Paris day 4

Our last morning in Paris we woke up and ate breakfast with a view of some pretty building which I can no longer remember.

Our waiter didn't like us and tried to ignore us.

Then we walked through Luxembourg Gardens

and caught the metro to the airport. Au revoir!

Paris day 3

The morning of day three was my favorite. According to the Notre Dame website, the church doesn't open until ten. We grabbed a quick breakfast and then walked over there. Saw this cool metro stop on the way. Our hotel was only a few blocks from Notre Dame.

We got there around 9:30 and the church was already open. Before going inside, we started listening to Rick Steves' audio tour of Notre Dame and some other sites on the "left bank" of Paris. It was really interesting and informative. It helped us to notice things on the facade of the building that otherwise would have gone right over my head.

(At one point during the French Revolution, the people of Paris thought those guys in the middle were rich French kings instead of the kings of Judah, so they cut off all their heads. A schoolteacher who lived close by took all the heads and buried them in his backyard. They stayed buried for years and were found in 1977. I thought that story was crazy!) So those heads on the church aren't the originals...

The audio tour takes you around the outside of the building before going inside, so we next walked around the cathedral to a little park. Throughout our trips, we'd been accosted by women with clipboards asking us to sign some random petition and we'd always told them no. On this particular morning, we were two of only a few people walking through the park. Dan was wearing our little one-strap backpack on his front (see above pictures). A woman approached and asked Dan to sign a petition. He said no and kept walking. She stayed right with us, holding her clipboard up in his face. She was joined by another woman who did the same thing to Dan. He tried to dodge them but they stuck with him. Finally he firmly semi-yelled, "NO!" and they fell away. A second later, Dan noticed that our backpack was unzipped so he turned and ran to chase them down. I followed him as he got to a group of about four women with clipboards. He told them to stop and asked them what they took. They played dumb but he again told them to stop and they did. I then looked through the bag to make sure nothing was missing while he told them that if anything was taken, he would holler for the police, who weren't far away. Fortunately, we had our cell phones on us (we were using mine for the audio tour) and a big water bottle sat right in the front of our pack, blocking them from reaching in and grabbing anything else. After we made sure all was fine, the women left the park ASAP. My heart was racing! We listened to the last of the outside portion of the audio tour, grabbed a ticket for the tower tour, and then went inside. It's incredible.

It's ten stories tall. Construction began in 1160 and ended in 1345. So crazy what they were able to do back then and that so much has held up well.

The window above and below is the only original window still in tact.

We got to sit for a while and listen to a choir practicing. Then we headed back outside.

We had some time to kill before our tower tour, so we continued the audio tour, which took us back over the bridge onto the left bank for a while.

The tower tour isn't really a tour, they just let you up to a few of the towers to see the view and the gargoyles. It's about 350 steps to the top and it's a tiny spiral staircase. It was our prettiest day of the trip.

We ended up kind of getting stuck up there for a while. There's only one staircase that everyone uses, so it gets backed up. Not a bad day to be up there, though!

Afterward, we got in line for security at Sainte Chappelle and skipped ahead in our audio tour while we waited. This building was much smaller but the stained glass was gorgeous.

Reality. I tried to take pictures as if we were the only ones there, but we definitely were not!

After this, we toured the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. Then we took a LONG walk. We stopped halfway to grab a baguette and some cheese to eat at a park for lunch.

We had a view of the Eiffel Tower. Not bad!

Then we took a path along the Seine which we thought would be nice, but then it went underground and we ended up walking in a dark tunnel with horse poop for a LONG time.

We emerged near the Musee de l'Orangerie, which has some big Monet waterlilies and a few other paintings. It was included in our museum pass, so we went in. I don't think I would pay extra for it...

We finally reached our destination: a river cruise. I'd heard great things about these so I was pretty excited, but it was a total disappointment. We waited in line forever, even though we had tickets. The cruise was supposed to take us down around the island where Notre Dame is, but it turned around early and we went under some other tunnels in a jankier part of Paris...

Not what we were expecting and a total waste of like 3 hours. We saw much more just walking around on our own.

Anyhow, after this we went to a restaurant that I was excited for - it's called Les Papilles.

It's a tiny place that has a fixed four-course Parisian meal. Take it or leave it. We were lucky enough to snag the last table. After we got there, a lot of others were turned away and told to come back at 9:30! First course was a delish pureed zucchini soup with bacon and cheese. Second course was beef cooked in red wine for hours upon hours served with veggies. Third course was cheese (which seems weird as an American and we were stuffed, but we ate it and it was good). Fourth course was a dessert in a cup that was an orange creme kind of thing. It reminded me of that Mormon jello type of dessert with little orange pieces and marshmallows and coconut with cool whip or something. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Well, we rolled outta that place stuffed to the gills. Did some souvenir shopping for the kids. Then got ice cream because ice cream is always the answer. Even when you're stuffed. Then we headed back to the hotel.

Notre Dame was amazing and dinner was fantastic!! Loved that day!

Paris day 2

We had breakfast at a crepe place overlooking the Pantheon and then took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. The metro signs were pretty cool.

 Every place we went had a super long line to get through security. Dan had visited once before 9/11 and everything was just open, but now it's a different story and a lot of time is spent waiting in line.

We bought tickets to climb the 675 stairs to the second platform. It was a gorgeous day.

It's always nice when you can ask someone else to take your picture.

It got a little cloudy as we were heading back down.

We ate lunch at a cute little restaurant. So many of the restaurants here are TINY. I could have reached out and put my arm around the woman at the table next to me. Dan had a tomato/mozzarella quiche and I had a croque moseiur, which is basically a grilled cheese with ham and then they melt more cheese on top as far as I could tell. But a friend of ours who used to live in Paris told me to get one, so I did.

On we walked. We stopped at Napoleon's Tomb, which is housed in a beautiful building that I forgot to take a picture of. Here's the dome inside.

 His giant coffin, which is made up of like seven different coffins.

 After that we went to the Rodin Museum. He's the guy who sculpted The Thinker and The Gates of Hell from Dante's Inferno. The gold dome in the background is the Dome des Invalides where Napoleon's tomb is.

Next up was the Musee d'Orsay, which has more impressionist paintings. This museum was more my style than the Louvre and although large, still managable. I only took one picture in there.

My ankle, which acts up sometimes, had started to hurt at that point. We took a metro to our next location - Sacre Coure in the Montmartre area (a hill overlooking lots of the city).

 We joined lots of others on these steps to soak in the view.

 And I just want to say that my photobomb game was on-point for most of this trip. I wish I could see some of the pictures with me in the background.

We finished the night with crepes once again. We tried this tiny little place and it was stupendous.

There was seating in there for only twelve people. Salty crepes for dinner with a nutella crepe for me and a lemon crepe for Dan. Then took the metro back to our hotel!

Paris day 1

Tuesday morning we drove the kids over to Charlottesville and said goodbye. We then drove to Baltimore for our flight. We got there a little early so we stopped at a restaurant Dad had recommended for some delicious crab cakes. So good!

We flew on an Icelandic airline called Wow. They are a low-budget, no-frills, no-free-water type of airline so we grabbed another snack before taking off a few hours later. We tried to sleep as much as possible because we were set to fly through the night and land in Paris around noon. Dan slept better than I did... We had a layover in Iceland and then continued on to France!

The airport was a ways out of town so we took the metro in. There was a strike going on, so we had to take the local train which was jam-packed with people. We stood the whole way. A guy shoved me because I accidentally tapped him with my backpack. It was not a great way to start the trip! After a connection, we made it near out hotel.

(Heading out into Paris.)

We grabbed our first French food - Dan a sandwich and me my first Parisian crepe (goat cheese, fennel, and honey - sounded better than it was), and then checked in to our cute little hotel. It used to be part of a monastery. Our room was classified as "cozy" but that's what we expected and we didn't spend much time there. The lobby had a bunch of portraits of animals posing as people. I thought Afton would like this one below.

We dropped off our stuff and then hit the streets!

In half-joking preparation for our trip, we watch Bourne Identity. Here I am at Pont Neuf and looking over the Seine. "I told you to come alone!"

The weather was cool and it started to rain pretty hard as we walked over to the Louvre.

We made it and noticed the crazy line to get inside. We had bought museum passes that got you into a bunch of different places and I'd read that there's a shorter line for pass holders if you went in a different underground entrance. So we spent forever trying to find that, only to also find out that there isn't a separate line downstairs, it was back outside. So off we went again into the rain and finally found the shorter line to get inside.

The Louvre is gigantic. I read in one of the many guide books from the library that it would take 9 months just to glance at each of the 35,000 things they have on display. But we did our best. We started with the Mona Lisa.

Ha! Can you see her back there? I eventually made my way to the front of the pack for a shot.

And here's a better shot of everyone else trying to do the same thing.

A few more pictures of things I liked in the Louvre.

The building itself was incredible. I wish they'd give you a tour of it and explain what they used the insane amount of rooms for...

When we got back outside, the rain was gone and it was really nice out.

We started our long walk from the Louvre down to the Arc de Triomphe. (About 2.2 miles - I just looked it up. We did a ton of walking on this trip!) Along the way, we stopped for dinner at a place called Creperie Framboise. So good. We split a "salty" crepe and then had two dessert crepes - one raspberries and cream, the other sauteed apples with caramel sauce. Oh, baby. So good.

Anyhow, we walked the Champs-Elysees to the Arc and took the 284 stairs to the top. Pretty view!

 The Eiffel Tour "glitters" for the first five minutes of every hour after dark until midnight or so. We got there at like 10:10, so we just barely missed it, but it was still pretty and all lit up.

They kicked us out at 10:30 so we climbed back down and took the metro back to our hotel.

There are twelve roads (I think) that all come together around the Arc, so you have to cross the street underneath. The traffic there was pretty crazy.