Paris, je t'aime!

We have arrived back from a wonderful weekend trip to Paris! I was a little nervous about going. I had heard that the French are quite annoyed when you don't speak their language (and I only have 2 years of middle school French under my belt). On our flight, we reviewed the few phrases I could remember in the cobwebs of my brain.

We arrived in Paris and first walked to our hotel. The first thing to catch my eye was the charming architecture of the apartments. I loved the shutters on the windows and the details in the building!



After we dropped off our luggage at the hotel, we went into a small shop for lunch. It was a bakery as well and people were dropping in to quickly fetch their daily baguette. Here's a picture of some of the delicious desserts!



We then made a beeline to the Louvre museum. You honestly need several weeks in order to actually see everything in this place! At one point, this place was a palace and I can only imagine it changed because too many royal figures got lost and were never found again.





My photos do not do justice to the sheer size of this place! In addition, it had quite a crowd! We were able to enter the museum among throngs of people from all over the world. I don't want to bore you with lots of art photos, but here are the highlights.

Venus de Milo


Mona Lisa


Liberty Leading the People


You get the idea--lots of famous art. Every room was cluttered with art, which is saying a lot since the edifice was already enormous. It took us 4 hours to hit all the important works that my artist partner insisted we see. After that, we crossed the bridge over the River Seine and headed to the Latin Quarter for dinner.



The next day, we awoke early and went to see the Eiffel Tower. For some reason, I have fallen in love with this structure. It's quite elegant in the Parisian backdrop!



The building becomes a motif in my later pictures, so I'll just leave you with that one now. Later, we went to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It's a famous street lined with expensive shops and this Arc de Triomphe.



We then headed over to see Notre Dame. I tried to get a nice picture, but it was difficult because there was this giant tent holding a bread station.



We went into the tent and watched dozens of bakers mix, mold and bake bread. Here are some of the workers. You can see the ovens behind them.



We then went over the bridge and back into the Latin Quarter, where we found Cafe de Flore, a famous coffee shop where Ernest Hemingway used to write. When you sit down and start to balk at the price for a cup of coffee (4 euro!) you notice that there isn't any obvious indications that Hemingway had been there. Apparently, there's a small plaque over where he used to sit, but we never saw it.



After purging our wallets in the Latin Quarter, we went up north of the city where Sacre Coure is located. This is a large beautiful church-you get a great view of the city from there!





You may know this building...



We returned to the centre of the city and I was able to capture this shot of the Eiffel Tower at dusk.



And no trip to Paris is complete without a visit to the Moulin Rouge! It's located amid a lot of sex shops. O la la.



So that was our trip to Paris! As I said earlier, I was quite nervous before going, but in truth, it was wonderful! The people were very friendly and usually spoke English. The food is a bit pricey, but delicious! I might have to make another posting simply for the food!

Au revoir!