The next day was Sunday and Father’s Day. We headed to the only English-speaking Catholic Church in Paris – St. Joseph, which was near the Arc de Triompe. After church, we walked down Champ-Elysees and did some shopping/window shopping. It’s a very fancy store street. 

We then took the metro to have a “snack” at Carette. We saw it on Instagram and it had hot chocolate, pastries and coffee. It was utterly delicious and worth stopping at. We were near the Eiffel Tower and had some time to kill before we could use our timed tickets for the Arc de Triomphe so we walked back to Trocadero Square and our children did a photo shoot in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We then went back to the Arc de Triomphe and headed inside. We walked to the top and had some more incredible views of Paris. Many of the streets head out from the Arc. While we were watching a video near the end of our tour, we found out they re-lit the memorial to the unknown soldiers at 6:30 p.m., which was in 15 minutes. We made our way down and were able to watch the ceremony. 

We decided to do dinner back by the Seine River near Notre Dame and everyone could pick what they were hungry for since our snack at Carette still had us pretty full. I enjoyed a baguette while sitting on a bench watching the river. It was one of my favorite moments during our trip.

The next day was our day to visit the Louvre. We needed breakfast first since our bakery was closed. We stopped at a Starbucks that looked like a museum. (We don’t normally go to Starbucks but made an exception because of how fancy it looked.) Mondays are supposed to be one of the least crowded days, but it was still very, very crowded. We had aimed to do the Rick Steve’s walking tour, but the entrance we were supposed to start out at was too crowded so we went a different way. We ended up seeing most of the main pieces of art that I wanted to see: Mona Lisa, crowning of Josephine, Venus de Milo, Winged Victory, Liberty Leading the People. We ate lunch at the Louvre and then went for a walk to nearby attractions.

We stopped by the National Library to visit the reading room we had seen on Instagram. Then we stopped at the oldest bakery in Paris – Stohrers. It was opened in 1730! I had a caramel éclair that was heavenly. We took an encased escalator ride to get more views of Paris and found La Palette, which is a restaurant featured in a Taylor Swift video. 

We didn’t have anything planned for the evening and one child requested to see if we could get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. There were no advance tickets available when I was buying them before we left, but you can buy tickets for immediate access. We went but it said the top was closed due to mechanical issues with the elevators. We decided we could do the second floor again instead, but when the person in front of us was buying tickets, they changed the signs and the top was back open! It was really neat to ride the elevator up and see Paris from the high of a point at night. When we got back to the bottom, we watch it light up again from a different side and from much closer. We were enchanted.

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