Ooh la la!

Bonjour! After a nearly sleepless night on the plane, we arrived in the land of poodles, public PDAs, great food and high fashion. Our hotel was in a Parisian neighborhood with an outdoor market and different shops for bread, cheese, olive oil, and chocolates. My kind of place! At first, my paltry French was embarrassing but I'm slowly getting used to saying Merci, etc. I was in culture shock and had major jet lag for the 1st 3 days (hence, no post here and the French keyboards are wickedly different); Ryan made us push through with our crazy schedule. Plus, everything took longer than we thought riding the subway with the connections and just trying to figure it all out. Anyway, 1st day we went to the Eiffel Tower (Cara's afraid of heights!), and the Sacre Coeur/Montmarte area. We had a fabulous meal and tables are so closse to each other that we had a great conversation with 2 French ladies about health care, French vs. US differences, and even politics (George Bush was mentioned:-)

The second day we overslept and were really dragging but still managed to enjoy a walk through the historic core of Paris with the touristy highlights: Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, St. Chappelle, the Orsay museum, Conciergerie (where Marie Antoinette spent her final days before her beheading--I'm obsessed with her-on our visit to Versailles even saw her own palace/grounds), and Ryan's favorite the sewer tour. Yes, we found out what happens after you flush in this big city. Let me just say it was stinky! Speaking of which, the bathrooms are quite horrendous. Anyone visiting Paris should always use ones in restaurants or hotels. I almost got locked in a public one, not funny at the time!!!!!

The food is AWESOME!! Onion soup, croissants, crepes, red wine, it's to die for. The cafes are set up to look at everyone walking by and so close together.

Versailles was a worthwhile trip. So opulent! We even rented bikes and frolicked around the grounds pretending to be royalty, ha. Then we visited Napoleon's tomb, that guy gets his own building and a huge tomb made of many materials with lots of security. Oh. to be an emperor.

We tredged up the 236 spiral steps to the Arc de Triomphe, views better than the Eiffel Tower in my opinion. But maybe that's because I wasn't as freaked out. Anyway, Paris is truly beautiful.... The tower has this laser show at night, it's all sparkly and did I mention our hotel room had a view of the top of the Tower?!

Of course, we visited the Louvre. Rick Steves has this podcast that we listened to from my Ipod so we weren't super overwhelmed. Took a cool pic of the upside down glass triangle from the Da Vinci code.

The last day we went to this neighborhood that one of the French ladies we had dinner with suggested. It was a pedestrian only street and a restaurant without an English menu. What made my day was I stopped a friendly looking Parisian and asked where the restaraunt was and she asked if I spoke French or English.... Ryan and I have a system where I've been asking for tables and to get the check and he pays!

Just now getting into the groove of traveling and the frustrations when you don't speak the language. Now I'm enjoying the differences more......