I was finally back in my favorite city on earth and it did nothing but downpour the entire time we were there! It was still fun though. We left really early friday morning and got to Paris around 10ish. We were met by a coach bus to take us on a tour around the city. Unfortunately, it was just a coach bus and not an open top tour bus. That was my only complaint. Friday was the only nice day we had. They let us off the bus at the Eiffel Tower and les Invalides where Napoleon is buried.
We went over to the hotel and put our stuff down and had about 45 minutes before we met up again to head over to the Louvre. Did you know that if you looked at everything in the Louvre for 3 seconds it would take you 3 years to see everything? Crazy! We went to see the Mona Lisa which was really cool. I've seen it before but I forgot how small it is! After the Louvre, we went to a little café and people watched. Then we took the metro back to the hotel and stopped for some nutella crêpes before passing out.
On Saturday we did a walking tour of Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter then took a boat cruise around the Seine. I was looking forward to going to the top of Notre Dame but since it was pouring, we wouldn't have been able to see anything, so we walked around the inside. It's gorgeous in there. Then we walked through the Latin Quarter and saw the oldest tree in Paris before heading over to the boat tour. I wanted to sit up top on the outside. Good thing I didn't because it started pouring! So we enjoyed Paris from the warm inside of the boat.
Once that was over we headed back to the Latin Quarter for lunch. The place we went to had really good hot chocolate! After that we went back to the hotel for a little bit to relax before heading back out to the Eiffel Tower. We decided to go when it was still light out so we could see the tower be lit up. Surrounding the big green park that's in front of the tower were huge bears representing a country and what it is known for. It is a United Nations initiative. The bears are on tour and going to different countries. We went to the US bear which was kind of a let down because it was just painted as the Statue of Liberty...which is kind of funny considering that was a gift from France. Nonetheless, it was still cool to see.
As dusk set in the tower started to light up. Every hour, on the hour for 5 minutes, the tower starts to sparkle. To kill the 45 minutes we still had we decided to walk across the street and grab some crêpes. We looked for places to sit but didn't really use our heads because when we sat down on a bench we proceeded to get wet pants, which was really uncomfortable and cold the rest of the night! But it was worth it because the Eiffel Tower is just absolutely gorgeous when it sparkles.
We did not have much luck at all on Sunday. We decided to go over to the Catacombs, which is underground passageways lined with bones. Really creepy, but very cool. Well low and behold they were closed because of air conditioning problems. Why they needed the air conditioning is beyond me considering it was 43 degrees out. Then we attempted to hop on the metro and head over to musée d'Orsay. Funny story actually. It was supposed to be one stop but we got on the wrong way and then got lost in the metro station for 40 minutes. By the time we got to the museum the line to get in was 3 hours long so we just went to have a long Parisian lunch. We headed back to the hotel after that and were just completely slaphappy at that point that everything was hilarious so we managed to have some fun with it. Finally, we headed back to London on the Eurostar and got back home around 11pm. It was a fun weekend over all and we're going to go back in December to hopefully have better weather!
eiffel tower
les invalides
notre dame
notre dame
notre dame
notre dame
oldest tree in paris
musée d'Orsay
eiffel tower
country bears
arc de triomphe
mona lisa
winged victory of samothrace
louvre
eiffel tower in the distance at sunset
eiffel tower sparkling on the hour
