Paris, Day 1--First Full Day

Believe or not, our first full day was the best weather we had the whole 10 days! I woke up so excited to get out and see Paris, I was like a kid at Christmas!! After breakfast we headed out. A few blocks from our hotel was the Arch de Triomphe.
I have to first say, I love the history of this city...or rather how historic Paris is. Everything seems to have a story dating back to 15th century or beyond. This Arc is a tribute to the French revolution and the Napoleon wars and also contains the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

We had lunch reservations at Pierre Gagnaire, not far from the Arc, so we wandered the streets as we walked over...seeing one of the many food/candy art displays around the city.
Our 3 1/2 hour lunch at Pierre Gagnaire was AMAZING. Easily in our top 5 best meals! All together we had 23 courses!! I'll spare you all 23 photos but here are some highlights...One is the two different butters they served with the bread (salted and a Normandy butter) and the other is the 5 course amuse, after the three course amuse we had already had.

Chef Gagnaire sighting in the dining room...I was so star stuck! There is a two month waiting list for reservations here. I contacted our concierge at our hotel a few months out from our stay and ask him to make reservations for us and he was able to secure us a spot...so lucky!
My appetizer, a tasting of "farmyard" consisting of pheasant, duck, pork, etc... And our waiter deboning Young's lamb entree. Really, the amount of food was unbelievable but so good...intricate and detailed. The whole meal, top to bottom, was perfect. Not one detail left out.
This was the pre-dessert before our five different desserts arrived on the table. Some desserts got eaten before I could snap a pic but here are a few...

After lunch we need a nice walk around so we headed over to the Eiffel Tower..arriving just at sunset, perfect timing.
The line was WAY too long to ride to the top, we decided to just walk around and enjoy the view from below.
The view was so beautiful, we must have taken 25 pictures of the same view...but this one stands out most.

It was nearing dinner time but we were still so full from lunch, we decided to stop at a small patissier for a snack...the first of 10000 patissiers we walked into...Dalloyau.
One last look of the Eiffel Tower as we walk back over Pont des Invalides toward our hotel. Guess this is why Paris is known as the "city of lights".