Sunday, May 24, 2009

Best Honeymoon Ever! Days 1 and 2

So for those of you who don't know. Before Sean and I got married, I had no idea where we were going on our honeymoon (surprises are so much more fun). Well, the day after our wedding he told me where we were going just hours before our flight took off. And guess where he took me...

PARIS

I know, I was shocked when he told me. I knew that we were going some where foreign, but I certainly didn't expect the city of love (which I probably should have, considering it is a honeymoon). So for those of you who don't want to read over my vacation log, feel free to skip over it and just look at the fun pictures.

Day 1 Sunday:
We departed at about 11:40 a.m. from Salt Lake City, and arrived in Paris on Sunday at about 10:00 a.m. Paris time (about 2:00 a.m. in Salt Lake). We went to the Hotel (pictured below) to drop off our bags and look around (check in time was 2:00 pm). Since we had made no plans for our first day there, except to catch up on some much needed sleep, we just walked down the street. Right in front of our hotel was this beautiful stature or rather monument in the middle of a round about, called Republic.
It was so neat getting up every morning to see this just in front of the hotel. There were some wonderful information signs all over the place telling us the history. Unfortunately it was all in french and neither Sean nor I can speak let alone read french. So I'm sure there is some fantastic history behind this (I can only assume the French Revolution), but I don't know what it is. It's a beautiful monument though, so much detail. But then again everything in Paris has so much detail. From there we just kept on walking down the street when we came up on this arch. It actually has a twin further down but we didn't go that way. Still it was neat to just happen upon something like this.



















It's amazing how many of these are all over the place. Every where you turn there is something to look at. Even the apartment buildings are intricate and decorative.


From the arch we proceded on to find a museum just down the road. There are museums everywhere so it was completely impossible to see all of them. This one was their science and industry history museum. It had all kinds of things in there from ancient abdacus's to the worlds first super computer. It was really neat to see, but every few benches we had to sit down and regain some strength, we still hadn't caught up on our sleep yet. But things there were facinating enough to make us stay. After that we proceeded to get something to eat and head to the hotel to sleep.




Day 2 Monday:
Monday was an immensely full day. The first thing we found when we came out of the Metro (their underground transit system) was the Hotel DeVille. I couldn't help but wonder if this is where Cruella lives (lol). We didn't get a chance to go inside because we were off to Notre Dame.























If you think the outside is amazing, the inside was incredible. There was so much going on inside. So many seplecures, paintings, statues, not to mention the stained glass windows. Something with so much detail, made so long ago, costing so very much, not to mention the countless lives that were lost in the making of it. It's impressive to think of the faith of the people at that time. They must have really, really wanted a place to worship. It's nice to know that time doesn't separate us that much.

From there we went to the Arc
de Triomph, the uninsured round-about. This is the scene that was of particular sorrow to my parents, they got in an accident on this round about and have had a bad taste in their mouth for Paris ever since. To be honest it was because of my parents experience that I had very little desire to ever go to France. Lucily I made a very good friend in Nancy who changed my perspective of France, and I'm glad she did, or else I would never have gotten to see Paris. Anyway, We went to the Arch, we didn't get to go on top unfortunately, which I'm told if you stay up there for more than five minutes you are bound to see an accident.
From there it was on to the Eifel Tower, but we didn't take the Metro, we walked instead which is a wonderful way to see the city. But on our way we
found a fantastic pastry shop. These pastry shops are about ten times more common than Wal-Mart's here, and they are fantastic!













Every one goes to these little shops at least every other day to get their baguet or other bakery items. We went to one every morning before we left each day. They also have these baguet sandwiches that are so yummy. Sean got a quishe every day.

We eventually arrived at the Eiffel tower and it was bigger
than I thought it would be. It was so neat to see the trademark of Paris. We at first were just going to go to the middle of the tower, but then I got over my fear of heights and we went all the way to the top. Luckily I wasn't the only one to be so freaked out, there was another kid there who asked us to take a really quick picture of him. He litterally ran to the edge and back. But it wasn't that bad. They had maps all around the top showing where things where, so we got to see some of the sights we'd gone to and some that we were about to see. We didn't stay long enough to see sunset from the tower because we were starving (we only had little tarts for lunch), but it was still a fantastic experience.
So that was just our first two days in Paris. There will be more to come, so stay tuned.