Paris Walking Tour Goes Awry

Sometimes when you’re on vacation, things don’t go as planned.

Take Sunday for instance. The Girl and I left our hotel with the intention of going on a 10 mile walk around Paris. We carefully mapped out our plan on google maps and were very confident about our journey.

• Start – Eiffel Tower
• Stop 1 – Le Bon Marche Grocery Store
• Stop 2 – The Catacombs
• Stop 3 – The Love Lock Bridge
• Stop 4 – The Nike Store on the Champs-Elysees
• Stop 5 – Arc de Triomphe
• Finish – 6 Our Hotel

Our hotel was near the Eiffel Tower and our first stop was going to be at the coolest grocery store in all of Paris, La Grand Epicerie at Le Bon Marché to buy something for breakfast. 

It was suppose to be a quick 2 mile walk. And it was, but when we arrived we discovered the grocery store was CLOSED.

Oh well, it was a nice walk anyway right?

So we looked down at our folded map and started towards our next destination. The Love Lock Bridge. Which was really suppose to be our third stop but we didn’t notice until our stomachs were grumbling and we had to use the bathroom.

Luckily the Rodin Museum was nearby so we stopped there for a bite to eat instead.

We saw The Thinker!

Ate something tasty for lunch, and then assessed our situation.  At this point it was about 2:30 in the afternoon. I knew entry to the Catacombs closed at 4pm so we walked as fast as we could. Once we got in line we were told were had about a 1 hour and 40 minute wait.

And the chances of us getting in were about 50/50. By now it was 2:50 in the afternoon and we hadn’t crossed anything off our original list of sites we wanted to see on our original walking tour plan.

The Girl didn’t want to chance it, but I did. 

We were the last group of 12 people to get into the catacombs. Wowza! Talk about cutting it close. {I’ll post more about the catacombs tomorrow}. 

At this point it was about 5pm and I new it would be getting dark soon and the last thing I wanted to be doing was wandering around Paris in the dark holding a map and trying to use the light from our cell phones to guide us home. So, for the first time ever, we braved the Paris Metro.

We didn’t make it to the Love Lock Bridge, but we were able to stop by Mona Lisa’s house. {The Louvre}. 

And the Arc de Triomphe.

And the Nike store for The Girl.

At that point I looked down at my pedometer and noticed so far we had walked almost 25,000 steps for the day. And we still had to walk back to our hotel. So we grabbed a quick bite to eat from Paul’s and headed back to our hotel.
In the end, our 10 mile walking tour of Paris worked out to be a 16.94 miles. Getting lost is RAD isn’t it? Seriously, at this point I might as well sign up to do a marathon this spring because we never stopped walking on this trip.

C’est la vie 😉

~ Mavis