It was Monday!
DSIS was totally excited to go visit the dome at Sacré Coeur! It was so windy and cold when we got to Sacre Coeur! But at least it was raining, yet.
We walked up a hill and then up these stairs!
But you can take the Montmartre-Sacre Coeur funicular train.
Here are the payment options.
We got there a bit after 8 but unfortunately, we didn’t look up the information correctly! We wanted to visit the dome but we looked up the hours for the church! 
The church was open but the dome doesn’t open until 10! 
It is an active church so we were respectful of the worshippers and didn’t take many pictures inside.
We were not too keen about waiting around 1.5 hours for the dome to open We decided we would finally see that Tower up close and personal! 
Ahead of the trip, we had chosen to go to Bassins du Champ de Mars for a relaxing view of the Eiffel Tower on the lawn. The walk to get there was very nice. The homes lining the path were the best of what we had seen in Paris thus far!
There she is! Notice all the construction fencing…
We got to what is supposedly Bassins du Champ de Mars and here is our view!
The lawns have been taken up and the area was fenced off!
At least it was sunny and not windy. We took the boys out to admire the Tower.
Closer yet. Notice more construction fencing?
As close to under as we could get on the side we were approaching it from!
From Pont de Bir Hakeim
We climbed up those stairs to the Metro station so that we could take a joyride across the Seine with the Eiffel in view. Sorry no pictures. We were being very present for the moment.
It was time for lunch! We hadn’t eaten that day yet. We had read about charcoal sandwiches at Maison Bergeron. Do the lines out the door tell you anything?
For these places, you really need to know what you want before it’s your turn. But it’s hard because you can’t see everything that available before your turn! 
Unfortunately, it no longer had the charcoal sandwich! Some of our bewildering selection.
We bought way too much! But we didn’t eat any of it after we bought the food because we were in dire need of a bathroom!!! Maison Bergeron didn’t have a bathroom. There were no public toilets around. We had to find somewhere to sit down to eat and fast! We settled on Cafe Le Dome. We fondly call this our 30 € bathroom pit stop! The Cafe is very touristy and pricey. But the Onion Soup was the best we had/saw on the trip! It was so, so delicious. The broth was tasty. The bread was still crispy in places. And the cheese was plentiful, stretchy, and yummy. The soup, served in a cast iron pot, is rather small. We each got fresh squeezed orange juice to go with the soup. The upsides? The food was very good and we each got to use the restroom twice! 
Onward to Arc de Triomphe. I wanted a day view and a night view of this icon. But you can get killed taking pictures of it because cars come from everywhere!
It was nearly time for our Musée de l’Orangerie reservations. It rained again. We were early so we sat and enjoyed our desserts from Maison Bergeron.
The raspberry macaron was excellent as was the strawberry cream cake, which had more cream than cake. However, neither was overly sweet. We also had a chocolate croissant and a raspberry croissant. We didn’t take a picture of them because they got crushed! The chocolate croissant was delicious! The chocolate in the chocolate croissants we have eaten had been plentiful and bittersweet. Delicious! The raspberry croissant was basically a plain croissant with same dry raspberry on the top. I don’t have a picture of the just raspberry version but it look similar to this chocolate raspberry version.
Our view during snack.
I had a small backpack with me and was required to do a bag check at Musée de l’Orangerie. People were also checking in coats. It is nippy outside but many indoor places are over heated! There were a number of times, I was sweating buckets in just a long sleeved shirt and pants! 
We were only here for these Monet water lilies paintings. I’ve seen pictures of them but it was surreal seeing how big they were! It was rather crowded and noisy. We had to wait around to sit down to admire and study the paintings.
We did like the Metro better than the bus because the Metro stations don’t get relocated. But sometimes, they can be a bit challenging to find because they are not labeled! From the direction we were coming from, there was no Metro sign for this station!
We were learning to recognize how the entrances of the Metro stations look like!
We checked in at our tour hotel, Le Méridien Etoile. We skipped the orientation meeting because we still needed to go get our luggage from the other hotel. But this was a nice hotel!
And how was I suppose to keep the water inside the shower with just a partial glass???
Off to get our luggage! Since the Holiday Inn had microwave, water, and bathroom, we heated and ate the food we bought from Maison Bergeron .
Vegetarian focaccia
Croque Monsieur
They were both delicious, even though we microwaved them! 
Interestingly, if we had eaten them after we bought them, they wouldn’t have heated them for us. I think they taste better warmed up!
France is environmental conscience. The cup lids are also paper!
Luggage transfer was a pain. Unless it was a major Metro station, there were no escalators! We each had a 50+ lb suitcase. Up and down so many flights of stairs and we had to transfer metro! More stairs! 
We were so blessed to have some very nice people along the way who leant helping muscles! Uber would have been the better choice!
Though far, we did have a view of the Tower from the Fitness Room. The Tower does a light show every hour on the hour. But there is no music and it is just white lights.
Dessert was hazelnut with mousse, and 3 macarons: passion fruit, hazelnut, and black current. They were all delicious!
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