Paris in the Spring

It is sometimes hard to believe as I sit here eating the last of my Swiss candy bar that I was really in Paris for a week. Eveyday life kicks in real fast when you get home and you find yourself back to the same routine, only with a little jet lag thrown in. But here is a recap and some pictures. One of the things I read in my trusty Rick Steve's tour book was dont let anyone offer to take you picture in Paris. Apparently it can be a tourtist scam and the would be picture takers run off with you camera, so I only have one picture of Steve & I together. Of course I took plenty of other people's picture, I must look trustworthy.

We flew all night and arrived in Paris around 7:00 am, by the time we got our bags and figured out how to get from the airport to the hotel, a train ride and metro ride and a short walk, it was around 10:00. Luckly the hotel would hold our bags until check-in at 1:00pm. We had tickets for the Open Air bus ride, a double decker bus, around Paris that stops at all the main site and you can get off and on all day. It was a good way to get oriented to the lay out, we just didn't plan on it raining off and on all day. We sat on the top with out umbrella's for a while but it was became too windy and wet, which wasn't a bad thing when you are going on about 5 hours sleep in a 32 hour period. The following days were better and the weather was really pretty good, not to hot, but I was suprised by the humidity. We went everywhere: Notre-Dame Cathedral, Louvre (the biggest in the western world) & Orsay museums, Sainte-Chapelle (built from 1242-1248 with 6,500 sq feet of stained glass and more than 1,100 different scenes from the Bible), Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon's Tomb, Rodin Museum, walked down the Champs-Elysees a couple of times (our hotel was right in the middle), Sacre-Coeur basilica, Opera Garnier, Orangerie Museum, St Sulpice Church (featured in The DaVinci Code), we went to the Sunday mass and stayed for the organ concert after, it was great. We walked through the Left Bank, went underground to the Catacombs which contain the bones of 6 million Parisians, it was bizzare, it goes on the about 1 1/2 miles. And last of all, I think my favorite, Versailles, home of kinds and queens of France. We went on a Saturday when the fountains are going, it was awesome! I have never seems so many fountains in one place going off at the same time, it was just beautiful. Well, I could go on much longer, but who wants to read a long blog. Hope you enjoyed the pictures ( I took over 500 and edited them down to 300, don't worry you didn't see them all)