Trip to Paris

Dan and I dropped off our girls the night before at Ryann's (Thanks so much again!) and headed out early the next morning on the train at 5 am. We were pretty excited minus the fact we had 3 hours of sleep that night. We decided to go watch a movie and didn't get home until after 12 am. We arrived in London with plenty of time to spare to catch the Eurostar to Paris. Only a 2 hour 15 minute ride....we slept the pretty much the whole way. We then had to figure out how to get to our hotel using the metro....luckily I had some idea how it worked since that's what we had used in Berlin. We got the two day pass which was cheaper than probably getting a taxi to the hotel. We found the right area but when we looked around, we had no idea where the hotel was. We went to a tourist place and asked and turned out, our hotel was right next to the metro exit we had been standing at trying to figure out which way to go. We checked in and took a three hour nap before heading out and seeing Paris.

Dan and I wanted to see Notre Dame so we ate at a little cafe right next to it and I ate my tasty mozzarella and tomato sandwich and Dan had his chocolate crepes along with our 5 Euro water. Crazy...the water was almost as much as the sandwich! We decided not to go to the top....8 month pregnant lady climbing up all those stairs...I thought I would pass on that one but we did go inside and there was a service going on along with singing. It was lovely just sitting there listening. Dan and I are always amazed at these massive structures. It has been by far our favorite cathedral.

The resurrection story...
I took more pictures but it takes forever to upload them...but we spent quite some time inside. We then headed back out and walked around since the RER train station we were suppose to take was closed. We then ran into the bus that was the detour route. We were on our way but first we took a few pictures of the surrounding area around the cathedral.
Next stop....the Eiffel Tower of course. We were both surprised by the color...it was brown...I was thinking it was going to be more black with green. We took the elevator to the 2nd part...unfortunately the elevator was shut down to go all the way to the top which relieved Dan. He's afraid of heights....and he married a woman who loves them...

It was still a great view of the city. I loved the architecture. So much more "romantic" then England.

We headed back to to the hotel but first stopped by a market to get some fruit and water for dinner. We really weren't all that hungry. Had a great night sleep....it was so nice to have air conditioning in our room!!! Although...we did have a shower that didn't drain very well....kind of gross.

The next day we checked out, ate at a little cafe for breakfast and headed to the Louvre. We had to see Mona Lisa...which I must say....she's quite small. It was nice weather again....75 - 80, sunny and no humidity. Perfect, although it was warm to us since we're so use to not so good weather. We were overwhelmed by the museum. It took us forever to figure out the map and how to read it....but then I got it and we saw what we wanted to see.
I think our favorite part besides sitting, was the Italian and French art area. It was pretty cool to see the originals of all these famous paintings. We just sat and looked and it was very relaxing. We even saw the famous no arm lady statue. There was much more to see but after more than two hours we had our fill of the museum. We headed back out and walked and walked and walked all over. We didn't realize how far we had walked and were pretty much to the station. We were done earlier than we expected so we tried to get earlier tickets for the train but that was unsuccessful. We just hung out at the train station which in all honesty....was so nice, we had a seat.

I must say, before we headed off I was a little sketchy about going. I had heard that the people were rude and unfriendly but I must say, we had the opposite experience. We had people helping us as soon as we pulled out a map, men and women giving up their seats and no rudeness whatsoever. Perhaps it helped being a woman who is 26 days away from giving birth, but my experience of Paris was really nice. I don't really need to go there again....there are other places I would like to see but if perhaps some day, a long time from now I would like to see it again....when I'm not so pregnant.