Up the Eiffel Tower

The hotel had not finished cleaning the new room, so we (mostly my granddaughter) packed and I lay down and had a rest. Long story short - we changed rooms.

Entrance to the garden patio of the hotel

Corridor to our room which is at the end

For some reason, they wanted me to look at the room before we moved so I did, but I didn't really need to. The new room had a double bed (the front desk guy had said that the handicapped rooms were all doubles)

Double bed

so they brought in a roll-away bed which they put in the "hall" opposite the bathroom. I decided that I would sleep on the rollaway because the head of it was against a table which I could use to put things on. (As again there was only one bedside table.)

Rollaway

The shower was a roll in shower, but with no seat, so they brought me a shower chair.

Shower stool

Toilet area of the bathroom

I got a shower and got dressed and then went to get a cab to dinner. I had spoken to the hotel about this but they apparently thought that I wanted the cab at 6 and not that I had a reservation for dinner at 6. There were some people at the entrance and they asked about the scooter. They said they waited 45 minutes for a taxi and that I should get Uber instead. But I thought it would be too late to do that to be on time for dinner because it was already 5:30.

When I was in Paris in 1964, I went up to the first level of the Eiffel Tower and I don't have any photos except this one.

Going up the Eiffel Tower in 1964 - France

So I was anxious to have some more photos

The driver went around to the 'back' of the tower to let us off and we went in. The meter said €14 plus €4 which was maybe for the scooter and he pushed the button on the meter and it flashed briefly at €18.2, so I gave him €20, and he seemed happy with that. I decided later that I was overtipping so that was why people were so happy.

After we went through security, I tried to find the restaurant and finally went to some official looking people and asked. They said that the Jules Verne restaurant had closed (It was apparently unexpected) and would be closed for several months. (Lauren did not find out about it until after we had left.) The lady we talked to apparently felt sorry for us and let us go up into the tower for free. She led us to the elevator and when it came to the place where you handed in your ticket, she just passed us through without paying. She said we could go to the second level, but it was confusing and we got off at the first level.

Looking down to the base

Looking up

Bank of the Seine

Looking toward the ugly skyscraper

My granddaughter on the first level

Under the tower

Sacre Coeur

Russian Orthodox Cathedral

I think that we could have taken the elevator to the second level, but it wasn't clear how to do that. So A went up the stairs. Neither of realized how many stairs that would be, but she made it. These are her photos

Seine from the 2nd level of the Eiffel tower

Fountain from the 2nd level

Hôtel des Invalides

She also took a video of the boats in the Seine. After A got down from the 2nd level, she said that she did not think that there was much in the cafeteria that she could eat as it was mostly sandwiches. She was still being cautious about gluten. So we had to find an elevator down. We went to a place which said it was to go down but nothing ever stopped. Someone official came and got us and led us to another place and put us onto an elevator almost full of people so we got down to the ground again.

I had seen a taxi out front, so after A led us out the Sortie, I went up to the driver and said Taxi. A told him where we wanted to go and he said it was a fixed rate of €24 (which I didn't really believe, but my back was beginning to cramp up and so I didn't argue). A folded the scooter and we got in. He wanted the street address rather than the name of the hotel and I didn't have it, but we arrived there reasonably quickly.

We ate at the hotel restaurant which we had been unable to do last night.

Appetizer

Soup

I had Langouste - I really wish I had thought to photograph the menu as the Langousta came wrapped in what looked like shredded wheat. (The langousta was a special and I found out the next night that the specials were not on the regular menu so it would not have done me any good to photograph the menu.)

Langousta

A had some carrot soup

Carrot soup

and gluten free bread which she said seemed freshly baked as it came out very warm and not looking like it was packaged. For the entre, she had yellow chicken breast.

Yellow Chicken Breast

I was in a lot of pain by now and really couldn't give the dinner full appreciation. So we didn't get dessert.

When we got back to the room I had A put a Lidocane patch on my back and then I went right to sleep. I woke up about 5 in the morning and went to the bathroom and took last nights pills and wrote up the day. Then I went back to sleep.

My granddaughter's account of this part of the tripDay 15