Paris! Paris!

We flew from Dublin to Paris the morning of the 3rd. Our lovely friend B (who was living there at the time) met us at the airport, and we all took the train back into the city. I have to say right now that B was the best part of our time in Paris, she was so much fun, and was willing to be a silly tourist right along with us, plus she spoke the language... she was our Parisian savior!!! Our hotel was not quiet ready yet so we dropped off out luggage and went to get some lunch...we were all starving! We had a fabulous crepe lunch. afterward it was tourist city!!!!

*this is us acting "french"
First we took a bus over to the Eiffel tower. We did not go up, even though there was not much of a line because it was raining off and on all day, but we did take the time to take all the cheesy eiffel tower pictures. The rest of the day we just wandered around the city to see all the sites, arch de triumph, the louvre, and a bunch of other cool old sites I can't even remember. For dinner we went to a French chain restaurant (I can't remember the name) who's specialty was mussels. I got my own huge pot of mussels...they were soooo good.


The next day we did more wandering around the city, and a bit of shopping. We were outside the pompidou (paris' modern are museum) and there was this guy with some really cool art work. B ended up getting a piece of his, and a bit latter after a coffee, and some thinking I went back and got a a painting for myself, because I knew If I did not I would regret it. We had to get back to our hotel by 5pm so we could start our "tour".

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the tour group I was about to spend two weeks with were not all fanny pack toting, black socks with sandels wearing people. They were mostly families with children ranging from, 15-26 and a couple of girls who were about to start medical/optometry school. They ended up being a great group of people. After a meet and greet we took the metro to a wonderful restaurant, and all had out first dinner as a group.


The next morning the whole group went to the Sainte Chapelle. It was very beautiful, and the stained glass windows were just amazing. We walked from there over to the Notre Dame which was also amazing. After our walk and site seeing, we broke for lunch, and had the rest of the day free to do what we wanted. We had a museum pass that would get us into a mess of places, so we chose to go to the pompidou (the modern art museum) There was so much great art to see.

There was this great exhibit called Détours d'objets Hijacking objects by Claude Courtecuisse. If you know me at all you will see why I like it so much. It was actually a children's exhibit. The artist took objects, toys, containers, blocks, anything you can think of, and stacked them up, and took photo's of them. There was also this room set up where you could go an sit on a plat form, and push a button, that took a picture of you, you then went over to a monitor and could choose from a list of images, including your photo, and make your own stack. You then printed out a receipt so you could go to a website and print out your stack. IT WAS SO COOL.

The next morning we went as a group to the louvre on out way out of town. We only spent about 3 hours there so we only had time for the highlights. One of which was the Mona Lisa, which frankly was a bit of a let down. It is an amazing piece of artwork, but there is something that 6 inches of bullet proof glass just takes away. All in all the museum was pretty amazing, and I'm glad we just got to see the highlights, because it is so huge it would really take weeks to see everything. ur

Thats about it for paris....Stay tuned to the next installment Beaune (bone) France!!!!