Up early on our first morning we train into town and emerge beside the Arc de Triomphe.After pictures, we stroll to my most wanted to see; the Eiffel Tower! I must admit after our first views from across the Seine, I thought it'd be taller, but there you go. We walk towards the tower from the Champ de Mars before joining one of the snaking lines for tickets to climb the 668 stairs to the second level. From there we take a vertigo inducing elevator to the top platform.
We take in the 360 views of the city, picking out other famous landmarks.
We have a late lunch up the tower before heading down and taking in the statue of steel from the other side of the Seine in the Jardins du Trocadero above the fountains. Yet another sun shower (they've been persistent for much of the day) sends us scurrying for shelter and we decide to call it quits, hoping that tomorrow's weather will be an improvement.
The same patchy skies greet us the following day after showers through the night. From the train we emerge again beside the Charles Gaulle roundabout (where its 6 lanes make getting car insurance impossible!). We stroll down Champs Elysees, the main street. Reach the end of the street we come to Place de la Concorde where one of Eygpt's obelisks resides. We briefly take shelter under some trees in the Jardin des Tuileries as another sun shower of rain passes over. We carry on downtown to the Louvre, before crossing the Seine and heading to Notre Dame. The church is nice enough, but we're pacing ourselves with churches as there'll only be so many you can see before you lose interest!
Amongst other showers of rain we walk back through the streets to the Louvre, where luckily for us it's a Wednesday so it's open until 10pm! We're starting to get a bit weary on it, but join the masses and find Mona Lisa. As predicted it's smaller than you expect. There's a lot to take in at the museum and it's a bit late in the day to do it justice. There's a lack of multi-lingual labels on the stuff which makes it tricky to really appreciate everything you're seeing, but I can see how its given the tag of the world's best museum (arguably).
We leave the museum as the sun starts to set and head along the river to see the Eiffel Tower at sunset and lit up at night. It doesn't disappoint, with a twinkling lights display before its lit up for the night, making us oooh and aaah. We take just shy of a million pictures, consume a massive as stick of candyfloss and view the tower from above the fountains. There seems to be an impromptu street party going on above the fountains with people pumping out Michael Jackson hits and dancing about. We head home via a stop at the Arc de Triomphe to see it lit up at night as well. 
Rain showers persist for the morning of our fourth day in Paris so we decide to leave a day earlier than planned and head for what will hopefully be better climes in the east of France; the Champagne region.
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