Paris: Day 1

On our first morning in Paris we decided to go to the Eiffel Tower first, just to remind ourselves that we were actually in Paris. We found our way to the subway and got off by the Eiffel Tower. As soon as we left the station I began to frantically look around to try to spot it. The moment I saw it, it was pretty crazy. We turned a corner out of the station and there it was, huge and towering over me. At that moment I thought "wow, I guess I really am in Paris, aren't I..."

After checking out the Eiffel Tower and taking a ton of pictures, we found a playground. It had the little horse things like the playground in Edinburgh, so I decided to ride on it too! Starting my playgrounds across Europe tour.

After playing on the playground for a bit we made our way back to the subway to go to Notre Dame. It was so crowded and we realized we needed cash to get to the top so we wandered around for a bit to find an ATM. After figuring out how to change the directions into English, we got our money and went to grab some crepes for lunch! I got a nutella one and it was delicious!!

The line for going to the top of Notre Dame took a while, but it wasn't terrible. The stairs though, those were pretty terrible. It was a spiral, stone staircase that went all the way up to the top of the church. So many stairs! Going back down the stairs was way worse than going to the top. It reminded me of hiking and how badly my legs hurt when I get to the bottom. Thinking back now, I have no idea if it would've been better to save this adventure for the end of the weekend so we wouldn't have had to walk on tired legs the rest of the trip. But oh well, we were walking on tired legs the whole time anyway.

Once we got up to the top we got to see the view and gargoyles, we realized that within the past 20 years they put up a fence like thing (for security reasons, I assume). So instead of looking like this:

It looks like this:

After having some re-creating fun we had time to check out the awesome view. You can see the whole city from up there!

So then we continued to wander around the Notre Dame area (which was our main "playground" for the whole weekend). We found a bookstore called Shakespeare and Company which was a really cool store. The walls were covered with shelves and there was a reading room on the second floor with some comfy chairs.

We wandered around more and made our way over to the Louvre! I, of course, took the obligatory holding-the-pyramid picture before we went in. It was hilarious to get there and see at least five people in a row, standing on the little platforms, all in the same position. It was like, no matter where these people came from, they all had the same goals in mind, to see Mona Lisa, and to "hold" the pyramid.

While we were waiting to get in I noticed this guy in a police officer's uniform and roller blades! It seemed silly for a second, but it quickly started making sense. It's a lot easier to chase after someone and tackle them to the ground in roller blades than a bike or a segway.

The Louvre was really cool! It is a huge building with way more than we could ever see in a day, or even a weekend! We saw some highlights. The Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, other paintings and statues. The building itself was almost as cool as the art inside the building.

After having some dinner and seeing a bunch of art we headed over to some of the museum gift shops and then some of the other bigger shops in the mall thing. There is an apple store....in the Louvre. It was a bit shocking to see until we realized that there is a whole mall with clothing stores and stuff under the museum. Very strange.

After the museum closed we went to find some of this famous ice cream that Megan had read about. I got this dark chocolate kind. Megan and I wandered down to the Seine while we ate our ice cream. It was so good. We got to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night which was so pretty, like a picture!