Paris, France: June 1-June 4

Our apologies for the length of this post.  It includes 3 days of Paris and photos.  Please note that all links are to TripAdvisor of the given locations.  We are happy to help in you make decisions in your travel plans!

Oh how we loved Paris!  So our journey to Paris began with tickets on the Eurostar in fold down seats in the end of the car as there were no seats left on the train.  We were to ask an employee after we began our trip if there were seats available.  Well, about 4 minutes after the train started moving, a gentleman asked us if we'd looked for seats.  We said, "no," and followed him to look.  The next thing we know, we have a private carriage  in a car!!  Well, this being our first trip anywhere by train, we were so excited!

 St. Pancras is a beautiful station!

 Our original seats on the train....

And our upgraded seats!!

We spent some of the 2 and quarter hour journey figuring out how to get from Gare du Nord station to our hotel (Hotel la Demeure) on Boulevard St. Marcel.  Fortunately, Erik is fabulous with maps!  We ran into an American in the train station giving away two metro tickets since he was leaving for his next destination.  We were sure they wouldn't work, but they did and we were on our way!  It was a short ride, and a pretty quick walk to the hotel.  We checked in and rested for a bit before heading out to meet my friend, Patrick, for dinner.  He took us to his favorite creperie which happened to be only a short walk from our hotel--Au P'tit Grec.  It was fabulous!  The crepes were HUGE and full of yummy cheese and meat (or not, in Patrick's vegetarian case).  Definitely Recommend for anyone traveling in Paris!

 The view from our room.  You can't see it in this photo, but we could see the top of The Eiffel Tower!

 Our room was just fabulous!  "Parisian small" as I call it, is to be expected in this city as a whole, but the bed was comfortable and the bathroom clean!

Patrick and I outside the hotel on our last night in Paris.

After dinner, Patrick generously gave us a walking tour of the city.  It was wonderful!  We walked from our eatery past the The Pantheon, St. Michael's Fountain, The Sorbonne (the school where Patrick is studying for his masters degree), we got our first glimpse of Notre Dame, City Hall, and more!  Before we new it, the time was 10 PM and Patrick had to go work on a paper.  He directed us toward the right direction and we said goodnight.  

The following morning we woke leisurely and agreed to wander the city.  One of my goals in traveling is to just leave the hotel and walk; "get lost," if you will.  We had a list of things we wanted to see, but other than viewing them on a map, no real idea where anything was located.  On this first full day, we saw the following:

Notre Dame!  There are no words to describe Notre Dame!  It is beautiful!  From every side surrounding the outside, there is a new something that you find.  From the windows, gargoyles, and stone carvings around the cathedral, to the flying buttresses surrounding the beautiful architecture.  When we went inside, we both just stared around at the gorgeous church which is 850 years old!

Following our time at Notre Dame, we kept wandering in search of the Arc de Triomphe.  On the way, we stopped at City Hall to see the beautiful building in the day time.

I just stared at this building in awe of its beauty.  We don't have architecture like this at home.  The building is old and has been used for so long, and its still absolutely gorgeous!

We continued on looking for two things:  Still The Arc, and also Cartier.  One of my coworkers wanted only a picture of Cartier from Paris, so I was determined to find it and take a photo for her.  We found our way through a beautiful park, Jardin des Tuileries, which is situated along side and across the street from The Louvre.  The park was calm and quiet on a beautiful sunny day, with seats surrounding the fountains and gelato and coffee available all over the place.  We shared some gelato and sat down for a bit in the sun.

There are sculptures all over the city.  They are just beautiful!

When we came out of the park, we found a couple more beautiful pieces of art, and beyond them, we got our first glimpse of The Arc de Triomphe!

It's hard to see in this photo, but The Arc is at the end of the road here.  For those of you who watch The Tour de France, you'll recognize this view.

Erik was very excited to see this street sign--he watches The Tour de France....

After looking at an unnamed fountain for a bit (above), we wandered our way down the Camps Elysees, finding all sorts of high end shops on our way to The Arc.  We found Tiffany & Co, Louis Vuitton, Swarovski...I said to myself, "Cartier must be here somewhere!"  Well, we found Cartier.  It was the very last store before reaching The Arc du Triomphe!  So, Jackie, I got your photo!

The Arc de Triomphe is just amazing!  It is HUGE!!  Ordered by Napoleon and begun in 1806, it was built to honor the victories of the Grande Armee.  We spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out how to cross the round-a-bout to get to the "island" that the arc is situated on.  When we turned around to start walking toward the Eiffel Tower, we realized there are stairs which take you under the street to cross.

Erik standing under a sculpture at The Arc de Triomphe.  This is only about 2/3 of the height of the wall.  It's HUGE!

We did not climb to the top of The Arc.  In all honesty, we didn't even talk about it.  I'm sure the view would have been fabulous!  I was so excited to head toward The Eiffel Tower!!  A friend of mine suggested that we buy a fresh baguette and a bottle of wine and enjoy a date at The Eiffel Tower.  We did, and it was wonderful!  We bought the items on our way to the tower, and continued on to marvel at the beautiful tower before finding a piece of grass to sit on and enjoy our "dinner."  We just couldn't get over the fact that we were there, together, sitting in a park, looking up at The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France!  We sat for a good while, and went to see about getting tickets to go up to see the view.  We chose the middle viewpoint, and it was perfect!

The views were amazing!  To see all of the beautiful places we visited during the course of the day from this iconic tower was just indescribable!  I personally loved every second of our time there.  It was comfortably cool, and our wait times were very low.  We visited the tower in the evening, enjoyed some time chatting and people watching, took the lift up to see the views, and came down to watch the tower light up and sparkle before finding our way to a metro station to go back to the hotel.  It was such a wonderful day!

I really wanted to visit Versailles while we were in Paris.  It was one of only a couple of suggestions I received, and I fully intended to go and visit.  Unfortunately, we only had one day that was simply "free," and I woke up feeling pretty under the weather (I'd been fighting a cold since leaving India).  So instead, we decided to stay a little closer to home base.  We went to get crepes at the same creperie that Patrick had shown us (Erik LOVED them!), and found ourselves at a street side cafe for coffee and tea.  Sitting at one of these cafes was another wish list item for me, so my day was made.  The cafes are situated so that small tables spill out of the building, all facing the street with chairs looking in the same direction.  We chose a table in the front row overlooking the small square and watched the comings and goings of the morning.  After our break, we decided to look at some of the shops up and down the street.  I found a pretty bracelet, and a gift for the children of a friend.

After all of this, we officially decided against going to Versailles, and decided that we would visit Basilica Sacre Coeur and the Moulin Rouge instead.  We would have loved to see the gardens and palace at Versailles, but I must admit that this visit was nice as well.  The basilica is just beautiful and the view from the stairs is marvelous as well.  Photos are not permitted inside, though friends of ours who were visiting Paris at the same time took photos, and they're very nice.  I might just ask them for copies.

This was a carousel at the bottom of the stairs  to the basilica.  I found it enchanting, and it had two stories!

To the left of the basilica, we found the stairs that is in so many photos of Paris (search "Montmartre stairs").  I meant to go take my photo of the beautiful and well photographed stairs, but in my excitement and awe of the basilica, I completely forgot until we were already at Moulin Rouge!  Since there was a metro station directly across from where we were, we went ahead and started for the hotel.

We didn't see a show, though had I thought ahead, we might have.  One American visitor in Paris said that they had seen a show there and it was "crazy!"  Definitely on my to do list for the future (not so sure what Erik thinks about this).

Once arriving back, we decided we were hungry and set off to find some dinner.  We decided on a little French restaurant (we were in France, after all).  I don't think I've ever had French food before, so I don't know how "good" it was, but we found it tasty.  We had our first taste of the famed onion soup (not "French onion soup").  It was wonderful:  Full of flavor, far less salt than we prepare it with here in the US.  Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the very quaint little restaurant.

And thus, we went to bed only to wake up to our last day in Paris.  The day was the only rainy one we experienced in the city, and it worked out perfectly as we intended to visit Musee du Louvre (aka The Louvre).  As neither Erik or I particularly classify ourselves as "art people," we expected to see a bit and go on our way.  Well, we were wrong yet again.  The museum was exquisite!  It has something like 4 floors on 3 wings:  We only visited one floor on 2 wings and a little here and there that we got a glimpse of.  Some pieces didn't strike us, others we couldn't take our eyes off of!  Just like with any art museum/exhibit, there is no rhyme or reason as to which pieces you do or don't like.  Random pieces simply struck one or both of us.  We were surprisingly permitted to take photos inside the museum (no flash=excuse the quality), so we took snapshots of some that struck us.

The Coronation of Napoleon was huge!

Even the ceilings are beautiful!

The Mona Lisa!

Left and Above are inside the same room.  These are The Crown jewels of France.  The photo is unclear, but they are absolutely breathtaking!

You can't see the facial expressions in this image.  My interpretation is that the Angel of Death is taking the man, and he doesn't want to leave his love and their child.  I'm sure it's completely incorrect, but his eyes are very chilling.

We were supposed to have met up with Patrick for an afternoon stroll and lunch, but I should mention that cellular ability for those of us with international phones is impossible.  We could connect to wifi which was readily available all over the city, but our phones weren't capable of using the wifi.  They would be stuck in "think" mode.  In other words, we missed my dear Patrick by only a few minutes and left him waiting for an hour before he headed to the library.  Of course we didn't realize this until we'd trekked back to our hotel and got onto the computer which worked fine in the hotel.  After profuse apologies, we made plans for dinner at a local pho restaurant (Rest Pho Banh Cuon 14) which is said to be the best in Paris.  I don't know about the best, but it sure was tasty!  We all sat and talked for a long while before realizing it was very late and we all had early mornings.  So, our last evening in Paris came to an end.  

One additional activity which we couldn't miss:

We had to put a lock on the bridge (of which there are actually at least two).  Our lock is visible in the photo to the right.

We didn't have major issues with communication, though admittedly, we were pretty quiet around French locals as we were both a bit intimidated.  On the occasions that we did communicate, I gave a very genuine apology for my lack of French speaking ability, and usually the person to whom I was speaking was kind and patient.  Only about twice or three times did we feel the "typical" French behavior toward Americans.  Patrick (who is an American fluent in French, and studying in Paris) was surprised by this, which is quite telling.  

We used the Metro easily.  The maps are color coded just as the lines are making it easy to read.  You simply find where you are, find where you're going, and follow the correct color.  Transfers were made easy by following the line we needed and looking ahead to the end of the line in order to see which direction we needed to go.  It took me a few rides to grasp this; like I said, Erik is very good at maps.  I mostly followed his lead.  We didn't ride the bus once as they seem a little more complicated.  The only up for the buses is that they are readily available.  It can be difficult to find a metro station when you need one, despite the fact that you know you've passed 6 or more throughout the day.  The only time this posed an issue was when we were cutting time close and we were both very tired (They stop running around 12:30 am).  We found a couple of police officers and asked for the next station.  They pointed us in the right direction and we quickly found our station.

Leading me to the next point...Paris is crawling with Police!  We even saw a very large riot squad on two sides of a corner.  I thought better of taking a photo of them.  We didn't see any arrests or crime which leads me to believe that the massive Police presence leads to low crime rates?  This is purely speculation on my part, though.  

Our first experiences in Europe were pretty incredible.  We had highs and lows.  We excelled and were tested.  We learned and grew as individuals, and as a couple.  There is no way that we can possibly know today the extent of the change that we experienced while we were away.  As I said before, we will write more as thoughts come to us.  It will likely happen over the next weeks or months.  As we talk about our memories and remember new ones. 

We know how amazing this opportunity was.  We made a decision to take advantage of the opportunity to see the world.  This is a goal of ours, and we realized that talking about it simply isn't enough.  So we went for it.  And it was entirely worth it!  Until our next adventure...

Keep on Burning....