Paris by way of Helsinki

Hello! I am still here! To say our September and October have been busy would be an understatement. Since September 8th, we have spent 12 days in France and Spain, gone to a couples shower in Houston, go to Newport Beach, CA for a wedding, had another wedding local that Eric was in, had Eric's birthday, and helped host a couple's shower. I have been a horrible blogger and have not documented any of it, so I am officially starting to catch up. I had a request tonight for me to update my website (Hi Gary!), so I am going to try to recreate the whirlwind last month for ya'll.

We left for Paris on Saturday, September 8th. I did not say we were leaving for Europe in case I have any crazy blog stalkers out there :) We had been planning this trip for months and months and it finally was here! I was so excited!  It has always been a dream of mine to go to Paris, ever since I took French in 7th grade with Madame Batt. We had a direct flight from Dallas to Paris, but at the last minute we decide to upgrade to business class and fly through Chicago. So Saturday morning, my mom picks us up and drops us off at DFW Airport. We board and fly business to Chicago and had a lovely lunch. Once in Chicago, we had a few hours of a layover and go to go to the Admirals Club, which was awesome. It is so much more of a relaxing waiting area than the gate area. As our boarding time arrives, we make our way to our gate. There is chaos to begin with there because they have oversold the flight. Everyone is in a panic about their seats. I had to loan my phone to a nice French girl so she could call someone to call her mom in Paris and let her know her seat had been oversold. It was a mess. Then after that, they start delaying our flight. We can see the pilots walking around the plane and we know that is not good news. They say there is a mechanical issue and they are looking into it. We are supposed to take off at 5:00. It keeps getting pushed back more and more. Finally at 8:00, they get on the loud speaker and just say the flight is canceled. Nothing else. Complete chaos breaks loose. Everyone is livid. I jump up to get in a line to rebook our flights and Eric gets on the phone to see if that is faster. Eric gets through first and they say they have rebooked us. Flying back to Dallas in the morning, then through Boston to Paris. Seriously!? We get our hotel voucher and head to the airport Hyatt. Not how I was expecting to spend the first night of my vacation. I am trying to keep it together at this point, but I will admit there were some tears. We go to the hotel and I call AA again. I do not want to get up super early and fly back to Dallas. They put us on a flight leaving at 3:00 to New York, but we have to fly into LaGuardia and transfer to JFK, and only one of us gets to fly in business. Okay whatever, we can sleep in, I just want to get to Paris, I don't care about business, Eric can have it. So we have some dinner and drinks in the hotel bar and go to bed.

I wake up in the morning and call American to see what other options we have at this point.  I have decided I want business class too! This woman finds us a flight flying through Helsinki, Finland and connecting to Paris on FinnAir.  We take it! We are both on business together, this is going to be good. We get to the airport, hang out in the Admirals Club, then go to our gate. Immediately we hear there is a maintenance issue. We rush to the gate. It is delayed. I break down in tears. This cannot be happening. Finally they say they are moving us to another plane, so we have to switch gates. We all rush to the new gate and wait and wait. The plane comes. Then the catering service has not shown up and we wait and wait for them to get there. We are now worried we are going to miss our connection flight in Helsinki. They tell us there is a later flight we can take.

Finally after all this mess, we board, we are sitting in business, with a glass of champagne. I can finally relax. The flight was awesome. Business is the way to go, let me tell you! We had the best seats that layed completely flat, our own personal Samsung tablet to watch movies on, fabulous 3 course meals with French wine and a hot fudge sundae to finish it off with. We used miles to be able to fly business and it was definitely worth it. So now we can say we have been to Finland. We have a stamp in our passport to prove it. It looked really pretty flying in. I don't think I would mind going back!

 We are in Finland!

 Please excuse my appearance. This is how you look after traveling for almost 48 hours. 

 This is a Finnish liquor that we were told we had to try. You can only get these berries in Finland.  It was an acquired taste. Finnair was really weird. Their idea of business class was giving you an empty seat in the middle of a normal three seat row... 

So we were supposed to get to Paris on Sunday at 9:50 am. We did not end up arriving until Monday at 2:30 pm. So we lost a day and a half. We decided to push our trip back and changed our return home flight to a day later. I was able to push most of our hotels back as well. This is our first hotel that we stayed at in Paris for two nights. We stayed at the Hotel de la Tulipe in the Rue Cler district of Paris. We were right by the Eiffel Tower. It was a small, quaint hotel and I would definitely recommend. I was a little shocked at the size (the room was really small!), but that is what you get in Paris...

 This is the view from our window out into the courtyard.

 The bathroom was old and yellow tiled. We had to get used to the European showers with the small little shower head. Funny thing, our bathrooms in our hotels kept getting better and better. This was the worst by far.

 We were exhausted but decided to power through it. We showered and set out to see the city. We walked towards the Eiffel Tower.

We decided to not go up the tower because the lines were super long. You can make reservations if you do it ahead of time and that is what we really should have done. I honestly didn't mind because I am a bit afraid of heights. The structure itself is amazing. It really is huge. 

After walking around the Eiffel Tower and surrounding areas, we stopped for a glass of wine and appetizers at a restaurant on Rue Bosquet which happened to be called Cafe le Bosquet. It was a really cute place and Eric ordered foie gras. I tried it and not sure it is my favorite. We walked around some more and then decided to stop for dinner on Rue Cler at a pizza place that was quite busy called Tribeca. It was pretty good but at this point we we deliriously tired and just wanted to eat and go home to bed.

So that was our first day in Paris! It only took us 48 hours to get there! It was definitely an adventure traveling, but once we got there we forgot all about it. I promise to post day two tomorrow!!

Oh and I am not re-reading this for mistakes so sorry if it is not perfect! It is Sunday night and I just want to get into my bed and watch Revenge!