Paris, Days 1-3 {May 8-10}

I finally finished going through all our pictures from the last 3 months. Although most of you probably don’t care too much, I’m mostly documenting all this for myself and for our families – starting with our trip to Europe. Nate and I decided to take advantage of his 2 months off between school and work and took a 2-week vacation to Paris and then a Mediterranean cruise that took us to Southern France, Spain, and Italy. It was definitely hard to leave the boys for that long, but we figured if we were going to spend the money to go, we would make the most of it. We have amazing moms who were brave enough to watch their little grandsons while we were gone. Here’s a little recap of our first few days in Paris.

Day 1

We arrived in Paris at about noon and checked into our hotel, then headed out to Sacre Coeur and the Montmartre area for the afternoon. We found dinner and wandered around for a while, and managed to stay awake until we made it back to our hotel about 9pm.

 

The highlight for Nate was seeing this street performer that he had seen a YouTube video of – he did all sorts of tricks with his soccer ball – including this one – he had climbed up the pole with the ball balanced on his foot, and here he’s holding onto the light with one hand, and has a small stick in his mouth holding the soccer ball. Crazy!

Day 2

We started out the day at the Louvre (it was a little bit of an adventure getting there…but that’s another story). We managed to hit the highlights in a few hours, and while there was definitely a lot more we didn’t see, I needed a break (and lunch!) by the time we got through. We walked through Les Tuileries gardens to the Musee de L’Orangerie, which has some huge Money waterlilly paintings, then walked along the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. We made our way to the Pompidou Center, where we saw a few cool things, but one painting’s title (see below) summed up most of what we saw. To the Latin Quarter for Gyros for dinner, then we walked over to the Pantheon at sunset.

 

Day 3

We attempted to visit the Catacombs in the morning, but without an alarm clock (and our phones didn’t work) we got there a little before they opened, but the line was already ridiculously long, so we decided to head out to Versailles instead. Long lines again – fortunately I had the kindle to keep me entertained while Nate ran to get us sandwiches. We enjoyed our visit through Versailles and despite getting rained on (off and on) had fun seeing the amazing gardens.

above: the hall of mirrors. Can you spot us in the picture on the left? Hopefully you can in the one on the right :)

 

We headed back to the Latin Quarter for dinner again (pretty sure it was Gyros again), then went up to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Definitely one of the highlights of Paris! You can’t beat coming out of the Trocadero metro stop, rounding the corner of the building, and having the Eiffel Tower front & center. We wanted to hang out for a while afterwards, but it was getting really late and we were exhausted, so we decided to come back the next night. On the very top, as we were waiting to come down, Nate managed to run into someone who grew up just down the street from him.

gotta love self-portraits!

 

More to come…