10:00 PM - Woke up naturally after a few hours sleep, and decided to get up, get something to eat, and then work on my blog for awhile. Looked out the window in time to see the Eiffel Tower all light up with crazy Christmas tree lights that flashed, and then it calmed down and was beautifully lit. (see picture left, click for larger)
10:30 PM - Decided to go and get some cash from the bank machine, to avoid more of the hassle I'd had earlier with the cab - got 100€. The money is really different looking here. (see picture right, click for larger). The top coins are (l to r): a 2€ coin (like a toonie), a 1€ coin (like a loonie), and a 20, 10, 5 and 1 cent coin. Like in Australia, there are no quarters.I was also hungry, so wanted to get something to munch on. I went for a walk just out the door of the hotel and a few blocks down, and came across another McDonald's. I figured I would get something different there, and though some other sit-down restaurants were open still late at night, I didn't feel like spending a bunch of time or money sitting in an eat-in place tonight. I didn't have patience for that and just wanted to get back to the hotel to get my blog going. Got a burger, fries and drink and walked back to the hotel.
Noticed something neat on the way back. There are a lot of electric and gas-powered scooters here, which is not so unique. Sydney, Australia had tons of them too. However, something I've never seen anywhere else in the world was road-side gas pumps ...designed just for scooters and small Smart Cars! (see picture left, click for larger)The streets are really quiet, with a few couples sitting together in outside restaurants drinking wine, and a few people on scooters coming and going from same. It really dies down here at night.
11:00 PM - Got back to the hotel and started working on my blog to get some of it up - want to get caught up if I can.
3:00 AM - Still couldn't sleep (think I'm overtired now) so decided to take a break and looked out the window, and the Eiffel Tower was black. No lights at all. Like David Copperfield had made it disappear, just like his trick with the Statue of Liberty.
And speaking of that, I couldn't believe my eyes - I thought I was in Vegas for a minute! As most of the city lights were darkened now, I thought I could make out the Statue of Liberty down below and just a few blocks away! I remember in the movie National Treasure 2, as Nicholas Cage was racing through Paris, that he was standing in front of it. I thought it was some kind of movie prop. Nope.
Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, who created the New York version of Lady Liberty in 1889, also gave a smaller version to Paris at the same time. You'll recall that the big one in New York Harbor was actually gift of the people of France to America to celebrate the American Revolution (French soldiers actually supported America's fight against the British in the Revolutionary War, mostly because they hated the English and wanted them to lose their colonies in America). Will head out to get pictures of it one day this week and let you see.
6:00 AM - incredibly, I was still up working on the blog until now. Going to hit the sack - set a wake-up call for 10:00 AM to get breakfast, etc. before I have go to the Congress for the day. I've been up for the most part of 24 hours now. Ugh, as I said earlier, I hate flying east - always throws me off!
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