Wow! Two updates in just a few days! What lucky blog readers you are. We are still in Paris, but are taking a 20 hour train ride to porto, portugal in just a few hours. It's actually three seperate trains, so we have a bit of a break which is good (especially since I've been getting a little motion sick on them...woo hoo).
Yesterday we walked what I believe must have been about 15 miles. We started at our hotel in st. germain des prés, walked over ile de la cité to see notre dame, through the 4th, 1st, 2nd, and 9th quarter into the 18th where we hiked the stairs to montmartre and saw sacré coeur. I climbed a heck of a lot of steps to the dome at the top for a great view (thank goodness I've been working on my cardiovascular endurance before leaving boston!!) while *t* had some "alone time" on the steps of sacré coeur. (We decided ahead of time to split up for a while each day so we didn't kill each other. Our "alone time" seemed to coincide perfectly with any intense climbing activity!!) Next we stopped to get lunch at a grocery store. For 2,93 euros (about 3.75 dollars) I got a loaf of bread, some brie cheese, an apple, and a peach yogurt.
While we sat in a park eating, a little old lady walked by wheeling her dog in a little leaning cart thing with wheels. Call me crazy, but I thought the whole point of taking a dog out was to give it some exercise. I guess the french have different ideas. As soon as I get home, I'm going to post the picture I took of this.
We then walked down the bd. de Clichy (which turned into bd. des batignolles and then bd. de courcelles) until it hit the arc de triomphe. Again we had some alone time while I climbed the 284 stairs to the top for an amazing view of paris. Last time I was here, it was very foggy, and the views were pretty crappy. From there, we walked down the champs elysées to the Louvre, across the bridge, and back to our hotel in st germain des prés. It took us about 10.5 hours.
Here's the challenge: Whoever can do the research and give me an accurate estimate of how many miles we walked (taking into account the extra climbing for me in sacré coeur and arc de triomphe) first, gets a prize from europe. Send your estimate as a comment to this post, and if someone else beats you to the punch, but you don't think their estimate is correct, reply anyway with your supporting evidence. Good luck!
2 comments:
Okay, I quickly mapped your destinations on google maps. I just did landmark to landmark and came up with:
hotel-notre dame=1.6 km
notre-dame-montmatre=1.9 km
montmartre-arc de triomphe=4.8 km
arc-louvre=4.5 km and finally
louvre-hotel=2.6
So...about 15.4 km=about 9.5 miles
BUT you guys probably took less direct routes than the driving routes, so you might have pretty accurate estimate.
Good job zandrea! All the estimates seem very accurate except for the second (from Norte Dame to Sacre Coeur). We did do some wandering, but that leg of the trip definitely was the longest for us. (I would guess at least 3 miles.) In any case, you won the prize since no one else challanged your answer! Good job!
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