PARIS

while my cousin rachel was here visiting we got to take a short 2 day trip to Paris!! we flew out early in the morning and came home late the next evening, so we could maximize our time. we were lucky to make our flight however.... we had to take the train to the airport and we missed the one we wanted by literally seconds, so we had to wait 20 min for the next one. i didn't think it would be a big deal since we didn't have any luggage to check and we had printed our boarding passes. WRONG! the line through security was FOREVER long, when we finally got through the board said 'final boarding call' for our flight which was a 15 min walk to the gate. so i RAN, and we made it, barely.

the first thing we did after we checked into our TINY hotel room (i really didn't care, it was cheap, and for one night.... it was clean and that's all that mattered!) was go on a river cruise down the Seine to get acquainted with the city.



here is our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, when we first got there it was so foggy we could only see about half of it.




after the river cruise our first stop was the musee d'orsey. beautiful museum, it was an old train station, so the inside was amazing!


after the orsay, we headed to the Louvre, this picture doesn't even do it justice, this is only part of one side of the 'U' shaped museum.... it was crazy big, i had no idea! we could have easily spent ALL our time here and not even seen a fraction of it.

anyone seen the da vinci code????

it seemed so weird to me that you were allowed to take pictures in this museum, so i didn't take many.... but here SHE is....

by the time we were done museum hopping, it was dark, and so beautiful!

the Eiffel Tower.... it is SO much prettier at night! :)

it was a lot bigger than i expected, and once we got to the second level, it was a lot higher than i expected.... (we would've gone to the top, but it was closed because of wind)

rach and i

the arc de triumph

do we look tired yet?? we were.... and we were so busy sight seeing that we hadn't eaten a thing ALL day! so we walked down Champs Elysees and grabbed some bread from a bakery (heaven) and headed back to the hotel.

the next morning we had a wonderful breakfast of crepes and croissants.... and ran into St. Michaels fountain

Notre Dame.... besides the Eiffel Tower this was probably my favorite!

the inside was amazingly beautiful!

this is a view of it from the other side

next we took a walk down Ru De Rivoli (and did some souvenir shopping) towards Concorde Square which is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were guillotined!

also in Concorde Square was the Paris ferris wheel (no where near as cool as the london eye, sorry)

we found this bridge totally by accident.... it has thousands of locks all over it, symbolizing peoples love for one another and commitment to each other..... they all have initials and names on them, very cool. i wish i would've known, i could have added mine!

one of the last things we saw before we headed to the airport was the Opera (as in the building, we didn't actually go to an opera :)

we had another eventful experience getting home.... we took the wrong train towards the airport and had to get off and switch trains twice until we finally got on the right one, fortunately we had learned from previous mistakes and left in PLENTY of time..... only to have our flight home delayed by 2 hours. which isn't really a long time, but the trains back to central London do NOT run 24 hours a day! i think there was only one train coming after the one we got on to get back home.... again, we barely made it, but we made it!

we had an amazing trip, Paris was wonderful, and i had tons of fun with my cousin! thanks rach for coming to visit!!