La Grand Roue

I finally made it to the Grand Roue de Paris, which is the giant ferris wheel at the Tuilirie Gardens Carnival. I've been eyeing it since my first day here.

The carnival is another of those things that just seems surreal. The fair is set up along the gardens next to the Louvre, so you're walking through these beautiful manicured grounds, you cross a fence, and all of a sudden you're in a little mini-amusement park full of carnies, rides, games, and junky food (though instead of cotton candy and hot dogs, you get crepes with nutella and Belgian waffles...mmmm).

And the rides are just strangely set up. Like they had a trampoline area, and right smack in the middle of all the jumping kids was a statue of some military hero holding a sword. And the beer garden was built around a fountain. Not sure, but it just seems like they're weird accidents just waiting to happen. "Oh no, my friend drank too much beer and drowned in the fountain that just happened to be inside the bar" or "Damn, my friend trampolined into a sword and died".
But a ferris wheel is a ferris wheel, and other than falling or getting hit by a pigeon, they're pretty safe. So we paid 6 Euros each, got into our little gondola and went on up.

At first it was a little weird, as the gondola kept spinning, and the only thing that spinning makes me do is throw up, but then we stabilized and all was good. Then Gina decided to get up to take pictures and that was another unpleasantly wobbly situation that sent Rachel into a panic.

Regardless, the view was beautiful and definitely almost worth the price. It's too bad that it took us about half and hour to take three complete spins, since they had to stop every few secondss to disembark and load up new riders. But it did make the picture taking easier.
Afterwards, we took a walk around the fairgrounds. Gina won a little ceramic pig at a shooting gallery, Rachel tried her first crepe ever, and Sunny smiled a lot. The fair also had some fun houses, like the one's in the "You're the One That I Want" part in Grease, and a scary mansion ride. The scary mansion was almost as bad as the one in Santa Cruz, but at the end, they had real people, dressed up like ghosts, jumping out and grabbing you. It was fun, but I did check to see that my wallet was still there when the ride finished.

As is becoming a ritual, I ended the night with a crepe.