Sarah and I arrived in Paris late Thursday evening, deciding to just spend the extra money to take a cab, electing to figuring out the metro system the following morning. We arrived at our hotel and we were surprised to see that our room had only one double bed, not to mention the small size of the room! My mom quickly informed me that that's Paris for ya! We made do, and decided to get a good night's sleep so that we could hit the ground running in the morning.
After a delightful breakfast at the hotel (which we thought was complimentary - it wasn't), we set out for the Notre Dame area as it is pretty centrally located and somewhat easy to get to. We were told that the Paris metro system is extremely to figure out, but we disagree. The Barcelona metro system is significantly easier, and the metro stations are much cleaner. Aside from that, we made it to Notre Dame where we decided to walk through the Cathedral. It was beautiful, but I still think the Cathedral in Barcelona is prettier! We walked around the area for a bit, finding bridges covered with love locks, Asian families asking to take pictures with us (no joke, why does this keep happening!), and some pretty places to take some fun pictures.
After exploring a bit, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed over to do some shopping. The first stop on our list? The official Longchamp store. Sarah and I are big Longchamp fans, and since they are significantly cheaper here than in the US, we decided to treat ourselves to one. I bought myself a burnt orange purse to sport at UT games next year -- gotta have that Longhorn pride! We continued walking around, seeing all of the big name stores, and picking up some trinkets before wandering around and eventually finding the Louvre. We spent quite a bit of time taking some typical tourist pictures before deciding to tackle the monster that is the Louvre the following day so that we could return to our hotel to freshen up a bit before meeting my cousin for dinner and a Seine River boat tour!
Fun fact, my cousin, who lives in Philadelphia, and I (with our moms) traveled to Paris ten years ago, and it is rather ironic that we have seen one another in the city of Paris twice in the past ten years -- that might be equal to the number of times I have seen her in the US in the past ten years! It was so great to see her, and we enjoyed a wonderful evening of catching up on silly family stories!
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| Eiffel Tower - ten years ago! |
After a delicious dinner and a superb dessert, we were ready to set off on our boat tour. We got on the 10:00pm boat tour, and we saw just about all of the major sights in Paris: it started near the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Pont Nouf (the oldest bridge in Paris), the National Assembly, the Grand Palace, and many more. All three of us loved it and agreed that we went at the perfect time: upon our return to the dock we were greeted with a lit-up Eiffel Tower that started twinkling once the clock struck 11:00. Y'all, it was absolutely magical and it was the perfect end to a very blessed day. We arrived back at our hotel a little after midnight with a plan to meet at 9:00am the next morning to climb the Eiffel Tower! Day 2 coming soon!
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| Raspberry Sorbet |
Au revoir!
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