Paris, j'adore!

A Year Ago Today...

March 16, 2009

Itinerary:

Monday, 3/16 Paris

-Breakfast: Leftover food from dinner/groceries.

-10:00am - Julia meets us at hotel

-Montmartre, Le Sacré-Coeur Basilica (metro pass works to ride to top-otherwise can climb)

-Lunch: Ham and Cheese Crepe €3.80

-Notre Dame

-Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore

-Eiffel Tower (Up to 2nd floor in elevator €7.80)

-Versailles Gardens (free: Palace closed on Mondays)

-Arc de Triomphe and the Champs-Elysées

-Dinner at McDonalds across from hotel: €6.00

-Julia meets us at hotel for some hang out time before bed.

-Lodging: Hotel Concorde Saint-Lazare

Okay, so our first full day in Paris was another full one! We saw and did so much! It's hard to only show you a few of the photos...but here is a taste of what we did a year ago in Paris.

This is Le Sacré-Coeur Basilica. It is up on the top of a high hill so you actually ride up a little tram thing to get to the top. It is really ornate and touristy inside. It really is impressive though on the top of the hill which is at the highest point of the city. On a clear day like the one we had, it provides for an amazing vista of the city. Once again, Julia was able to spend a lot of the day with us--spending quality time as well as being our fabulous tour guide.

I just wanted to fit in with the Parisian Gargoyle crowd...

When we came down from the "mountain," we got some delicious and authentic crepes on the street. Mine was ham and cheese and it was deeeelicious!

Our next stop was another church that we needed to see: Notre Dame. Sadly, we saw no hunchbacks, but we did enjoy the fine architecture. Inside was really touristy again and in fact it was full of machines where you could get little coin souvenirs. It's rather sad actually.

This was a stop that Autumn made sure was on the itinerary and we all enjoyed it immensely. Shakespeare and Co. is an English bookstore in Paris with quite the charming atmosphere including a cat and a piano inside. I think there was a cat anyway...am I remembering the right bookstore? Maybe that was one in Seattle...

I told you we packed a lot of things into this day! From the bookstore, we headed back to the Eiffel Tower and this time ascended to the top. We were planning to save a little money and climb the steps, but turns out we got in the long line for the elevator and by the time we got to the front, we weren't about to stand in another line.

We had been debating whether or not we would go up the tower, but we were all so thankful we did! It was such a beautiful clear day and the view of Paris was breathtaking!

Julia had to leave us to pick up her charges at the end of our Eiffel Tower experience, so the four of us headed off on our own to experience Versailles Palace. A helpful tip for anyone thinking about stopping by the Palace: it's closed on Mondays!! It is actually quite a ways outside of Paris by metro, so we were sad to see that we could not get in (consequently, the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays and so we were able to return to the Palace to see the inside the next day. Sadly, we never saw anything in the Louvre--guess we'll have to go back!). However, it all turned out okay because we ended up having some of our best times of the trip running around the gardens at Versailles--which as a bonus, was completely freeeeee! We had so much fun in fact, that I thought our time in the Versailles Gardens deserved its own post so you'll have to look for that coming soon.

Can you believe we squeezed one more thing into our day? We finally made it back into Paris and checked out the Arc De Triomphe as the sun was setting. It is right outside a subway exit so you come out from the depths of the underground and there it is in all its glory, proudly waving the French flag. From here, we decided to walk back to our hotel and take in some of the Paris street sights on the way. So here we are planning out the best route with our trusty map. I think we may have gotten a little lost, but that is part of the adventure, now isn't it??