Paris Adventures (Part 1)

*Read about the start of our trip and our four days in Barcelona HERE.

Day 5 (9/13)
We left Barcelona in the morning and arrived in Paris around lunch time.  Sidenote, the security in Europe is NOT like in the US.  I would travel in Europe anytime.

When we got to Paris it was raining....  which would be the daily weather for majority of the time we were there.  We got to our hotel, the Westin Paris Vendome which was a really cool and beautiful hotel - maybe just a little bit loud....  thin walls and doors.

After we unpacked and got settled, we decided to just push through the drizzly rain and walk down the street towards the Louvre and the Sienne.  Then, we walked down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

We stopped at Cafe Du Colannade for dinner before we had our ghost/mystery tour.  Our tour guide, Michele, was nice and funny.  Mom was fascinated by his glass pipe that he smoked most of the time we were walking and I liked that he was wearing fangs.  Totally in character.  The tour was interesting and nice to walk around a bit of Paris at night.  Did you know that the real story of the demon barber, Sweeney Todd, is actually from Paris?  After the tour, we wandered past the Louvre at night.





Day 6 (9/14)
Another day of drizzling rain.  We were pretty tired from the day before so we decided to sleep in, which ended up being around 10:30am.  Even with the rain, we pushed through and walked up to the Basilica Sacre Coeur.  Maybe the second most famous cathedral in Paris.  It was beautiful (even in the rain) and was sitting high up on the hill above the city. After our tour, we wandered upon a little square with restaurants and a ton of local artists selling their goods.  Both my mom and I bought paintings from two different artists and we sat at one of the cafes for lunch.

After lunch, we wandered over to the Parc Monceau, down past the cemetery and over to the Tower Eiffel.  The rain just would not let up and both of us were tired and sore and wet and cold.  We headed back to the hotel early.  My mom commented while looking at the map that we had walked FAR that day and we ordered room service and watched BBC reality game shows.

Day 7 (9/15)
Finally, a day with NO RAIN.  And it could not have come at a better time since we had our day trip out to Versailles Palace.  (Our tour guide also let us stop at the Arc de Triomphe while it was nice out.)  This was probably my favorite part of the trip.  The palace was incredible and we didn't even see most of it.  The tour we were on got us VIP access to the private apartments which are not open to the general public.  That was pretty cool.  It also got us in right away past the lines so that we could see the famous Hall of Mirrors without many people in it.  After that, we headed up to the gardens.  We went on a day that they were having the fountain shows which was awesome.

 

When we got back to Paris, we decided to take advantage of the nice weather while we head it and headed down to the Eiffel Tower to see it lit at night.  Hands down the coolest thing ever.  I know it's super tourist, but I loved it.  We saw it twinkle once while we were walking there and then waited around to see it again.  It twinkles for 5 minutes every hour.  After that, we stopped to eat at this cafe on the Sienne and got to see it twinkle one more time before we headed back to the hotel.

Stay tuned for Part 2.