Postcard from Paris

Well, it's been a couple weeks since I last blogged. I've been busy entertaining my wonderful mom for the last 10 days, but I just dropped her off at the airport yesterday :(,so now I have a little spare time. But more on her visit next time...this entry is all about our trip to Paris two weeks ago.

Thursday: After booking non-exchangable tickets for the 5:40 AM train, we realized we had to be to the station by 5:10, and the public transport didn't start running until 5AM...shoot. So we had no choice but to sleep in Central London on Thursday night, I call that hostel "the prison hostel" because the beds were literally a full wall of bunk beds with slats of wood dividing the beds, lovely. Luckily we arrived late and left early so it wasn't too big a deal.

Friday: We woke up puffy-eyed at 4:30 in the morn, made it to St. Pancras station, and boarded our train to Paris. The journey was about three hours, and travels under the English Channel in the crust of the earth for about 20 minutes of it! Our first stop in Paris was Notre Dame, which was one of Spencer's favorite things we've done in Europe. The cathedral is a mind-boggling 850 years old! Spencer took tons of pictures, here are just a few:

The amount of detail that goes into these things is mind-boggling!

After Notre Dame, we split an omelette in a cafe and caught the Metro to the Eiffel Tower (just for the record, I totally prefer London's Underground, they all smell like stale urine in Paris. Plus a girl almost puked on me on the Metro). The one problem with the Eiffel Tower was once we'd taken pictures with various angles of the tower, there wasn't much to do. So we walked around the surrounding area. Did I mention it was soooo cold?? We couldn't just sit in a park and enjoy, because it was too darn cold. 

Spencer was so embarrassed that I asked some random lady to take a kissing picture of us.  I didn't care, I wanted my kissing picture at the Eiffel Tower. 

I'm not sure if it was overconfidence or lack of language skills (probably some of both), but we got lost multiple times in Paris.  We kept getting on the wrong train, something we've never done in London. 

At 6PM we hit the The Louvre (art museum). I found out the day before we left that from 6PM-9PM on Friday nights, you can get into the Louvre for free if you're between ages 18-26, bonus! We visited the Mona Lisa, the Venus statue, and a few other famous works of art then wandered around more statues and the Egyptian exhibit. After the Louvre we ate dinner in another cafe, and even ordered a Creme Brûlée. Then we went back to the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up at night which was beautiful, but impossible to capture in photos. By the end of the night, we were exhausted! By the time we made it back to our hostel, we figured it had been a 17 hour day!!! The good news was we had a private room with a double bed so I didn't have to deal with people snoring and coming in at all hours of the night. 

The plaza outside of The Louvre

The Venus, the Mona Lisa, and a miniature sphinx (he was even missing his nose!)

Saturday was the day I had laid aside to visit the Palace of Versailles. The palace was built in the 1700s and is probably most famous for being the home of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette before the French Revolution. The palace was ridiculous! It was beyond grand with elaborate paintings on the ceiling, crystal chandeliers, and gold trimmed everything. Included in our tickets for the Palace was a self-guided tour. We're talking the little electronic devices that you type numbers into, hold up to your ear, and learn about each room. We are true tourists now! The guide actually did help a lot, because it explained the different pieces of art, and put meaning behind each room. 

I wish these pictures could do the ceilings justice!

The Hall of Mirrors, arguably the fanciest room in the place it was a hall full of chandeliers, paintings, and mirrors (hence the hall of mirrors).

Spencer with his listening device and map.  Both of us with the outside of the Versailles.

After the palace interior, we visited the grounds of the palace, which go on for acres. My favorite part was the enormous hedges which reminded me of the hedge in Harry Potter 4, as well as all the fountains everywhere.

After Versailles, we caught a train to Normandy. We checked into our 1 Star hotel (gotta do Europe on a budget) for the night, then headed towards the downtown of Bayeux (the town we stayed in) for dinner. Unfortunately, by this time it was 10 PM, and Bayeux is a sleepy town, unlike London or Paris. We quickly realized that pretty much everything was closed. We saw one place open and walked in, the lady inside informed us they were now serving "Dessert only." I asked if anything else in town was open, she said no. It could have been a lie, but it seemed believable and we were starving! (We hadn't eaten anything but granola bars since we'd split a baguette sandwich 9 hours before). So we sat down and ordered 3 crepes (butter and sugar, Nutella, and applesauce). They were hands down the best crepes I've ever had. Maybe it was just because we were so hungry, but they were amazing enough they inspired me to get crepes in France 4 more times. No other crepe has been as delicious as those Bayeux crepes.

On our way to the train station in Paris, we came across a parade celebrating the harvest of the grapes.  No words can describe how strange it was.  It was basically a bunch of middle-aged adults walking down the street in bizarre costumes related to food.  There was even one part where they had dead fish on the end of a rod which they flung around at the spectators.  The highlight was a cute old man handing me this bouquet of flowers. 

Sunday: Sunday we went on an 8-hour guided tour of the D-Day sights. We rode in a 9-passenger van with 3 other couples that were all our parents' ages, and a German tour guide (how's that for ironic?). We could have toured the Normandy beaches ourselves, but everything is so spread apart, you'd do a lot of walking, see less, and you wouldn't appreciate or understand it as much. 

A gorgeous sunrise over the French countryside

Each place we stopped, our tour guide would describe what had happened here, showed us pictures, told about different soldiers who fought there, then gave us time to explore on our own. We visited Nazi bunkers, Omaha Beach, the American Cemetery, Point Du Hoc, a D-Day artifact museum, La Fiere bridge (upon which the last battle of Saving Private Ryan is loosely based), Utah Beach, and a church that served as a hospital during the attacks. 

Top: La Fierre bridge, Middle: German bunker and turrets, Bottom: Utah Beach

Omaha Beach was beautiful (think Oregon coastline), and it was hard to imagine it as a massive battlefield. Our tour guide did a good job of describing the reasons the landing on Omaha was so difficult for the Americans, and why there were so many casualties. (The Nazis had higher ground as you can see in the bottom picture, the Nazis had set up explosives and obstacles in the water, the Americans had to come in at low tide meaning there was more beach they had to make it across, etc.). 

The American Cemetery was closed while we were there due to the government shutdown, but our tour guide told us how to sneak in the back way, and gave us an hour to explore. So, we hopped the fence, and it was totally worth it. It was incredibly humbling to see all the grave markers overlooking the sea. 

The only people in the cemetery with us were two other couples from our group.  We may not have been able to see the visitor's center, but we did get the whole place pretty much to ourselves!

You can't really tell from the picture, but the railing we're climbing over was on a piece of concrete that was several feet off the ground.  It wasn't particularly hard to climb, but a lot of older people were standing outside the wall because it was too high off the ground for them to hoist themselves up. 

Point Du Hoc is an area of cliffs that gave the Nazis an advantage because they had the higher ground to visualize the coastline. The Americans dropped 3000 bombs here (all of which missed their targets), and the marks are still quite visible in the landscape. The only bummer about our tour of Normandy was the cold, blustery sea-wind and the intermittent rain.

The top right is our attempt to show the bumpy landscape.  The other two really capture the wind and rain up there.  My hair WAS in a ponytail at the beginning of the day. 

Monday: This was our last day in France, and was much lower-key. We visited an artist's area, the Basillica (another church, see below), the Arc de Triomphe, Champ de Elysses (a famous and expensive shopping district), the lock bridge (a couple writes their names on a lock and hangs it on the bridge), and ate escargot and fondue for lunch. 

The Arc de Triomphe, this was build during Napoleon.  Armies march through it to celebrate their victories.  Hitler  himself marched through it when he took over France, then the Allies marched through it when they liberated Paris.  

Top left: Our view of Paris from the Basillica  Bottom Left: The Basillica  Right: The artists square

Fondue for two!

We wanted our last day to be more about walking around and seeing Paris then racing from site to site. On Monday night we boarded our train to London and arrived home at midnight exhausted but very happy with our trip.

Wow! If you're still reading this, I apologize for the long-windedness. I'll try to keep it shorter next time!