Paris

Friday, 12/28/2007

Paris here we come! We were all excited for our upcoming Paris trip despite having little to no sleep the night before. By 5:30 am, we were out the door and on our way to the Luton airport via a traditional London taxi.

Our EasyJet flight departed London at 8:30 am and arrived in Paris at 10:45 am, right on schedule. From the Charles de Gaulle airport, we took the RER train to our hotel in La Defense, the business district of Paris. Our hotel was right next to the Grande Arche, a 20th century version of the Arc de Triomphe. At least if we got lost in the city, we knew to just look for the giant cement square to lead us back to our homebase!

After a quick nap to re-energize ourselves, we took the Metro into the city so we could begin sightseeing. We stopped by a crêpe stand that Davin had really liked on his trip to Paris the year before, and sure enough it was a big hit with the rest of us--we visited that same crêpe stand many more times throughout our trip. With our bellies full of warm ham & cheese and/or chocolate & banana crêpes, we walked over to see the magnificent Eiffel Tower.  Seeing the tower in person was surreal.  We couldn't believe that we were actually in Paris!

From the Eiffel Tower, we walked down the Seine River past the elegant Pont Alexander III Bridge, then down to the Champs Elysée.  This prestigious avenue was bustling with activity and it didn't take very long for us to see why the Champs Elysee is one of the most famous streets in the world.

There were so many restaurants on the Champs Elysée to choose from, but eventually we decided on a small French café for dinner.  The ambiance of the café definitely helped to set the mood for our trip.  Waiters wearing striped sailor shirts with classic French berets served us delicious French cuisine and bourdeaux wine.

After dinner, we walked further down the Champs Elysée to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the narrow staircase to the top for a panoramic view of the city.  The city was absolutely breathtaking from 165 ft high and totally worth the climb to the top.

We descended the arc and walked back down the Champs Elysée to do some shopping at the Nike and Adidas stores.  Eventually, the day's festivities started to catch up to us so we took the Metro back to our hotel where we ate a late snack in the hotel lounge and played cards.

Saturday, 12/29/2007

We couldn't take a trip to Paris and not go to the famous Louvre Museum, so bright and early on Saturday morning we were on our way to see the Mona Lisa.

The Metro took us right to the inside of the Louvre where we saw the Mona Lisa, Jeune Homme Nu Assis au Bord de la Mer, Venus de Milo, and many other famous paintings and sculptures.

We could've stayed at the Louvre for days..literally.  Supposedly if you spent 5 seconds at each work exhibited it would take a month to see everything in this massive museum!  Overwhelmed by the amount of artwork, we chose to just stay for a couple of hours to check out the most popular works.

Looking forward to continuing our tour of Paris, we took the RER train to Versailles, had lunch and margaritas at a Mexican restaurant, then pressed onwards towards the Palace of Versailles.

We arrived at the Palace of Versailles just in time for...closing.  Luckily, the palace was not closed entirely for the day.  An employee at the entrance told us to come back in a couple of hours for the night exhibition, Quand Versailles était meublé d’argent (When Versailles was Furnished in Silver).  Thank goodness we didn't travel all the way to Versailles for nothing!

We needed to kill some time before the exhibition so we decided to walk around to the back of the palace to look at the gardens. How unbelievably decadent the grounds were!  Sculptures upon sculptures, fountains galore, expertly manicured landscaping, and did we mention sculptures?  King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sure knew how to live lavishly!

While we were in the gardens, it started to rain so we headed to a café on the property (La Flottille) where we had hot tea and coffee. After giving ourselves ample time to dry off, we tried to head back towards the palace, but a large gate had been bolted shut and prevented us from going back the way we came in. Instead, we walked around the property to a different entrance where we were met by a police officer who had shut and bolted this gate as well!  We ended up walking completely around the grounds and re-entered through the main gate, successfully arriving in time for opening of the night exhibition.

The exhibition was exceptional; an endless amount of silver furniture and décor from different areas of the world were proudly on display. The most impressive aspect of the tour however, was the Hall of Mirrors, constructed in 1678 to honor Louis XIV. Seventeen windows overlooking the garden were matched by seventeen large mirrors along the wall. As if that wasn’t enough extravagance, the ceiling boasted thirty detailed paintings depicting defining moments in French history.

The tour of the Palace of Versailles left us feeling drained and ready to reitire for the day.  We then hopped onto the RER train back to La Defense and went to sleep early so we could have plenty of energy for our last day in Paris.

Sunday, 12/30/2007

Ahh...our last day to explore Paris.  Having this on our minds inspired us to get an early start.  We eagerly made our way to the Eiffel Tower in hopes of riding an elevator to the top.  To our disappointment, however, the line was entirely too long (an estimated 4 hour wait), so we decided to keep moving.  Instead we walked across the Seine River to Trocadero, the site of the Palais de Chaillot and Place des droits de l’homme (Place of Human Rights), and took some amazing photos of the Eiffel Tower.

We still needed to see the Notre Dame, so we jumped onto the Metro and headed further east towards the cathedral.  Once again, we were confronted by an exceptionally long line.  So instead of touring the inside, we walked around the outside and admired all of the gothic architecture.

From the Notre Dame, we took the Metro to Montmartre, a little village north of Paris.  Montmartre was very picturesque—steep cobblestone streets, tilting houses, windmills, and quaint shops. We wanted to really take in the scenery so we found a sidewalk café and watched people pass by as we enjoyed our hot tea and French fries.

We couldn't go to Montmartre without visiting the famous Sacré Coeur cathedral, so we walked over and took a short tour of the inside. We contemplated climbing up the stairs of the Sacré Coeur for an expansive view of Paris, but we had limited time and still more to cross off of our to-do list.  We instead decided to head over to the Picasso Museum before it closed.

We hurriedly hopped back on the Metro to get to the Picasso Museum. Luckily we arrived just in time—the museum was getting ready to shut down for the evening, but the staff decided to let everyone in line go through for free!

After the museum, we walked around the Marais district and admired all of the bustling shops and restaurants.  We quickly became hungry for a nice dinner after drooling over the many appetizing aromas we had walked past.  So we took the Metro back to our hotel to change and freshen up for dinner and were back into the city within no time.

We headed towards the red light district to catch a glimpse of the Moulin Rouge, but also in hopes of finding a nice restaurant for some good eats.  We initially had some trouble deciding on where to eat for dinner.  There was actually a restaurant called Indiana, of all things!  We thought it might be funny to eat at Indiana, but decided that we needed to have a true French dinner on our last night in Paris.  We eventually stumbled upon a restaurant called Wepler, a French/German fusion.  At first glance of the menu, the food seemed a little strange.  We must've been feeling a bit adventurous that night because we decided to give it a try anyway.  Matt ordered pickled white fish in a jar and Trent ordered something he couldn't pronounce, which ended up being ham hock--something none of us had ever seen before (we're still not exactly sure what part of the pig the hock is from).  Davin and Kita played it safe and ordered steak.  In the end, everyone thoroughly enjoyed their meals (even the fish jar and ham hock) and had a fantastic night.  A perfect end to a perfect Parisian trip!