Bonjour, Paris

Hey, look at that.  It's been two weeks since my last entry.  My good excuse is that Jay and I took our long-awaited trip to Paris.  Grandma came and hung out with the kids while we spent our 15th wedding anniversary in France.  It was amazing.  Once I got over the shock of driving away from my children and purposefully leaving them for so long I was fine. 

We arrived in France on Saturday, October 6th.  Travelling to Europe (or anywhere, really) can be a pain when you have to worry about flight connections and such.  Since we were booked on the direct, non-stop flight from Salt Lake City to Paris the trip itself was easy.  We got on the plane about 4:30 pm Friday and got off in Paris about 11:00 am on Saturday.  We were tired but took a nice little 2 hour nap in the hotel before dinner.  Our plan was to wander around our neighborhood and find a quick bite to eat (we stayed in St. Michel, just a few blocks from Notre Dame and it was a great location) but unfortunately we woke up to rain.  Sigh.  We soldiered on, however, and did a little walking but it was hard to see anything in the dark and the wet.  We grabbed some Asian food and headed back to the hotel to bed.

Sunday was the best weather day we had.  We had bought tickets on L'Open Tour, which is a bus tour where you get off and back on the bus as many times as you want at various stops around the city.  It was a great way to see alot of Paris in a short period of time and we enjoyed it.  It was sunny and pleasant and a nice way to spend the day.


This was the view from our hotel room.  We loved just walking around Paris - all the little streets and alleyways had some interesting buildings and architecture.

We were lucky to get a room with a little balcony.  We wanted to sit out every morning and eat our yummy pastries but alas, the weather didn't cooperate.  The first morning, however was lovely.

This is a view of Paris from the Arc d'Triomphe.  It was quite a climb but had some great views of the city:

 A view of the Arc d'Triomphe:

 Another view of the Arc d'Triomphe:

 Jay took this picture of the Eiffel Tower from our L'Open Bus. 

 Here we are on the bus:



 A picture of us on top of the Arc d'Triomphe:

 

 

We ended our first day in Paris just walking around St. Michel.  We were pretty tired still so we just grabbed a gyro from a little place in our neighborhood.  It was probably our least favorite meal of the trip.  One of the cool things about Paris was just being in a big city with all the different places available to eat.  We went with mainly French food for the rest of the trip.

 

Next up - a rainy day in Paris means the Louvre with about 9 billion other tourists.  Stay tuned.