Thursday, July 10, 2014

Paris June 29th-July 1st 2013

Paris- The City of Light, it always amazing me by it beauty and grandeur. But to get there from Lake Como required quite the travel day. It began as we left our hotel in Belligo at 1030am in the pouring rain and took a combination of trains, planes, automobiles, and boats to finally arrive in Paris at about 9pm. It was a very long travel day!
Here we are on the ferry leaving Bellagio...
...waiting at the train station in Verenna on Lake Como...
... and waiting at the Milan, Italy airport. There was a downpour of rain which delayed our flight about an hour. This is where we had to say goodbye to Kellen as he headed back to Brussels to go back to work.
Here we are on the RER train that took us from the Paris airport to our charming hotel in the Latin Quater of Paris. We were all starving when we arrived, so naturally we kept it classy and ate at McDonalds for dinner. I thought it was a great choice because in my opinion a McD's cheeseburger is always a winner! 

Day 1:
When you only go to Paris for 3 days and want to see everything, it becomes a bit of a sightseeing whirlwind! But before enjoying sightseeing you always need food, and when you are in Paris why not eat lots of crepes?
Once we were filled up, we headed off for our first stop: Notre Dame Cathedral. 

After Notre Dame came Sainte Chapelle. This church was built to hold the "crown of thorns" that Christ wore during the crucifixion. This is one of my favorite churches in Europe. Every wall is stained glass depicting all the stories from the entire bible. With all of the stained glass widows the church seems to glow with colored light! 

After Saint Chapelle we headed to the Louvre. We always take a long time getting between places because, as the good tourists that we are, we must stop to take lots of pictures on the way!
I was able to meet up with my good friend, Emma Finley, whose husband is the BCG ambassador in Paris this year. We both had bitter sweet feelings when we realized we were exactly halfway finished with our year abroad!!
As you can see, the Louvre was flooded with tourists straining to get glimpses of the most famous art in the world. We were yet again grateful for Rick Steves, who took us on a brief, yet informative audio guide tour. One of my favorite moments of the day was after we came out of the Lovure. We took Maddie out in front of the entrance and let her play in the fountains. She was so happy and it was so cute to watch!

Next we headed to Musee D'Orsay, which we soon learned is closed on Mondays. Exhausted from walking our legs off, we had dinner in the Latin Quater and Maddie and I headed in for the night. Our first day was a busy, yet successful day in Paris. 

Day 2
We left our hotel bright and early at 7:45am to go to Versailles. This palace was built by King Louis XIV as an escape from the busy city life of Paris. It sprawls over thousands of acres and its walls are covered in beautiful paintings and gold trim. This opulent palace was built by the king while the people of Paris were starving. This was one of the major things that led to the French Revolution, which makes a lot of sense to me.  
The line to get into Versailles snaked around the outer courtyard and would have taken about 2 hours to get through. Lucky for us, a nice security guard let us go right to the front because we had two strollers. While typically traveling with the babies caused us to slow down a bit, occasionally, but just occasionally, they helped us move more quickly!
We call this picture "meals on wheels" a baby needs to eat when she needs to eat so why not have lunch while in the hall of mirrors!

On a more serious note, having a mirror in your home at this time was a sign of wealth, so the king to show his wealth made an entire and entire Hall of Mirrors!
After touring the palace we headed outside to the gardens. On Tuesdays it it "music in the garden" day which means you get to pay €8 extra to have classical music playing as you walk through the gardens. This possibly could have been the biggest rip-off of the trip.


What seemed like a 10 mile walk finished at Marie Antoinette's Hamlet. It has 12 quaint cottages she built to escape palace life. We were all seriously running on empty after so much walking and not enough to eat, so we headed back to the train to go back to Paris. 
And by this time even the babies were getting worn out. Maddie rarely falls asleep while being held; go Uncle Blair for getting her to sleep!!
Right when we returned to Paris we went to the Musee D'Orsay. This is my personal favorite with rooms filled with paintings by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Van Gough and many others. 
We then went to relax and enjoy the evening at the beautiful Eiffel Tower. As we walked around at the Eiffel Tower Maddie said "mama" for the first time - a moment I will never forget
To finish a perfect Paris day we headed to the Arc De Triomphe and claimed to the top to watch the sun set. 
Well that wasn't quite all... We headed home to watch the USA play Belgium in the World Cup. Obviously Kellen and I were cheering for the US, but I'm not sure who Maddie really wanted to win. I guess she has spent most of her short life in Belgium! Go Belgium Red Devils who did beat the USA!
Day 3:
After a leisurely morning we checked out of our hotel and went to drop our bags off at the baggage check at Gare du Nord train station then head to Montmartre. Sadly the baggage check was full, so since I had just been to Paris a month before I volunteered to stay in the train station to watch all 9 bags and Maddie. It was a long few hours but I was glad to take one for the "Big American Team" and let everyone else go explore. At 4pm our train left Paris and 1 hour later Maddie and I were home in Brussels, excited to show everyone our city!!

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