Beautiful Paris...

Paris is such a beautiful city. It's pretty much everything you would imagine old-school Europe to look like. It also has soooo much history! Kind of like a GIANT downtown Franklin for those of you know who know what that is.

On our first full day in Paris we took a tour of the city and also went up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower. Jonathan couldn't get enough of that structure. We have probably around 150 pictures of it! Don't worry, I won't make you look at all of them, but here are a few from the morning we went...

Ready to go in!

Pilier Nord, North Pillar, is where we went in

Some views from the second level...

The rest of the first day we had these passes for a "hop on and off" tour through the city. Basically its this bus line that runs through the city and stops at all the major sites. You can get on when you want and get off when you want. It was nice having that instead of having to figure out bus routes that were in French.

We were pretty exhausted from lack of sleep and lots of busyness in London and going to Paris so the after we rode the bus for a bit we headed back to the hotel to rest and went to the little market down the street and got some stuff for dinner and just ate in the room! We were a little boring that day...

However, the NEXT day we literally walked almost all over the city. It was great experiencing Paris as more of a local than a tourist (except when we'd pull out the giant camera to stop and take a picture, or two...or twenty....)

We started off at Revolution Square. This is where Marie Antoinette was beheaded and also most of the other nobles of that time. At the time, there was so much blood from all of the beheading, cattle wouldn't even cross the square because they were afraid from the smell. In the center of the square is an Egyptian obelisk that is over 3000 years old. It's the oldest thing in the city.

Next to it is a beautiful fountain...

From the square we walked to the famous Louvre Museum.

There were the most beautiful flowers in the gardens around the Louvre, Heather if you're reading this they make me think of the wildflowers you find and put in your vases :)

In front of the Louvre

From the Louvre we walked to Notre Dam, and on the way we saw this little painter. Definitely something you feel like you'd see in a city like Paris...

He was just sitting by this bridge, painting away!

And here is the breathtaking Notre Dame...it's official, cathedrals are my favorite.

Amazing right?

After that we did a little exploring...

Then we hopped on a bus to go back to Eiffel. It was an open top double decker bus so Jonathan was able to get some great shots of different things...

that's not what I mean...

:)

Under this gold dome is where Napoleon is buried....in SIX caskets...legend says it was so he wouldn't come back!

We really wanted to sit on the grounds next to it and just take it all in. So we got some ice cream and did just that....

We then walked back to the Arch de Triumph, where we took the underground to get back to where our hotel was.

We had dinner at a charming little cafe that was on the walk back to the hotel. You hear that French people hate Americans/speaking English, but if you just make an effort (even a simple 'Bonjour!' as a greeting) most of the time, they are very nice to you! At the cafe, the manager greeted us and even brought us a menu in English without us even asking!

theres a reason why they call it French bread....

This was delicious.

A charming church across from the cafe near our hotel

Well that was our adventure in Paris! We loved the city. It was so well preserved. We really enjoyed feeling like we were almost stepping back in time.

Up next, ROMA!