Paris

Paris was an experience.  Some parts were absolutely amazing but I can't say us and Paris ended as very good friends.

We made such good plans of how to get to our Eurostar chunnel train but we didn't do so well when it came to getting to our Paris Hotel.  First getting tickets for the Paris underground took forever and these young guys would harrass the tourists in the lineup trying to sell us tickets and then these army dudes came with huge guns and chased them away.  The underground map is very good and since our hotel was called Millenium Hotel Paris Opera, we thought getting off at the Opera station seemed like a good idea.  So we pop up for the first time in Paris with people smoking everywhere and we have no clue where we are.  The GPS Leif has doesn't work so well with all the tall buildings around so we followed it down a very narrow and very wrong street - with all of our luggage!  We turned around and finally got to the right boulevard and decided to go left because there was more road that way.  Big mistake.  We went about 10 blocks before the GPS decided to tell us we were going the wrong way.  We finally found our hotel hot, sweaty, tired, hungry, and grumpy.  Not a great first impression!!! The hotel did have cool elevators though.

Our first order of business was food.  There are lots of cafe looking places so we picked one and sat outside.  I'd heard crepes were delicious in Paris so I tried one of those and Leif decided to go with home comfort and order a cheese burger.  This was part of our view from the patio type area.

Since it was only about 2pm when we finished, we thought we'd make use of the afternoon and check out the Eiffel Tower.  This was the absolute best part of Paris for me.  These are some views from underneath the tower.

We decided to climb the stairs up the first two sections and then take the required elevator to the very top.  Our legs were burning by the end of 1021 steps!

The view from the top of the steps was better than from the very top.

After waiting in the huge lineup we finally got to the top.  As you can see, the wait was well worth it.  You can see the tower's shadow in the picture above and the second one below.

Best shot of the day.

On our way back to the hotel we decided it would be cool to buy bread and cheese and eat like the French.  We found a cheese store where the lady only spoke French.  My broken Canadian French didn't seem to make sense to anyone which was really frustrating.  We got what we wanted in the end.  Unfortunately she didn't sell bread so we had to go find another shop.  It was the same story in there and the lady wasn't very nice.  On the way back to the hotel we had more issues because my 2-day train ticket that we bought that morning wouldn't work.  We ended up walking to another station with an information window and the man let us through so we could go home and recover.

The next day started out very positive.  We found a McDonalds for breakfast down the street with an upper eating level.  People watching up there was so entertaining!  We saw so many weird things but as soon as we got out the camera the best ones all hid.

Our next stop of the day was the beautiful Notre Dame Cathedral.  I didn't realize this place is actually a working Catholic place of worship.

After going back to the hotel for a new camera battery, we headed off to Le Louvre.  This museum is GIGANTIC!!!  We turned up our cultured side for a couple hours and walked and walked and walked.  The highlight was probably seeing the Mona Lisa.  If you want to see more, I took 113 pictures there.

To complete the long day, we went shopping at the nearby Galeries Lafayette.  They have stores like Gucci, Prada, Louis Vitton, etc.  Very ritzy place.  For supper we found a yummy crepe stand and had one chicken and cheese and one nutella and banana.  So good.

We tried to go to McDonalds again for breakfast the next morning and people watch but they were closed even though their sign said they were open.  We ended up walking around for half an hour until Starbucks opened and we were so happy they had filtered coffee instead of the weird stuff we'd been drinkng!  We decided to take a taxi to the train instead of using the underground again.  Best decision ever.

And that was Paris.  I'm going to do another post of all the weird people we managed to take pictures of another time.