somehow (there were a lot of gates, again). It was windy, cloudy and a bit cold, but we still took a lot of pictures of course!

The famous Inception bridge! Although there were a lot less people and no mirrors.
We walked underneath the bridge and took pictures, but the wind was blowing so hard! We decided to walk along the Seine to the Eiffeltower. Suddenly, I realised we hadn’t taken the picture we really wanted yet: a real Inception picture! So we walked back.

INCEPTION.
Initially the plan was to hold up a piece of paper with Inception on it, but of course we had forgotten about that. Luckily I had a pen in my bag, so I could write on my hand (and walk around with it for the rest of the day. ^^).
We left the bridge again and walked along the Seine, looking at the house boats floating in the water. We also had a nice view on the Eiffeltower, but it was so cloudy almost all the pictures turned out dark. ^^’
We arrived at the Pont d'Iéna (Hyena! XD Sorry…), in front of the Eiffeltower. It was very crowded, because cars weren’t allowed to drive there today. Apparently, there had some kind of triathlon been going on or something.
We walked up to the Eiffeltower, planning to sit down on the grass of Champs-de-Mars, but the grass was closed off by gates. :( So we walked back to the Tower itself. We wanted to take pictures of ourselves right underneath it, but that wasn’t possible either, since they were in the middle of hanging a giant discoball (?) underneath it, so more gates. Luckily, we managed to take nice pictures after all!

Hearts! We made many more poses, like waving, cute, oops and fighting!
We walked around for a bit, but I started to feel really cold! I was glad my mom had brought her black cardigan with her! ♥ I looked at some souvenirs and after we saw a man taking pictures of his children on blocks, we decided to do the same.

My mom and the Eiffeltower, I have no more to say. :)
As you can see the sky was all white, haha! Better than rain of course. ;)

Et moi! ^^
We decided to walk back to the Pont d'Iéna and then walk to Trocadéro. We almost forgot to take a jump picture!

I’m flying!
We walked up to Trocadéro, where all kinds of sports-related stalls were set up, because of the triathlon. We decided to sit in the grass and think about what to do. My mom suggested to go to Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, a big and famous cemetery, but the there were a lot of clouds and we wanted to see it in the sun. I was also really tired, although sitting down for a while helped a lot.
After a while, we decided to go Princess Crêpe again. Midori would be there to make a little event and we were looking forward to eating another Princess Crêpe, so we went on our way. But of course not without taking a picture of the Eiffeltower from Trocadéro.

Mother and daughter. =)
We took the metro at Trocadéro, after taking pictures in a photomaton (our third picture is hilariously hideous)!
We arrived at station Saint-Paul. First, we visited the chocolate shop to get some more ‘chocolate clams’: chocolates in the shape of clams (obviously). They didn’t look very special, but my mom was in love with them! My favourites were the white chocolate slices with walnut, almond and apricot.
We arrived at Princess Crêpe, where I saw Marie, the Pirate guy and another girl from the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright Tea Party! It was nice seeing them again! ^^
I didn’t see Midori (I had no idea when she would arrive), so I went to order two crêpes, when she suddenly walked around the corner, wearing an adorable dress and usamimi! Sawada-san offered her a Princess Crêpe apron (I seriously want one, so cute) and she went to stand in the corner to hand over the ordered crêpes. When I asked for a picture, she was more than happy to pose with me! ^^

Midori is so cute and adorable and perfect! ♥
My mom and I received our delicious crêpes and we ate for a while. Midori ordered a crêpe too, she ate it so slowly, haha! ^^ She accidentally spilled chocolate sauce on her apron! I helped her wiping it off her hand, poor girl!
Midori walked around a lot, to promote the shop outside and talk to people inside.

Hiii, my mom asked for a picture too! ^^
Then, Sawada-san asked Midori if she wanted to make a crêpe herself! Every Lolita around gathered at the pink kitchen to take pictures of Midori (XD). First, the ‘crêpe man’ showed her how to do it, then Midori tried it herself. It looked easy, but it was clearly harder than expected!

First, pour the batter onto the hot plate. Then, divide it evenly. Scoop the crêpe up to
flip it over. Make a heart pose. Fill the crêpe with whatever you like.
Now you have the perfect crêpe!
As you can see, poor Midori had a bit of a hard time. ^^
It was so funny: we were constantly taking pictures, squealing over Midori’s cuteness and applauding every time to encourage her. My mom, who was standing behind us, noticed a couple coming in (we didn’t). At first, they were a bit annoyed, because they couldn’t order and they didn’t understand what was going on. Midori’s first crêpe wasn’t of course the best advertisment for Princess Crêpe either. ^^’ Luckily, my mom explained to them she’s a Japanese model who made a crêpe just for fun and they understood. ^^
We had sat down for a while, when my mom asked if I wanted to go. Since I was still tired, she suggested I would stay at Princess Crêpe while she explored the streets around a bit. I didn’t mind at all, I didn’t want her to be bored because of me!

Midori is too cute to be true!
We all talked a bit to Midori and she asked for a picture with a little girl. The child was jumping around in her chair, haha!
After a while my mom came back and she showed me a purchase she had just made: a bag she had really loved the year before, but couldn’t find in the right colour. I took it out of the shopping bag, looked at it and said: ‘Oh I like it! It says ‘New York’..!’ after which my mom looked at it and said: ‘Dang it, I wanted the Paris one!’ and she went back to the shop! XD
Because of all the Lolitas standing outside of the shop, lots of people went inside for a crêpe, so cool! Meanwhile I talked a lot to Constance, one of the girls I was following the day before to the Baby shop! It was really nice to talk to her this time, haha!
We decided to take a group picture in front of the shop. Even though I wasn’t wearing Lolita, Midori wanted me to be in it too! ^^ Poor Sawada-san was asked by everyone to take a picture, he was holding at least six cameras!
I found two pictures with me in it on Midori’s blog.

Pictures from Midori’s blog, yaaay!
Then it was time for Midori to go. We said goodbye and she told us she hoped she could come back next year! Marie (the girl wearing Milky Berry) had taught her some words in French, maybe they’ll help her some day, haha! Then, Sawada-san went on his way with Midori to her hotel.
I talked some more with Constance and her friend, until my mom arrived (with the right bag this time). She told me there was a nice shopping street just a little further, so I said goodbye to the girls (after Constance wrote down her Facebook for me) and we went on our way.
It turned out we were walking around in le Marais, quite a fancy neighbourhood. We went into Sabon and tried some amazingly smelling stuff for our hands (we had to pump water into a beautiful sink ourselves, haha) and I tried on a nice dress in a busy shop. The dress was lovely, but not really on me unfortunetaly.
After a while, we went back to the metrostation (after buying more chocolate, bad us) and we went back to our hotel to rest a while. There, I discovered I had lost my badges from the Baby, the Stars Shine Bright Tea Party! I turned the whole room upside down, but I couldn’t find it. I emailed the shop if maybe they had found it.
We decided to try to go up the Eiffeltower that night, since we knew from last time that it’s not so busy at night. We rested until the evening. My mom slept, but I couldn’t. We had internet, so I could chat with my friends about the Angelic Pretty Tea Party the next day. I decided to wake my mom up eventually and we decided to have dinner at Café d’Albert, just across the street. I had a delicious carpaccio, while my mom had tagliatelle with grilled salmon. My food was great, but my mom’s salmon had fish bones in it, so she was a bit afraid of eating it.
Although I don’t remember the exact time we left the café, I do know it was later than planned, but I read the metros would ride until about 1:30 am, so it would be fine.
We took the metro to Trocadéro. God, the Eiffeltower is so pretty at night…

♥
We went on our way to the foot of the Tower, which took a while because of the stupid traffic lights that took ages to become green.
Okay, I’ll be honest: our memories were a bit confused. We thought the Eiffeltower sparkled more than just once every hour. We were a bit upset over the fact it only sparkled for a little while (we were both not feeling so well and somehow we couldn’t really take this). We walked to the pillar with the only working elevator (did I mention the Eiffeltower had technial difficulties? Only one out of three elevators was working, while there were thousands of tourists in Paris at that moment!), but I noticed on the sign that the sommet (the top floor) was closed already. I still wanted to go up, so we walked to the queue, but then we realised the gate was closed! An arrogant French man was standing next to it, so we asked why it was closed, as the closing time was midnight and it wasn’t midnight yet. He either didn’t speak English or felt repulsed by the idea of speaking to us in English, because he mumbled something about it already being midnight and that we weren’t allowed to go in anymore, with that ‘stupid-tourists-every-damn-day’ look on his face. Horrible, arrogant pr*ck! I wanted to slap him so badly (don’t worry, I would never do that)! The fact it was closed, okay, but his attitude, argh! I hated him. We asked another woman, who did speak English, but she said the same. We were both so disappointed, since we had really been looking forward to it! Even when the Tower started sparkling, I couldn’t enjoy it. We still couldn’t sit on the grass, which made it even worse.
We decided to go back to Trocadéro, but when we crossed the road we realised there was something going on. After us, people weren’t allowed to cross the bridge and there was a big car with lights attached to it! It turns out they were shooting a car commercial!

The car with lights on it turned out to be a filming car! This is the
last picture of the evening by the way.
I think it was either for Renault or Peugeot. A beautiful, shiny red car drove up and down to the Eiffeltower, sometimes followed by the filming car. Other times the red car drove past the filming car with an incredible speed, only barely missing the front of the other car. My mom and I were fascinated and kept looking for a while, after which we went on to the metrostation.
From this point, there are no more pictures, because here started our evening from hell. Maybe you think: ‘What, that’s all?’, but to us it wasn’t at the time. Although writing about it or looking back makes the situation seem not so bad, the moment we lived it was really frightening.
We walked up to the entrance of the Trocadéro metrostation, but as soon as we had walked down the stairs we realised we had a problem: the gate was closed. We couldn’t enter the station. I started panicking, but managed to follow some other people to another entrance that was, thank God, still opened. The only thing I could think of was: ‘We need to get to our station taking the shortest route as possible!’ We ran to the platform where the metro would arrive to Pasteur, where we could take the metro that would go straight to our hotel, but instead of indicating what time the next metro would arrive, the sign only showed Xs, indicating no metro would come. We ran to the opposite platform, that would take us to Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, where the Arc de Triomphe is. That metro did come, pfew! Our hearts were racing: how on earth could we get to our hotel if the metros didn’t ride anymore? Taxis would be so expensive at night! We arrived at Charles de Gaulle-Étoile, where people were running as fast as they could to catch the last metro. We ran to the platform of line 2, but I realised we would have an even bigger problem if we took that line: we would have to get out at Pigalle, a neighbourhood you don’t want to roam around at night. We were doubting about getting on the metro, when suddenly two strict-looking ladies showed up and started yelling in French. I understood them, but I wanted English! They told us the last metro had left and that we had to leave. My mom and I were a little relieved: at least no Pigalle. We got out and the Arc de Triomphe was so different than usual: it looked spooky and deserted, without the hundreds of cars driving around it. We had to take a taxi, but we had never done that before. We didn’t even know how to stop a taxi! I saw an older couple standing a little away from us and they looked as if they were going to stop a taxi, so I walked up to them. The man had ‘American’ written all over him, he even wore a cowboyhat! And I was right, the couple was American! I asked if they ever took a taxi before and they said no, haha! But the man held out his hand and a taxi came right over, so it clearly wasn’t so hard. I told them we had never taken a taxi before and the woman asked where we had to get out. When I told her, her face clearly showed she had no idea where that was. ‘We’re getting out at Lamarck,’ she said. ‘Oh really? That’s one station away from ours!’ I said, surprised. The sweet couple then offered to share the taxi, so kind! ♥
While my mom was sitting in the front seat, I sat in between of the man and woman. I felt so much better, knowing we’d at least get back to our hotel in the middle of the night. While my mom was still recovering from our bad adventure, I had a lovely conversation with our fellow passengers. They live in California and had come to Paris for their anniversary, but they too were too late for the Eiffeltower and they had also missed a boat ride and a tour through the catacombs with just one minute! Speaking of bad luck! =( We had a lovely conversation about Paris and other stuff and the woman complimented me on my English, yay! *^^*
Our driver was very fast, haha! But of course, there wasn’t so much traffic anyway. We arrived at the couple’s hotel and when they got out, the price was so low compared to what we had thought! And the American man gave the driver 10 euros, almost the entire amount! They were so, so nice! I wonder if they’re doing well…
We arrived at our hotel too. We were very grateful: the driver didn’t use a night rate for the price, so my mom gave him a big tip!
We were sooo happy to be back at our hotel! We could finally smile again, we were so stressed! We went to sleep at 2:30 am, wow…