Paris ’18, Day 5 – Arc de Triomphe, Ladurée and Going Home

Hi everyone! How are you all doing in these trying times? I was hit by a sudden wave of nostalgia and finally decided to finish this Paris series! It’s been ages since my last blog post, so I wonder if anyone still reads these..? Oh well, here we go.

Monday July 9th was our last day in Paris, so we had breakfast, packed our things and checked out. As our bus wouldn’t leave until late in the afternoon, we still had plenty of time left to do something fun. As my mom and I had wanted to go up the Arc de Triomphe for years, we decided to do so this time! We left our luggage at the hotel and went on our way to the Arc de Triomphe.

Our outfits of the day.
We arrived at the Champs-Elysées and went through the tunnel to cross the road. The ticket office for the Arc de Triomphe is also there. I’d heard that in order to go up the Arc de Triomphe you have to climb many stairs and as my mom can’t do that due to various reasons, I asked whether it was possible to go up through an elevator before we bought tickets. Luckily this was fine, so we got our tickets (mine was free because of my age)! We walked up some stairs, which led us to the Étoile square. The weather was absolutely beautiful, perfect for our goal honestly!

Tickets for the Arc de Triomphe!
We went to stand in line and got a body- and bag scan, the whole works! After that, we were led to one of the pillars, away from the poor people having to take the stairs, and were allowed into the elevator. The elevator was super cool, with a glass roof showing the endless inside of the pillar stretching up above us. Also, the lady taking us upstairs was very kind!
Once upstairs, my mom and I stepped out of the elevator and arrived in a huge room, probably right under the top of the Arc. There was a gift shop and various wall paintings and art works related to the Arc. We went up the last couple of stairs and found ourselves, finally, on the top of the Arc de Triomphe!
The view upon Paris was absolutely stunning! We could see all the way down the Champs-Elysées to the Louvre on one side and all the way down to la Défense on the other.

The view upon the Champs-Elysées and one of the other streets to the left,
seen from the Arc de Triomphe.
We could also see the Eiffeltower in the distance, rising from the Parisian buildings and striking against the blue sky. The view was so amazing and thew weather just perfect!

This view was just so stunning…
Honestly, there’s not much to say about our visit. We looked around for a while, which my mom and I both absolutely loved. Many people took pictures and there was even a very big film camera present, which was cool. My mom and I sat down for a while, took selfies and just enjoyed the view a bit more. We were very happy to have achieved this goal!

Maybe not our best selfie, but we look so happy! ♥
Finally, we decided to go back down the stairs and check out the gift shop. It was fun to look at all the Paris- and Arc de Triomphe-related articles and my mom ended up buying a book about Napoléon for me, which was really sweet of her!

Goods to satisfy all your Napoléon needs!
We took the elevator back down again, said goodbye to the nice lady and ended up taking some very nice outfit pictures with the Arc as a background. I felt very extra, standing on a small pole, posing in the wind in front of the Arc de Triomphe! It was very fun and the pictures ended up really nice! ^^

I felt like such a model!
We then walked down the Champs-Elysées and visited some shops, like the Swarovski store to take more fancy pictures, haha! Eventually, we ended up at Ladurée again! We wanted to have actual pastries this time, so we took a look at the pastries for sale to choose and then asked for a table. I ordered a raspberry pastry while my mom went for strawberry. We also got iced tea drinks, but they were quite bitter and not very great. XD The pastries however were heavenly!

Delicious pastries at Ladurée.
It was nice to just sit, chat and eat for a while, but eventually we had to leave and pick up our stuff at the hotel. I quickly got changed there, as a long, flowy coat wasn’t very practical for dragging luggage around. Unfortunately, even though we wanted to avoid it, we ended up having to hurry for our bus. We made it in time, but it was stressful. The bus wasn’t full at all however, so we could take up a lot of space and even sleep a bit! The journey was long and uneventful. My dad picked us up from the bus stop and once home, we were greeted by happy dogs. It had been a great trip! ^^

Purchase of the day

Thank you for reading! ~☆~