News from Paris...

It is Thursday evening and we are resting our tired feet at our hotel.  I have never done so much walking, nor walked up so many tiny winding staircases in my entire life!  My feet hurt even after religiously using the public transportation system!  The Paris Metro and Bus system are awesome and easy to use once you figure it out.  Our week long passes allow us to be able to just wave them in front of a little scanner for unlimited use.  We are having a blast and reports from home concerning Rylan are all good, so that makes us even more able to enjoy ourselves.

We flew out on Sunday at 3:30 pm Houston time and arrived in Paris at 8:30 am on Monday.  By the time we got off the plane, bought our six day museum passes, got small pictures taken for our week long Metro and bus passes, and figured out how to take the Metro, I think we arrived at our hotel at 11.  We walked around a bit before checking in and found a bite to eat.  After checking in, J would not let me sleep, so we headed down the Champs Elysees and over to Notre Dame cathedral...spectacular.  We walked up the 400 steps in the small, winding, staircase to view the city of Paris.  I am in awe at the scale of all of these famous museums, monuments, and historical places.  They are unbelievable!  After being awake for more than 30 hours straight, we finally crashed about 8:00 that night.

Tuesday morning we headed over to a little area called Rue Cler, a typical Parisian neighborhood.  It was so fun to see what life would be like living here.  The fresh meat markets and fruit stands were really neat.  We then sauntered over to the Eiffel Tower where we dined for lunch on the second level restaurant called Jules Verne...fancy and fabulous.  Neither of us has ever eaten in such a classy restaurant.  It was awesome and even better, we got to skip the lines!  After our 2.5 hour lunch, we headed back to the hotel and took a nap!  Vacations without itineraries rock!  Tuesday evening brought a full walk up the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Triomphe.  We ate at a little cafe and then trekked up the 284 winding steps to take in the beautiful nighttime views of Paris...one of my favorite things so far.  We ended up back at our hotel just in time to see the Eiffel Tower twinkling during its' nighttime hourly display.

Wednesday we toured the Louvre.  Once again, the size and scale of that place is absolutely amazing!  We spent a couple of hours there really looking at the things that most people weren't looking at.  So it was fun to kind of be in a different area than all the tourists.  We also went up to the the huge department store near the Opera, Galleries Lafayette.  If you shop by designer, it is the place to go!  I don't, but it was fun to see.  We walked around some more, and took a bus back to our hotel where we took little naps before taking the train out to Disneyland Paris for J's business meeting.

J had more meetings today back at Disney, so I took on the Left Bank of Paris by myself and had a blast!  I shopped around at Bon Marche (another department store) and all of the boutiques around it.  I visited St. Sulpice, Luxembourg Garden, saw Montparnasse, St. Germain-des-pres, Cluny Museum, and then met J at Orsay. 

So now we are up to date...  Where are we having dinner J?