The Honeymoon Tour: Paris - Day One

The City of Lights....La Ville Lumiere! Our first day in Paris! Some quick trivia for you:
*Paris is nicknamed the City of Lights because it was one of the first cities to have electricity.
*Also, the name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic tribe known as the Parisii who were its early inhabitants. The city was called Lutetia Parisorum, or "Lutetia of the Parisii," during the Roman era of the 1st to the 4th centuries AD.
*The city was renamed Pairs during the reign of Julian the Apostate, whoever he was...

Good to know, right? We arrived in Paris on a blustery somewhat chilly day and my husband was able to successfully get us from l'aeroport to le taxi and from le taxi to to our very quaint (read: tiny) French hotel. We stayed at Hotel de Londres Eiffel, a family run small hotel with I think about 30 rooms. Could it get more French than this??

The concierge gave us a brief overview complete with map and kindly told us about all of the nearest metro stops, train stations, and attractions. After our brief "orientation" we were off for a two block walk from our hotel....and this is what I saw: 

The left photo is the first photo I ever took with the Eiffel Tower. And I finally got my Eiffel Tower selfie so mark that off on my Bucket List!  We picked up a baguette, some cheese (muenster and some brie), and saucisse, and sat ourselves right in front of the Eiffel Tower so we could soak it all in and so I could calm down from hyperventilating that I was finally there. Oooh I won't lie, that muenster cheese was STINKY. I tasted good but left a really bad aftertaste. We ended up not eating it all. The baguette, saucisse, and baguette were gone in minutes though. Yum!

We then walked back to our hotel so we could get changed into something more appropriate for dinner. We had made reservations at 58 Tour Eiffel, one of the two restaurants in the Eiffel Tower for a late dinner.

The dinner was delicious. I'll definitely be sharing more about that in an upcoming post!

Our view was the trocadero which proved very difficult to capture at night!

After dinner we headed back outside to see the Eiffel Tower twinkle. Every hour on the hour starting at about 9 PM the Eiffel Tower lights up and glistens in the evening sky. It was especially neat because the first twinkle happened while we were sitting at dinner (I told you it was late dinner!). The twinkle is frustratingly difficult to capture in a still photo because it doesn't look like much.

And I made it a gif!

After we were done hanging out watching the Eiffel Tower we walked back to our hotel and called it a night. Catch up with me next time to find out what we did on Paris Day Two!