Paris

Our next stop on the European vacation was just down the road to Paris! This did involve crossing the English Channel, which meant we got to take the train through the Chunnel! It was mostly uneventful, just dark for about 15 or 20 minutes, then we were in France!

Once in Paris, we made our way to our hotel, and luckily it was right off the Metro. When we got there our room wasn't quite ready, so we left our bags and we took a stroll to find some lunch, and the Eiffel Tower! We sat in the park right under the tower and enjoyed being in Paris.

After lunch we got checked in and showered and then since it was Friday, the Louvre was open late (until 9!) so we figured this was the best way to get the most for our museum money, so we were off. We found our way along the Metro once again, and the Louvre Metro stop puts you right underneath the museum, and you even pass a little shop which sells tickets, so we skipped a line already! The main lobby of the museum is quite intimidating, there are three wings with an entrance for each wing, and tons of people. Rick Steves said that this was the slow time, I would hate to see it busy. Fortunately they had a free map that included a dozen or so highlights, so we wandered off and found all kinds of cool stuff. They had Da Vinci paintings, the Venus de Milo sculpture, the Code of Hammurabi tablet, and little painting by the name of the Mona Lisa. And I think little might be a accurate description of the Mona Lisa, I think it was probably a 12 inch x 18 inch painting. I mean it was exciting to see and all, but it was teenie!

Then on Saturday we had reservations to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and once again we saw huge crowds to fight through, so we planned to get there a little bit before our reservation time. Fortunately, because we had the reservation we were able to skip almost all of the line at the bottom of the tower, but it did nothing for the lines once we got on the tower! The first elevator ride was uneventful, and the first stop wasn't that high according to Mikey, but still had some great views. Once we looked around for a few minutes, we jumped in line for the second elevator to go all the way to the top! Seems we could see all the way back to London from there!

That night we went up to Montmartre, one of the hills of the city that has the Basilica Sacre Coeur on the top of it. We got some great views of the Eiffel Tower all lit up and sparkling. We ate some cheese and bread for dinner, and eventually walked down to see the Moulin Rouge, which was only mildly exciting.









Sunday we took the train down to Versailles, but since Versailles isn't really Paris, please see the next blog post! (It's almost ready to be posted, I promise)

After Versailles, we wanted to check out the rest of the city that we hadn't seen yet, which involved taking a little stroll over to the Rue Cler and then seeing the Military Museum, but then we had to make our way down the Champs-Elysees, and look for landmarks from the Tour De France. We took a few pictures of the Arc de Triomphe and then made our way down the Champs-Elysees towards the Louvre. Once we got close to the Louvre, we hit up a public restroom, and I broke it twice... silly things that rinse after each use... Anyways, during our stroll we found some delicious snacks!! So we sat and ate and then we went over to see the Notre Dame. We sat in Notre Dame for a little while and then I took a million pictures and then Mikey got bored so we made our way back the Rue Cler for an Italian restaurant we saw early during the day.

And I think that about wraps up Paris! Well, except us almost missing our train back to London, but who really wants to hear about us going through the super valued members line and then jogging to the very other end of the train and having three minutes to spare once we sat down. Well, I thought it was wonderful and even with the warnings of Paris being really dirty, I didn't seem to mind too much, maybe some day we will go back for a boat cruise along the Parisian canals!

Here are our favorite night time pictures of the Eiffel Tower!