Paris

We have finally had nice weather! It has been beautiful in Paris, just a little windy. We took the train from Brussels and it only took a little over an hour. When we got here, we checked into the hotel and then walked around a little to find a place for dinner. All of the restaurants close to our hotel are Italian! There are a surprising amount of Italian restaurants in Paris, so we had pizza the first night.

Friday
We woke up and went to the Eiffel Tower. We just went outside of it because the line was ridiculously long and the entrance was not included in our Paris Pass and since it is a two day pass we wanted to do the things that were included first. So we walked over to the Musee d'Orsay and saw a lot of Paris along the way, it is really beautiful. The Eiffel Tower is a little different than I thought it would be, it looked lighter than it does in pictures. It was really cool though and I was not disappointed. The Musee d'Orsay was also awesome and I really liked all the paintings there, especially the impressionist ones. After that we went to the Louvre. The Louvre was huge and beautiful and overwhelming. We walked through some of it and saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The Venus de Milo was wicked cool and looked just like she does in pictures and was really impressive. The Mona Lisa was cool too, but people have all been telling me I would be disappointed, so my expectations were very low. I really liked the painting though. One great thing about the Paris Pass was we got to cut the lines at a lot of places. After the Louvre we picked up sandwiches for lunch and went to Notre Dame. At Notre Dame we went into the cathedral which was beautiful and then waited in line to go up to the towers. This was a long line that we were not allowed to cut but it was completely worth it. There were two places we could go up to and they both had beautiful views. We also go to see one of the bells. There were so many stairs, when we got down we were so tired. But then we went over to the Arc d'Triomph and climbed more stairs! It was worth it again though. After the arc we walked around that area for a while, which seemed to be really expensive shopping streets and found a place to have crepes for dinner.

Saturday
Today we woke up and went to Versailles. This was quite the journey because we got on three wrong trains before finding the right one that would take us there. When we finally got there we walked around the palace and saw the apartments and the outside. It was huge and gorgeous. Then we went out to the gardens. The gardens were also huge and beautiful. I really liked them and they were cool because you would just walk around then there would be a sort of courtyard with statues or decorative plants. There was also a man made pond where you could rent boats to paddle around but we did not do this. We hung out in the gardens for a while and then we headed back into the city. Once we were back we went to the Conciergie which used to be a prison and was where Marie-Antoinette was imprisoned. There was a recreation of her cell and a normal prisoners cell. Hers had two guards, a bed and a desk while a normal cell was straw on the floor. It was actually a really pretty prison. After the Conciergie we came back to the hotel and relaxed for a little while. Then we walked around the area our hotel is in, at first it seemed like a residential area but then we found this cool street with tons of restaurants. Our hotel is actually in the Latin Quarter so we went to a Cuban restaurant! It was not as good as in Miami, but that is not surprising. Then we walked around that area for a while and headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow we are doing some stuff around Paris then taking the overnight train to Venice!