Day 14 - Last Day in Paris

Day 14 (Sept. 16th) - Today was our last day in Paris.
We got off to a late start--didn't leave the apartment until after 1 p.m.  We went to Sacre Coeur, a beautiful church started after the Franco-Prussian War in thanks to God for not letting Paris being captured.  The church was completed in 1914.

Walk up to Sacre Coeur

View of Paris from the steps of Sacre Coeur

Sacre Coeur

The area around Sacre Couer is a tacky tourist trap.  There were several souvenir shops (which we patronized). There were also several scams and beggars in the area.  We saw 2 men working the 3 card monte scam, a group of teenagers using the deaf-mute petition scam, and several people in African dress were trying to pull the friendship bracelet scam.  (It took several stern "No"s to get one gentleman to stop trying to put a bracelet on one on the girls' wrist.

We arrived during the middle of Mass.  It was interesting to walk through the church while 1/2 the people were worshiping and the other 1/2 were walking around admiring the building.  We joined the service for a while during the service.  Even though it was in French, I knew when they congregation was saying the Lord's prayer.

While we were walking down from the church, we say the police carting off the teenagers trying to pull the deaf-mute scam earlier

Afterwards we went to the Montmartre area near Sacre Coeur to find a place to eat.  We past an Pakistani-Indian restaurant that looked like it had a great menu, but it was closed.  We finally settled on a pizzeria.

Montmartre area has lots of restaurants

Original Metro sign over the entrance to the Metro

Dinner at the Pizzeria

After dinner, we took the Metro back to the Trocadéro Gardens to view the Eiffel Tower at night.  We left with enough time to re-use our Metro tickets for the ride home.  Oddly, only Sarah's ticket worked.  We used the last of our tickets to get back to the apartment.

Leah holding up the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower at dusk

Eiffel Tower at night

Tomorrow is a long travel day.  We're taking the train:

• Paris East station to Karlsruhe (3 hrs)
• Karlsruhe to Frankfurt (1 hr)
• Frankfurt to Würzburg (1 hr)
• Würtzburg to Steinach (40 min)
• Steinach to Rothenburg ob der Tauber (14 min)