Time for Paris! Before I left for Europe, everyone I talked to told me that I was going to like London a lot more than Paris. Therefore my expectations for Paris were slightly lower. I was expecting the people to be rude to us Americans and for the city to be dirty. However I was proven completley wrong! Paris was an amazing city, maybe on of my favorites. I actually enjoyed it more than I did London, which surprised me. The people were super nice and the city was absolutely beautiful. I would go back to Paris in a heartbeat (of course I would probably go back nearly anywhere if given the opportunity).
We arrived in Paris at the Gare du Nord Station on the north side of Paris. We took the Metro across the city to our hotel in the 15th Arrondissement. I was a little nervous traveling in Paris with our complete lack of knowledge of the French language (in spite of my dad's degree in French) but we made it around with no problems. Besides my mom nearly getting trapped in the closing doors of a Metro car, we made it to the hotel with no issues.
Our hotel was the Quality Hotel Abaca, located at the Convention Metro Station. The hotel was nice and clean. It was located in a neighborhood away from the touristy parts of the city, which I thought was pretty cool to stay in. It felt like authentic Paris with all of the architecture.
View across the street from our hotel. Our room also had one of these half balcony things.
My favorite view in all of Paris. We traveled thousands of miles so we could see the colonel from our hotel room!
After checking in we walked down the street to a crepe stand to get a crepe for lunch. This was where we failed the most with our comprehension of the French language. I stuck with a ham and cheese crepe because I could understand that in French (although I already forgot it's translation). However, my parents split the "thon" crepe without knowing what the word "thon" means in French. Turns out it means tuna. I had a bite and that was the most disgusting crepe I have ever had in my life. But now I will never forget that the word "thon" means tuna in French!
We decided to spent the afternoon doing a Rick Steve's walking tour of the area around Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter. It was a beautiful day and a nice walk to see parts of the city.
The walking tour brought us to the famous Notre Dame! We stood in line for like 20 minutes to get inside. There was a service going on though so we didn't dawdle for too long inside.
Impressive architecture!
View down the Seine River.
Possibly the oldest tree in Paris????
The bridge with all of the love locks.
The narrowest building in Paris!
Walking the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter. This was one of my favorite neighborhoods. So many shops and restaurants.
More Paris streets and buildings.
View down the Seine.
After the designated Rick Steve's walk ended, we decided to head over the the Avenue du Champs Elysees and see the Arc de Triomphe. It was a pretty long walk, but you can't go to Paris without seeing the Champ Elysees.
Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe in the distance.
Shopping on the Champ Elysees. I don't think I ever learned how to properly pronounce the name of this street. Even with my French heritage I am absolutely horrible with the French language.
The world's busiest McDonalds!!!!!!! (According to Rick Steves)
The Arc! It was much more impressive than I was expecting.
How Grand!
Dad and I decided to climb to the top while everyone else stayed at the bottom. It was a lot of stairs, but a great view from the top! My legs were killing me after another long day of walking, but no regrets here!
We can even see the Eiffel Tower in the distance! It was cool to see it all light up. I can now cross off "see the Eiffel Tower at night" from my to do list in life.
We took the Metro back from the arc to our hotel. That night we grabbed donor kebab from a shop down the street from our hotel. Not as good as the donor in the Netherlands or Scotland. I was disappointed, but oh well! We were all tired that night from a very long day that started in Brugge and ended by walking across the city of Paris.
Sunday (8/23/15) was our day to tour the Palace of Versailles. The day was kinda rainy and chilly in the morning, but we were ready to make the best of it, We took the commuter rail out to the town of Versailles and walked to the Palace from the station. We had pre-booked the tickets, but we still had to wait an hour to get in to the palace and through security! Not a fun hour.
Once inside we toured the palace and then walked around the gardens. The palace was very large and opulent. It put all other palaces that we had toured to complete shame. I knew the place was going to be big, but I was still surprised by the size, especially the size of the gardens. They stretched on for what seemed like forever! The gardens were having a water feature show in the fountains of the gardens, so that was neat to see! We spent most of the day in Versailles and didn't leave until the late afternoon.
The line to get into the palace. It snake around over and over again.
Me and all of my new friends.
The front gates. A little pretentious if you ask me.
So many details in the building!
King Louis must have had a lot of time on his hands to get this level of detail.
Where do the gardens even end!!! Also the day cleared up, so it was actually pretty nice wandering around.
Louis liked his statues.
The fountain sprayed water to a musical tune. My mom was a big fan of the water show going on.
More fountain fun. So many fountains!
The trees are such a perfect triangle shape. I was very impressed by this.
The classic selfie to prove that I was actually here.
After Versailles we took the train back to Paris and went to the Montmartre neighborhood. We did another Rick Steve's walking tour to see the hillside neighborhood, although at this point I was a little tired of following Rick and I really just wanted to wander around. Ah well, it was still an interesting way to see the neighborhood.
View from the top of the Montmartre Hill. Beautiful view of the city.
The church at the top of the hill.
We sat and watched this street performer guy for awhile. He was pretty impressive. The sitting was not part of the tour recommended by Rick, but we stopped and enjoyed the view anyways. We bought beer from a random guy with a cooler walking up and down the steps. It was fun to sit there and look at the view with our Heineken beers. Although the random men with coolers got rather pushy trying to sell us more beer once they realized we would buy them. We were able to haggle them down to a pretty low price by the third round.
During the actual Rick Steve's walking tour.
We found Moulin Rouge!
After the walking tour we were ready for dinner. We went back to the Latin Quarter and found a restaurant advertising a three course meal for a reasonable fixed price. We got a great table right by the open windows so it was like we were outside. I had a bucket of mussels for the appetizer, duck for the entree, and a cheese plate for the desert (I remember the entirety of this meal even 10 months later!). This was my first time eating duck and I was slightly disappointed. Duck is much more gamey than I prefer. However, John got the rabbit and I was shocked how good that was! I had never had rabbit before either. The cheese platter was good, but dad and Lauren got the creme brulee and that looked delicious! Overall this was one of my favorite dinner experiences on the family vacation.
Monday (8/24/15) was our only full day in the city of Paris itself. It was also the day with the worst weather, with off again, on again rain all day. Lauren and John got up early and went to the Louvre. I was going to join, but I was exhausted again from the non-stop traveling of the past few weeks. I ended up sleeping until 11:00 am. It was a great life choice. I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon walking around Paris by myself. I found a little bakery and got coffee and a croissant and ate it on the sidewalk tables (today and yesterday my dad went to the McDonalds near our hotel to find coffee he could drink, but even the McDonalds coffee in Europe was too strong for him). I ended up walking around the Trocadero and around the Eiffel Tower before I met up with the rest of the family for lunch at a cafe where I got a croque-monsieur.
Wandering around Paris by myself.
I found the Eiffel Tower!
Proof that I found the Eiffel Tower!
He found the Eiffel Tower as well.
After lunch we headed back over to the Eiffel Tower. Today was our day to go to the top and see the city from the tower itself!
Lauren presenting the Eiffel Tower.
Up close view. Look at that steel!
View from the second level. We weren't allowed to go to the very top because it was too windy this day.
How imposing!
The Trocadero and the business district in the background.
My mom made it up too!
Lots of people on the observation deck.
View of the Seine River.
Now the view from the lower observation deck. On the lower deck we hung out for awhile and had some wine while looking out at the view.
Everyone below just looks like a bunch of ants!
There's a storm a brewing.
Once we got down to the bottom again we had what was probably everyone's favorite moment of the trip. It seems that as soon as we got down, the sky opened up and it started downpouring. Sadly, there are not many places near the Eiffel Tower to run for protection from the rain. The nearest building was a couple of blocks away. So we ended up standing directly underneath the tower trying to get as much protection from the rain. To make it even better, we only had 2 umbrellas for 5 people. After about 20 minutes the rain stopped and we were all rather soaked. Not the best timing on our parts to get stuck in a rainstorm!
Once the rain died down, we decided to take a boat ride. We were all rather cold and wet, but the boat ride was included in the package we got for the Eiffel Tower tickets. At least on the boat ride we could sit down and try to dry off.
The ride was really pretty going down the Seine, but we were still all pretty cold and damp from earlier.
Pretty views from the middle of the Seine. The narrator's voice on the boat ride was very soothing as well.
Notre Dame in the background.
And we found the Eiffel Tower again!
After the boat ride we took the Metro back to the hotel. We all needed to change out of our clothes since they were still damp. My dad really wanted to go back and see the Eiffel Tower up close again at night, but the rest of us were exhausted. We ended up having dinner at a restaurant near our hotel. The waiter was really nice. He didn't understand English very well but he still tried hard to communicate with us. When someone asked what a certain ingredient listed was, he went back to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of cinnamon to visually show us because he didn't know the translation.
I got a taco salad! Not very French, but I decided I should at least attempt to be a little healthy.
After dinner we went back to the hotel and started packing up. We had another train ride to get ready for the next morning!
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