2nd full day in Paris. OK, starting to warm to this place!  Today we went on quite a long walk from our hotel near Gare du Nord, to the Arc de Triomphe via l'Opera, and then to the Eiffel Tower. The walk along the Champs Elysees was a highlight. A beautiful boulevard lined with trees in spring growth. This is Paris. Beautiful buildings, enormous monuments, wide avenues, traffic going in every direction possible. How does anyone drive around the Arc de Triomphe and find their correct exit, is beyond me. I counted 13 roads leading into the roundabout - there may be more! At least 6 lanes of traffic, sort of going in the same direction, yet I didn't hear a bingle while we were there.
The Arc is so much larger than I had imagined, thinking it was of the same scale as Marble Arch in London. Wrong! A very impressive monument to their fallen troops over the many years of French involvement in wars in the region.
On to the 'meccano set' on steroids! Again, the Eiffel Tower was larger than I anticipated. The 4 'feet' of the tower were I guess, approx. 100 metres apart. We decided to not go up the tower since the wind was quite cold and would have been freezing at level 2. The top was closed. There was also quite a queue, so we moved on. L'Opera, Grand Palais, Place de la Concorde, Place du Madeleine, Cite de L'Architecture; so many grand buildings and monuments. Even the bridge Pont Alexandre 111 was extraordinarily ornate.
This was also the consular district, indicated as much as anything by the presence of the police. Haven't worked out all the different police agencies, and hopefully I don't need to!
As we were walking back 'home', we stopped for a cuppa at a café  near Madeleine. Rose was feeling a bit sore in one of her feet, so she impressed the staff by taking off her shoe in the café. Whatever they thought, we don't know, however the break helped her feet and she made it back without any further problems. We might go a bit easier tomorrow.
Would have loved to spend lots of time at each venue, but simply not possible. We experienced enough to want to know more about these places.
As we were having dinner at a café near our hotel, we pondered how anyone could drive around this city. How do the buses work their way through the traffic that doesn't seem to let up? Next time I see Jonnie, I will check to see if he drove his bus through Paris when he was doing his stints of driving around Europe. If he did, my congratulations to him! There are scooters (2 & 3 wheels), motor bikes, bicycles, and cars, cars and more cars. Most of the cars are small, to make manoeuvring easier. They seem to park wherever suits and obey the pedestrian signals only if they really have to!
A fascinating city that is starting to grow on us.