Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart

On the night of the 15th, we checked out of our hotel in central London and got a taxi to a hotel close to the Luton airport, where we flew from at about 6 the next morning. When we got into Charles de Gaulle, I kept thinking how familiar it looked. It seemed almost like a dream; then I finally realized that I had seen it in the movie Taken. It was either shot on scene or it was shot at a studio that looked EXACTLY like the airport.

We got a train from the airport to our hotel, which was supposed to be extremely easy to find. Well, it turns out, it was a little bit harder than we thought it would be. We're going to blame it on the language barrier. We got off at a stop thinking we had missed ours. This lead to us wandering around for about an hour or so with all our luggage in tow, trying to find our hotel that didn't exist at that stop. Since our hotel was a little further out from the city (which we loved), not that many people spoke English.

We eventually realized that we needed to get back on the train for another stop, then our hotel should be much easier to find. So we get on for another stop and get off on the next stop. And we still couldn't find the hotel for another half hour. Turns out, it was right around the corner from the stop. After all that, we were pretty tired, so we crashed at the hotel for a bit.

Later that day, we went and saw the amazing architecture at the Notre Dame Cathedral, where we lit a candle. We wandered the grounds taking pictures and crossed the Pont de l'Archevêché, but somehow didn't even know about the "love padlocks." :(

We wondered the streets with no real plan and found a panini place and had lunch. After an awesome lunch, we walked to the Palace of Luxemburg and walked around the grounds there. After spending some time in the gardens there, we caught the train to the Arc de Triumph. From there, Jon thought it would be a good idea to walk to the Eiffel Tower, which you can see from the Arc. Turns out, it's a lot further than it looked. We made it, walked around a bit and then Jon took a nap in the park that is right beside it.

That night, we walked by Saint Michael's Church; it was just closing for the night, but the streets were just coming to life. We walked around the church and found a cute little place to eat dinner. After having another amazing meal, we got on the train and headed back to our hotel and called it a day. Jon, unsurprisingly, fell asleep on the train.

The next day, we woke up nice and early and headed to the Louvre, where we spent most of the day. Since we were no artists or art historians, though, we didn't recognize a lot of the pieces. Of course we recognized the Mona Lisa; Jon kept going on about the statue of the lady with no arms, though. Turns out, he was talking about the Venus de Milo. We recognized the Winged Victory of Samothrace, but couldn't name it to save our lives. We googled it when we got back to the hotel.

After going to the Louvre, we got a train and headed to the Palace of Versailles, an hour train ride out of the city. The gates closed literally two minutes before we got there. Not. Cool. We took some pictures of the courtyard and then got something to eat at... SURPRISE... McDonalds. Because where else can you get a fatty, greasy, unhealthy burger and fries? Oh wait...

After an american dinner in Versailles, we headed back to the Eiffel Tower, where we got tickets after a very long wait (and in incident involving a rat on Jon's foot) to go to the observation deck. We got to have an awesome view of Paris at night as our parting gift from the City of Lights.