Visiting Paris with toddlers (day 1): from Eifel Tower, some other places and back to the Eifel Tower

The children only knew one Parisian monument beforehand: the Eifel Tower. The excitement was great when they discovered we could see the top of the Eifel Tower from our hotel room, even though our hotel was located in Boulogne and not the city center.   So when we headed downtown to explore, they only requested one stop: see the Eifel tower.

The weather was drizzling and grey but when we turned around the corner from Trocadero square and the great view on the monument became visible, a big Woooowww escaped Kabouter's mouth. 

We descended from Trocadero and walked around the Eifel Tower and surrounding blocs to also show the office where Jan sometimes works and explored the park a bit. We were far from all demonstrations. 

Next we took the Bateaux Parisiens docked near the Eifel Tower for a small sightseeing tour on the Seine. It was ideal to give the little legs a rest again, to warm up, to play (or listen) to the guided explanations with the headsets, to have a drink and use the bathroom.  I found the boats very comfortable now in winter time but probably also very nice in summer with the large upper deck. 

We walked along the (fairly recent) pedestrian area along the Seine to the city center where we could hear the demonstrations on the Champs Elysees from a distance and saw the police helicopter hovering above.  We took the advice from Parisian friends and hotel management and stayed away from that part of the city but the closed metro stations and police presence on each river bridge was also very proactive not to end up "by accident" in the unrest.  After lunch near Musée d'Orsay (the lines outside were huge and made us decide a 'quick visit' inside), we hopped on the metro again to the children's request and headed north towards Montmartre. Our weekend RATP tickets allowed us to take the cable cart up and down the hill which was another exciting transportation for the children. The top of the hill was painfully cold with icy wind however so our visit to the Sacre-Coeur and Place du Tertre was rather in a rush.

 Back down in the warmth of the below city, we met up with a former colleague which I hadn't seen in more than 15 years but Jan met up with her by accident on a fair in San Francisco in September and now we managed to get together for a drink to catch up.  Pretty cool!

The return was quite a puzzle since the demonstration and unrest had spread...contrary to my optimism that it would dissolve in the afternoon. A whole set of extra metro stations and some lines had closed down, the Galeries Fayette were we would have liked to go and see the Christmas lights with the children had closed down early.    We managed to take a line to the South of the Seine again and walked a detour (carrying Beertje who had fallen asleep in our arms) to the lighted up Eifel Tower again. Our timing was perfect to climb back up to Trocadero to admire there the hourly flickering lights of the monument...much to the excitement of the children again. Clearly not much in Paris can beat...the Eifel Tower in a toddler's opinion.  

When we were all ready and tired and happy to take the metro back to our hotel...we saw the metro station was there closed as well and Jan realised that the 'fog' in the avenue Kléber in the distance was probably smoke.  So rather than attempting to walk to a next metro station while puzzling a new itinerary in the RATP app, we descended the park again and hopped in a taxi there which brought us back to Boulogne. For the 2nd time that day we had been physically relatively close in bird's eye's view of the riots but we have not noticed anything nearby at all.   We ended the evening in  a very authentic tiny japanese restaurant across the street.