Paris

We took our first trip this past week. It was our Christmas present to each other- 4 days in Paris! I am not going to lie, I was a mess leading up to the trip. For some reason thinking about traveling to another country where you can't speak the language just freaked me out...and trying to figure out how we were going to get to the place we were staying overwhelmed me. This is why you stay at actual hotels.

I was introduced to this website this past summer, and knew of a couple that used it they went to Paris as well. All in all, it was wonderful. We paid a reasonable amount of money to stay in an apartment that was literally a 2 minute walk to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysee and then a 10 minute walk to the Eiffel Tower. The location was perfect. The traffic around the location, not so much. It was very loud, but oh well.

The apartment was cozy enough and it had a low bed, so James was in heaven. So we flew in around 5, but didn't actually get to the apartment until 7ish, because a)we had to at McDonald's- don't judge and b)we were trying to figure out how to get there. Thankfully, James was in charge and I was successfully letting him take the lead on this one. I decided before we went that I wasn't going to freak out anymore. We were going to get there, and it didn't matter if it took us 8 hours to find our way downtown or not, but it would be fun and an adventure either way. Good thing it didn't take us 8 hrs! We didn't have any trouble getting to the apartment, or navigating the metro and trains the whole trip!

Here are some highlights:

Eiffel Tower at night. It was seriously unbelievable. It was rainy, gross, and absolutely freezing, but we decided to venture out anyway and we were so glad we did. We just started heading down the street towards the huge, shiny building that lit up the sky. It was a pretty foggy night, so the top of the tower made the surrounding clouds glow this BEAUTIFUL red hue. We grabbed some hot wine, that I successfully ordered in French and enjoyed the view.

 

There was a little patisserie right around the corner from us, so we ate there in the mornings. Can I just say that the pastries were to DIE FOR. Hot and filled with chocolate- perfection. And we had oranginas. I probably drank 4 Orangina's while we there...so stinkin' good.

Our favorite museum was the Orsay, which kind of surprised me. I thought the Louvre was going to be at the top of the list, instead it was at the bottom... The Orsay on the other hand was awesome! It had a lot impressionist paintings, which are my favorite. I discovered that I really, really liked Monet's paintings. I have never been a big art person- I do think it is beautiful, but I have never really found myself drawn to pictures, but when we found Monet's collection it was a different story, I could have spent hours just looking at them. Here were a couple of my favorites:

James ended up loving all of the sculptures. So he was happy at the majority of the museums :)

Here is our little rant on the Louvre. It is huge. Absolutely massive. And if I could do it again, I would probably do parts of the museum each day, but it is WAY too much to do at once. And it was crowded, obnoxiously crowded. Plus, the Louvre allowed pictures to be taken, which the majority of museums don't, so with the crowds and all of the cameras it was difficult to walk without getting in someone's picture. I was over it in about an hour. The other downside, was that everything was in French- no big deal because we got the main points of all of the paintings, but we really wanted to read about some of the artifacts that they had. The other museums had like 12 different translations for each main event and usually the pictures as well- just kind of surprised me that the Louvre didn't. I'd really like to go back to Paris, and spend more time there, but it was by far the most overwhelming part of the trip.

Notre Dam was another incredible visit. The stained glass windows were breath-taking. We really enjoyed sitting and listening to the organ play and reading about it's history. It took 200 years for this church to be built, and it was built by the people! Everyone chipped in to do their part and construct this beautiful place of worship. That was the part that really got to me and James- the people that started building, didn't finish it, but instead passed down their passion to have a place of worship and didn't only pass it down to one generation, but through multiple! I thought it was so cool! I was also amazed at all of the detail. I mean the stone has beautiful curves in it, and have trouble fathoming how they made the stone curve like that back in the day... I also wonder how many people died in the process of building the church.

My other favorite part of Paris were the cool doors!! James mocked me as I would stop to take pictures, but they were just so cool, old, and were such beautiful colors.

We had a fabulous time. We ate some amazing food- the cheeses were my favorite, and drank a lot of wine. We will definitely have to go back and visit again because there are so many more places that I'd love to see in that city!