Ah, Paris

Paris for the weekend. A very successful weekend indeed!

Started Saturday morning at about 5:30. Got to the train station and got on our TGV. Arrived in Paris at about 9:20. Found our way to our hotel. Then started the great adventure!

For day one, we decided to walk around and hit all the big monuments, so that Sunday we could spend all our free time inside Musée du Louvre. So we got off the tram at Cité and  saw Notre-Dame de Paris.

For those who don't know, all cities have a Notre Dame (which translates as Our Lady), because these are the cathedrals that are found in the center of the town. Generally, when a new town was being built, they would build the cathedral, and then build from there. But the Notre-Dame de Paris is the most famous, and therefore can just be called Notre-Dame and people will know what you are talking about. But downtown Strasbourg, there is Notre-Dame de Strasbourg. So be careful!

Point Zero - if you touch this, you will return to Paris one day : )

After walking around Notre-Dame we got lunch from a sandwich vendor. My mom and I split a mozzarella and tomato panini. It was very delicious. This we ate in the little park behind Notre-Dame.

After we had our fill, I wanted to find Shakespeare and Co. Which is a super old bookstore that is one of the haunts of Hemmingway. This turned out to be a bit more difficult than I'd anticipated. I had been to it before with my school group when we came two spring-breaks ago. But this had been a day that was full of walking all over Paris, and it was impossible for me to even attempt to mentally retrace our steps. So we ended up asking half a dozen different people along the way. But, we finally made it!
Then we made our way towards Avenue des Champs-Élysées.

On our way, we found a little sidewalk café that looked perfect for my dad's needed experience of sitting in a french café drinking a coffee. So we stopped and had a little snack. I got hot chocolate, and the best crème brulée of my life. Yum. My parents both finally got the pain au chocolate (essentially a square shaped croissant with chocolate on the inside of it. Super delicious) they had been craving.
Then we continued on our way towards Champs-Élysées. We walked on the Rue de Rivoli side of Le Louvre.

Then we walked through Le Jardin de Tuileries, coming out to Place de la Concorde, with the huge Obelisque in the middle. Then continued down Champs-Élysées. 

At the end of this grand shopping street, stands L'Arc de Triomphe. We crossed under the street and while my dad wandered around it and took pictures, mom and I rested our feet. Then we started to make our way to La Tour Eiffel.
On our way we looked at different restaurants, figuring we would stop for an early dinner. But we ended up coming across a really neat looking English Pub with surprisingly good prices. The food and atmosphere was excellent. I highly recommend Frog XVI along avenue Kléber ( Frog Pubs website ). I had the best veggie burger of my life.

We reached La Tour Eiffel around 6:00ish (18:00). We took some pictures, and wandered down towards it. There was a vendor selling french snacks (such as guifres (waffles)) and they had Barbe à Papa (which translates as Grandfather's beard, and it's cotton candy!) Of course I had to get some! (My mother is Grandma Wonka after all). For the first time in my life, I had fresh cotton candy. The guy poured the sugar into the machine and spun the cotton candy right in front of me! It was awesome. Usually you get cotton candy from a bag at home!
So I ate my fresh cotton candy as we wandered around the Eiffel Tower and looked at it.

My mom wanted to see it when it was all light up at night, so we decided to find a café and wait for dark. We found a neat place and got our first french macaroons. They were yummy. We got rose, pistachio, coffee, chocolate, and pomegranate.

Then it was time to head back to our hotel. Which was (unfortunately) a Best Western, and located on the outskirts of Paris in Malakoff. But, it had an awesome view from the back patio!

Sunday morning we got a little bit of a late start. Due to 1) we were exhausted from all the walking the previous day, and 2) we had quite the morning. We woke up and got ready. Since our hotel was out of the way of Le Louvre and the train station, we decided to take our luggage with us, and put it in a locker at the train station.
We finally got to our train station...only to discover that their lockers were closed. But the sign said that we could go to Gare du Nord, (our train station was Gare de l'Est). Luckily, these train stations were only one metro stop from each other. The unfortunate part being that for some reason, my two day metro pass hadn't worked that morning when we left our hotel, and the predicament hadn't been magically fixed when we tried to re-enter the metro.
So we had to wait in line for the info counter, and the guy just wrote on my ticket the days it was good for and told me to show the ticket to the people at the desks so they could just buzz me through into the metro.
So he buzzed me through, and we went to Gare de Nord. We found the lockers after a few moments of confusion in the large train station. You have to go through security to get to the lockers, and so my mom and I decided to wait outside the caged area while my dad took the bags inside. "It's like the amazing race!" My mom commented at one point. Basically, you get through security, and then everyone rushes off to find an open locker. But I guess the lockers had no indication of whether or not they are taken, so you have to run around, trying each handle. Then, my dad discovered he didn't have enough money with him for one of the medium sized lockers (which seemed to be the only ones left open). By the time our suitcases were safely tucked away, it had been about an hour since we had left our hotel.
Then, we made our way back to the metro, only to discover that the info desk where I had to show my ticket not only had a half hour long line waiting in front of it, but was no where near the metro entrances. The only thing to do was wait in line, and when we finally got up, I asked the woman for a new ticket. She seemed to have a better grip on the situation than the guy who had previously helped us, and she gave me a new, working, ticket.

Finally, we arrived at Le Louvre, two hours after we'd left our hotel. We made our first priority La Jocande (The Mona Lisa). As you make your way towards the tiny painting, you go past La Victoire de Samotrace (Winged Victory) on her pedestal.

After seeing  Mona Lisa, I took my parents to see Venus de Milo.
Then my mom was ready for lunch, so we wandered around the other side to a restaurant/cafe. I had my first Croque Monsieur! This is a french sandwich, consisting of bread, with ham in the middle and covered in cheese and then grilled. It's quite delicious.

My mom's favorite sculpture
Amphitrite (goddess of the sea)

Then we went to see Napoleon III's apartments. Which were amazing! And then we wandered around Cour Marly. 








We had an hour left to go to the gift shop, so we did this, and then made our way back to Gare du Nord for our bags.