Paris!

I have just gotten back from Paris and I'm in love with the city! It was an absolutely wonderful experience and I hope to go back someday! I flew out late afternoon on Wednesday (Kevin arrived the next morning, which is a very long story itself.) It was a different experience getting into Paris and having no one around you speaking English. 3 years of high school French could never fully prepare you for the moment, thankfully I did remember how to say "non parli francias" which means I don't speak french. But the view from our room was BEYOND amazing. 

Yes. That is the Eiffel Tower in this image, and yes I got to look at that every night. As cliche as it sounds, it was absolutely breath-taking.

To give you an idea of where things are located around Paris, I figured I would put in a map of where things were located because Paris was HUGE. Even with all of our adventuring, we still had so so much to see! But Paris is broken up in 20 arrondissements, which are basically just 20 different zip codes. This map shows how they are broken up!

Now on to our adventures! So once Kevin arrived Thursday morning we set off to see the chapel Montmartre. There is only one word I could use to describe this place and that is gorgeous. it was on top of a hill that overlooked the city of Paris. It was a little climb up, but well worth the site! We walked around the area for a little bit and then headed down to some of the main streets to explore some more! We made our way to the Arc De Triomphe and Champs Elisees and took some typical tourist-y photos. We then crossed over the Seine River and looked right onto the Eiffel Tower. It almost didn't seem real! I tried my best to take pictures from every angle, which you can find on my facebook album. After soaking up the moment, we headed back to our room for a little rest (as well as stopping to get a true French Baguette to snack on). We then headed out to dinner at a place we found thank to Yelp that ended up being one of the best dinners I have had since being abroad. We started off dinner the true French-style way... with escargot, aka snails. To my surprise, I actually liked it! But it was hard to get over the fact that it was a snail I was eating. Kevin was obsessed with them! He would have ordered more if we hadn't already ordered our main entrees. After dinner we headed back and called it a night! The map below shows the journey we made through Paris in just a few hours (I calculated and it was over 7 miles of just sighting seeing, and my feet are defiantly feeling it now)

Montmartre

Arc De Triomphe

Eiffel Tower

For our second full day in Paris, we started off by grabbing some Crepes. I can easily say I am now addicted to the crepes. I got a strawberry crepe (or a frimbose crepe) and Kevin got a nutella banana. After we got our crepes we went back over to the Eiffel Tower were we left off and went on from there. We thought about going to the top of the tower, but unfortunately it was not open for us to go up. We could have paid to go to the 3rd floor but it was around a 4 hour wait to get there (crazy, right?? since its not even tourist season! and it was early on a Friday!)  We headed straight across the lawn facing the tower towards the old Military School, which was built in 1750. We then headed down the street towards Des Invalides which was built around 1670 and Napoleon  used as his mansion during his time. Now it is used as the national army museum, and napoleon's tomb is located in the museum as well! Afterwards we walked across the Seine river and headed to Notre Dame (which is located on an Island in the Seine River). The cathedral is actually a lot smaller then I imagined it (but don't get me wrong, it was still really big!). We got to go around inside and  look around, there was even a little sermon going on! It was another "I can't believe this is really happening" moment getting to walk around the church. After walking around the church we walked around the rest of the Island and headed to the other side of the river and saw the Chatelet, which is the only piece left of an ancient prison & court that stood nearby but was destroyed by Napoleon. We walked around some more and then took a little break before heading to the local shopping district were I got my very own longchomp purse (for those who don't know, its a purse that is extremely overly priced in the US but you can get it almost 50% off in Paris.) After my puchase, we headed to the Louvre! This museum was bigger then anything you could ever imagine. It would take literally months for you to see this entire museum. We went rather late (around 6pm) because on Fridays from 6-9 the museum is free! Once there Kevin & I headed straight to the one and only, Mona Lisa. We even got to take pictures of it! While walking around the Louvre, I also ended up running into a friend from high point who was studying abroad in southern France. It was crazy! Out of all the places to be at the same time in Europe, let a lone the same museum and the same hallway at the same time. Shows how small this world really is! After the Louvre we headed to Champs Elisees again in search of Le Deurs, which is suppose to be the most famous macaroon shop in Paris! I got a raspberry macarron and Kevin got a vanilla one. This was the first macaroon we had ever had, and boy was it good. Afterwards, we headed to dinner (yes, we ate macaroons before dinner) and then called it a night.  Below is another map that shows our journey throughout the day!

our crepes!

Des Invalides

Notre Dame

Inside from the Notre Dame

The Louvre!

Mona Lisa

Our last day there we packed our bags and took one last look at the Eiffel Tower from our room. We then headed down to get MORE crepes. We then walked around Paris one last time (actually, we tried to go to the Carnavalt Museum which is about the history of Paris, but we ended up getting lost and once we finally got there we were told that we couldn't get in because we had our backpacks with us). We ate some lunch and then got on a train back to the airport and began our journey home!

It was a fabulous trip and I would pay to do it all over again!