Day 12: Paris

La Tour Eiffel
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Last day in Paris - sad, we know.  We woke up super early today to pack up all of our stuff and check out.  We went downstairs for our last breakfast, checked out, and gave them our bags to put in their luggage room.  We found out that the nice woman at the reception desk is named Chantal.  We ask Chantal where we can find some macarons that TJ has come to love so.  She directs us to a nearby bakery that isn't open yet since it's so early in the morning.  It's okay, we tell her, since we're off to the Eiffel Tower today anyways.  It pays to wake up early, we got there before any major crowds got there and we got to enjoy the tower rain-free.  It's rained or sprinkled every day since we've been in Paris.  Those darn Paris showers!  Our feet were feeling a bit tired so we decieded to take the elevator to the top of the tower, rather than climb it.  It was still an amazing experience.  We even got to take a picture by the famous Jules Verne Restaurant on the second stage of the Eiffel Tower.  If we had a lot of money, we would have DEFINITELY gone there =)  It was pretty windy and cold up at the top of the tower, but still a great and fun experience.  You could see all of Paris from up there!

On top of the Eiffel Tower, with Invalides in the background
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After the Eiffel Tower, we decided to walk down towards the Hotel des Invalides.  This isn't exactly a "hotel", but it was commissioned by the Sun King himself to house injured soldiers (the "invalids").  Invalides is incredibly large topped off with an amazing gold dome.  Housed at the Hotel des Invalides is the Musee L'Armee (the Army Museum), which showcases army history from all over the world with an obvious emphasis on French wars.  Also at the Hotel des Invalides is the tomb of Napoleon I.  When stepping inside the dome, you're greeted by the most intricate and extravagant gold cross with great orange-ish stained windows giving the whole inside a warm glow.  You can descend downstairs to find the incredible tomb of Napoleon.  Surrounding his tomb is depictions of twelve of his battles.  It's pretty amazing.

Inside the dome of Invalides
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After we left Invalides, we headed on back towards our hotel area where we had a nice cafe lunch, at a cafe looking right at Sacre-Coeur.  TJ had a croque-monsieur with fries, Melissa had a croque-madame with fries.  Quite delicious!  Then we headed on to find that bakery Chantal had told us about.  We were on the street that she told us to find the bakery and remembered that she said the bakery was on our left-hand side.  Apparently we didn't walk down far enough and saw a bakery on our right-hand side and thought Chantal may have been mistaken.  We entered the cute bakery that seriously had EVERYTHING!  The bakery, called Arnaud Delmontel, is apparently quite famous.  The new French president shops for his bread there.  They had macarons of EVERY flavor!  We got a big box of them, this time we bought the mini-size macarons.  We've tried a couple so far - - and we couldn't be happier.  This will keep us entertained on our long journey into Switzerland!

Tomb of Napoleon
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Next... Interlaken!