Paris!

After four days in London we headed over to Paris for the last 4 days of our vacation. We took the Chunnel train which was just lovely if not a little hard on my sensitive little ears. It was also james' first train ride. James was smart enough to buy us a dictionary in French and the first thing we learned to say was "I am allergic to shellfish." Betsy had no desire for a trip to a French hospital because she couldn't read the menu.

We were pretty tired when we got to Paris. And not just a sleepless night, I mean tired of traveling tired. So we took the first day pretty easy, we navigated ourselves through the French subway system (diiiirty) and found our cute little hotel in the Latin Quarter. We settled in for the night and oscillated between CNN and BBC- our only English channels. I felt very up on the world news when leaving Paris.

Our first full day we hit the Louvre to see the world famous, well, stuff that they have.
As you can see our good friend Mona is a big smaller in real life. We wandered around for half a day and then basically powered down on the subway ride home. I don't really know what we did for the rest of that day..... I think I read a book and James maybe stared at CNN for a couple hours. I know, we are thrilling 70 year old travelers. My only defense is it was cold and we had been traveling for about 14 days at this point. The food that day left a little to be desired. We ate on over priced, equally awful breakfast, a limp lunch in the Louvre and an strictly disgusting dinner at a Bassisere which is suppose to be a cheap eat. Um no it wasn't.

So for day two we decided to forge our own way instead of taking hints from guidebooks and hotel concierges. We got a lovely choclatine at our corner bakery and headed down to the Notre Dame.
We did the free tour of the church and then paid for the trek to the top. Our travel hardened legs took us to the top in no time and we were rewarded with a spectacular view. And since we were off peak tourists we didn't have to adhere to the 5 minutes on the top rule. The Notre Dame was by far one of our favorite moments in Paris. We ate lunch at a corner bakery that make cute little sandwiches out of baguettes. I had a ham and egg- sounds gross- but it was divine.

We also journeyed to the Eiffel Tower to see it in all its splendor. While we agree we had a great time in Paris, we have no desire to head back there. We saw, we took pictures and we conquered.
We did not pay for the ride to the top but it was amazing to see it in person. We had a great time wandering around the park. James also got way laid by a bracelet making peddler in the park. He is way too nice to tell him to bug off like I did. He then got guilted into giving him some euro for it. We now use it as an expensive bookmark in our French dictionary.

Our last day we hit the Orsay Museum and we liked it a whole lot better than the Louvre. So much more our style. James wasn't complaining bitterly only because it was a windy, cold day and he had no desire to do anything outside.

As you can see below- I reverted back to the crack in an effort to caffeine load. But this was about the look on my face at this point.
We did rally and head down to the Eiffel Tower to see it lite up at night. It was amazing! Pictures don't do it justice but I was a little afraid of being mugged or beat into submission to buy a light up version of the tower so we didn't stay long.

Our last day was spent touring the Pantheon and traveling. We had to take the subway to the bust station and then the bus to our "Paris" airport that was 2 hours outside Paris to catch our flight back to Dublin. We arrived in Dublin at 11 pm and slept for a couple hours before catching out flight back to JFK. Of course we took our flight back in the middle of the European day so I watched 3 and 1/2 movies, finished a book, played battleship and ate 3 meals. We arrived back at JFK and raced to La Guardia to try and catch our flight to Phoenix. Epic fail. We were non-reving and we got booted off by a smug employee and her 15 family members. I glared at her. We ended up catching a flight to Chicago and overnighted there. We then caught the first flight out to Phoenix in the am. My mom happened to be in Phoenix and shoveled us into her car to drive us home. We got a total of about 7 hours of sleep over 2 days (1 hour of that being face down on a tray table until a flight attendant poked me to make sure I was ok). We got one good nights rest and then started the Tucson Gem Show. We like to hit the ground running :)