Paris...Goodbye Europe

The next morning I woke up & we drove to Paris. We stopped at a truck stop on the way for lunch (fancy) and got to the city at 6:30. That night Erin & I went out & got crepes for dinner. We bought wine & just sat in a park by the Eiffel Tower. Once it gets dark…the Tower SPARKLES! I didn’t know that. It was so beautiful…definitely nicer than I had imagined.

Day 2 in Paris began with a long & painful train ride to the Chateau Versailles. It was nice place, obviously, but definitely not worth the work it took to get there. We pretty much ran through it because it was so crowded.

Afterward we had lunch near our hotel, where I got a gross salad & didn’t eat it. French food = no good. After I went back to the hotel to soak my knees & meet up with Linsey for the afternoon.

We went to Notre Dame during a service, which was really cool to be at. From the outside I didn’t recognize the cathedral. I pictured it dark – like in the Disney movie. Oh well, it was still gorgeous.

We walked around the town, and to the Sorbonne, which wasn’t really impressive at all. The area around Notre Dame is very nice though. Everyone just sort of sits by the river and hangs out…which I seem to like to do in every city we go to.

We went across town to Champs de Elysses, but didn’t shop because it was a Sunday and everything was closed. We got to see the Arc de Triumph, which was nice, and do some souveneir shopping.

We rode the metro home and got Chinese take out for dinner. It was soooo good…not French.

I woke up and went to the Tullieries with Teresa before heading to the Louvre. The gardens were nice but nothing too spectacular. It was a beautiful morning, however.

The Louvre is pretty much a city in itself. There is no way someone could cover that in one visit. It was a serious business kind of museum. I did get to see all that I wanted to see though. There were tons of paintings, which are always my favorite, and a few cool sculptures.

After the museum, I got to see Champs de Elysses when everything was open, since it is right there. A lot of shopping later, it was time to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The ride to the top of the tower takes 2 different elevators, and is pretty intense. Once at the top, I was fine, but in those elevators…whoa! But the views of the city are absolutely beautiful, and definitely worth seeing.

After that I was beat so I headed back to the hotel for the night.

On our final day in Paris we had only a few hours to spend, so I went off on my own looking to find a park to hang out in. Well, I found it and it was definitely my favorite place in the city. There were ponds, paths, tons of flowers, and people just being lazy everywhere. It was a nice way to end the trip.

We had to take 2 flights back to Larnaca that day. The bus was late getting to us and by the time we were back at the house it was 5:30 a.m. It was an exhausting journey, but such a great one!