The Left Bank

After our morning self guided walk of historic Paris, we headed back over the Siene to the right bank and headed to the Pantheon. Don't forget it is raining and my feet are killing me! My fashion Pumas were so uncomfortable. I had thought they would be perfect! I will admit I was a bit of a complainer and poor Eric had to put up with me. We stopped for lunch along our walk to the Pantheon at Rick Steves' recommended place called Le Pre Verre. His review boasted a great lunch menu including a starter, main course, glass of wine and coffee for 14 euros. This was honestly one of our best meals. The starter was a cold vegetable soup (not my fave but was good) and the main course was pork cheek in a star anise sauce on fresh pasta. It was so good! We both really enjoyed it! And it came with a glass of wine! Win win! I got to rest my feet and recuperate a bit and we headed on.

 This is the Pantheon. This state-capital style Neoclassical monument celebrates France's history and people. The building is hugeand inside there are monuments tracing the celebrated struggles of the French people.

 The building is 360' by 280' by 270'.

 This is Foucault's pendulum tht swings at the end of a 200 foot cable suspending from the dome. It was here in 1851 that the scientist first demonstrated the rotation of the earth. You can watch the pendulum's arc shift as you and the earth rotate beneath it.

 Rainy Day!

 We next headed over towards the Jardin du Luxembourg, which is Paris' most beautiful, interesting, and enjoyable park/garden/recreational area.  

 Another umbrella shot!

 Luxembourg Palace where the French Senate meets.

 Panoramic View

 After the gardens, we headed to the Rodin Museum. It is filled with works by the greatest sculptor since Michelangelo. Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) sculpted human bodies on an epic scale. Here is one of his most famous works, Thinker.

 The Gates of Hell was a monumental work by Rodin depicting a a scene from "The Inferno", the first section of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

 The museum is actually the house Rodin lived in with Henri Matisse, Rainer Maria Rilke, and dancer Isadora Duncan. I believe this is a Matisse above.

 Funny thing while we were there - Land Rover was having some event. Tons of guys in suits came in and went to this tent in the gardens.

 From the Mussee Rodin, we walked over to the Army Museum and Napoleon's tomb. The Hotel des Inavlides, a former veterans' hospital, is topped with a golden dome and houses Napoleon's over the top tomb as well as Europe's greatest military museum.

 Napoleon's Tomb

 Part of the military museum - I can tell you Eric enjoyed it much more than I.

 An artsy view of the Eiffel Tower.

 The building was huge and surrounded by a large moat.

Can you believe that we are only on day two and I am still not done?! Stay tuned for the Champs-Elysees and The Arc de Triomphe.  I can tell you by the end of day two we were exhausted, but we are having a great trip!

An Historic Walk through Paris

After a horrible travel experience, we finally got a good night's rest and woke up ready to take in Paris on our first full day there. We had breakfast at our hotel, which was the standard European breakfast of bread, butter, croissants, fruit, and coffee and then set out for the day. I used the Rick Steves' France 2012 guide book and had already planned out the sights we needed to see. We decided to start with his self-guided historic Paris walk.

 Crossing over the Siene to the Ile de la Cite

 Our first stop was Notre-Dame Cathedral. This 700 year old cathedral has so much history and the building was amazing. It really was a breathtaking sight. 

 Here is Mary, front and center, cradling God, right in the middle of the facade and surrounded by the halo of the rose window. Adam is on the left and Eve is on the right.

 Notre-Dame has the typical basilica floor plan that so many of the Catholic churches have, a long central nave lined with columns and flanked by side aisles. The church can hold up to 10,000 people.

 The man with his head in his hands is St. Denis. Back when there was a Roman temple on this spot, Christianity began converting people. He was beheaded as a warning to those who were forsaking the Roman gods. But the early Christians were not having that and the man who would become St. Denis got up, picked up his head and headed north apparently. The Parisians saw this miracle, Christianity gained ground and the church replaced the pagan temple.

 This 300 foot spire is a product of the 1860 reconstruction of the old church. You can see the green men around its base who are apostles and evangelists as well as the architect in charge of the work.

 The apostles look outward blessing the city.

 These are the flying buttresses - they helped hold up the structure.

 The gardens were beautiful around the cathedral.

 Eric is getting artsy here.

 Next we headed to the Deportation Memorial (Memorial de la Deportation). This is the memorial to the 200,000 French victims of the Nazi concentration camps from 1940-1945. 

 The round plaque reads "They went to the end of the earth and did not return."

 The hallway ahead is lined with 200,000 lighted crystals, one for each French citizen who died. Below the flowers is the tomb of the unknown deportee. While it was a simple (and free) site, we enjoyed visiting and spending a moment remembering these innocent victims.

 This is the Ile St. Louis. It was once a swampy mess and has been developed to be one of Paris' most exclusive neighborhoods. We walked across the bridge, Pont St. Louis and walked around the streets with neat shops and restaurants.

 Our tour then lead us to the Latin Quarter, which is an artsy, bohemian area. The two main streets St. Michele and St. Germain are lined with cafes. At this point it started to rain and we bought an umbrella from a little "tabac" shop. Luckily we had packed rain panchos as well. We didn't let the rain stop us from getting our sights in! This fountain above is in place St. Michele and the core of the Left Bank's artsy, liberal hippie district.

 From the Latin Quarter, we walked to Sainte-Chapelle which was built between 1242 and 1248 for King Louis IX to house the supposed Crown of Thorns. 

 The stained glass was beautiful.

 Right next door to Sainte-Chapelle is the Palais de Justice. The most exciting thing that happened here is I got to sit down because by this time my feet were killing me! This is a huge complex of government buildings that have housed the local government since ancient Roman Times and it is now home to the French Supreme Court.

 The Conciergerie was our next stop. This is a former prison that was the last stop for 2,780 victims of the guillotine, including Marie-Antoinette.

And that concludes your tour of historic Paris! We did miss a couple of the stops including the Cite Metro stop which is the oldest subway stop signs still around, Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris and the Paris Beaches, where they bring in sand every summer for the Parisians to soak up some sun on. It definitely was a good experience to walk around the city, follow the map, and get a feel for the history of Paris. I also really reccommend Rick Steve's books. They are easy to read and understand and he gives honest opinions on what is worth it to do.

Here is another tip: buy the Paris Museum Pass. You pay one price for however number of days you want to use it and you get access to most of the sights you will want to visit, so the savings adds up quickly. You always get to skip the ticket line (which can be very long) and sometimes the security line. It was very nice! You can buy them any of the museums/sights or in Tabac shops.

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!