Paris! - England Part Seven

Thursday

26 May 

2016

We got up early Thursday morning, packed up our bags, and left our bed & breakfast.  We swung by the McDonald's right by our bed & breakfast to get breakfast (the restaurant at our bed & breakfast was really slow), then headed to the airport at around 5:45am.

Traffic was worse than we anticipated, and we were feeling a little pressed for time.  When we got to the airport, we also had to return our rental car, and we ended up looping the rental car lot a couple of times trying to find the correct place to return our car because several of the different companies were in the same area.  Then we had a little bit of a hard time finding our terminal, although this was easier than finding where we needed to return our car.  We tried to use a kiosk to print our boarding passes, and they wouldn't print!  We finally got in line and after a long wait were able to speak to someone.  They told us we were in the wrong place!  We had booked a flight with British Airways, but it was being fulfilled by a company called Vueling.  So we had to go wait in another line, and this one was much longer.  We were really worried now about missing our flight. Luckily for us, we weren't the only ones.  The workers actually called people on our flight to the front of the line because they were getting ready to board, and they didn't want us to miss it!  

Happily, we made it onto the plane without any other issues.  Rather than boarding the plane straight from the airport, we actually had to take a bus out to the plane on the terminal, and they let people board from the front and the back of the plane.  However, once we were on the plane, we had to wait for 2 hours to take off!  For reference, it only takes about an hour to fly from London to Paris.  My dad said this was because of "Flow Control".  Basically, France controls when and how often people can fly into and out of the country, and if you miss your slot, then you have to wait for a new one.

When we finally made it to Paris and through the border, we stopped and took a breather.  Then we made our way to the metro station, which is connected to the airport.  Peter was awesome at figuring out where we needed to go and what tickets we needed, and I was so glad he could take care of it!  I just stood there with our bags and listened to him talk with the metro workers, who actually spoke pretty good English.  Then we were on a train with all our luggage!  It was a little bit of a ride from the airport into town.  

Once we got to our stop, we decided to take a taxi to our hotel, rather than try to figure out how to walk to get there.  The taxi driver didn't speak English, so Peter showed him our hotel reservation to let him know where we wanted to go.  I remember it being a sort of awkward ride because I didn't want to talk to Peter too much, since the driver didn't understand us, and I didn't want to be rude.  But it was also kind of fun because we were in Paris!  In a French taxi!  With a French taxi driver!

We finally arrived at our hotel, several hours later than we had planned.  It was a tiny room, but it was very pretty.  

Tiny French bathroom

View out the window

Out the window and down the street

We hadn't eaten since breakfast that morning, so we wandered down our street to find some lunch/dinner.  We found a little restaurant where the waiter/host didn't speak any English.  We communicated by pointing to what we wanted on the menu :)  It was fun, and the food was good.

My chocolate dessert was better than Peter's
dessert, though he disagrees

Then we came back to our hotel...and took a nap.  We were exhausted.  Once we had rested up a bit, we decided to head out and see if we could find the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur.  We again got on the train, but even once we got off, it felt like it took us a while to get our bearings and figure out where we were going.  Then it was a steep climb up a lot of steps to get to the Basilique.

We went inside, but they requested that no photos be taken inside, since there were people there to worship.  Once we wandered the inside, we decided to just keep wandering the area for a bit.  We actually stumbled upon Montmartre, which we didn't realize is actually a rather famous portion of Paris.  This was Peter's favorite part of our Paris adventure.  It was a very artsy portion of town, with cafes with music, and sketch artists out on the street.  It felt like what you picture Paris nightlife is like.

Friday, May 27

Friday, we had an Eiffel Tower tour scheduled for around noon.  So we got up and found a french bakery to eat some breakfast at, then found a laundromat to do laundry at!  I wish I had taken a picture here.  We had to use Google's Translation app to figure out how to use the washers and dryers because rather than putting the coins in the individual machines, you had to put in your laundry and then put the coins in a central machine that then started your load!  Luckily this app lets you point your phone at text and it translates it for you in real time!

We were also glad that we had scheduled a tour for the Eiffel Tower.  You can visit the Tower without a tour, but the lines were very long, and we actually got to move through them more quickly because we were with a tour group.

View from the Eiffel Tower

The Basilique du Sacré-Coeur from the Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower selfie!

That afternoon, we went to Ile de la Cité and the Notre Dame Cathedral.  This was really cool to me. We took a few pictures, then decided to wander the isle for a bit and come back.

We wandered and shopped a bit, and stopped for some lunch.  We actually struggled a bit to find food in Paris (seems strange, I know).  The problem is that the sidewalk cafes tended to start their food prices at €15, and it was hard to know what the food actually was even with Google translating for us.  We found some savory crepes for lunch this day that were pretty good.  

By the time we got back to the Cathedral, the line to get in was incredibly long, and we were hot and tired and ready to go cool off in the hotel for a bit. This is the one building we didn't go inside that I wished we had, but we really needed the break.

After our break, we went to the Louvre.  It is huge.  We didn't even make it through the whole thing before we got tired and decided to move on.

This was my favorite piece of art.  It's called
The Winged Victory of Samothrace

Mandatory Picture of the Mona Lisa

I liked this lady's dress

This painting of David and Goliath is double sided!

The architecture in the Louvre was lovely, also.

This statue seriously looked to us like it was taking a selfie.  Apparently it's called "Apollo Triumphant over the Serpent Python," and I think he's holding the hilt of a sword whose blade has broken off.  But we couldn't resist taking "selfies" with him.

This sculpture just struck me as really sad, so I took a picture of it.

Long ago, in the far away land of ancient Greece...

After the Louvre, we went back over to the Eiffel Tower so we could see it light up at night.  This was really awesome, except for all the annoying salesmen who kept trying to convince us to buy wine and flowers!

Then we were really hungry, so we found a restaurant not too far from the Eiffel Tower.  The food and the service wasn't that great, but we did get a crème brûlée that was fantastic.  I'm still not sure which was better - crème brûlée or sticky toffee pudding!

Saturday, May 28

Saturday, our plane left for Italy at around 5:40pm, so although we had to check out of our hotel, they did let us leave our suitcases behind the counter so we could continue exploring for a while without having to lug them around with us.  I wore a t-shirt we had picked up at shop in Paris.  

One of Peter's coworkers told us we needed to go to a restaurant called Angelina for breakfast and get some hot chocolate.  It was delicious, but it was very rich.

After Angelina, we went to the Arc de Triomphe.

We also bought some French Macaroons at Angelina, that we actually ate in the airport waiting for our flight to Italy.  More on that adventure in the next post!