A Day in Paris!

I have been so thrilled in these past few months because all of the traveling I get to do and how much fun I am doing it!  Being a stay at home Mom for 18 years, I have been very lucky to meet someone who wants me to travel with him.  The kids are very cool with it.  They felt it was about time!

My most recent trip was to France.  For most of the week we stayed in Montpelier as I swam in the Mediterranean Sea.  And boy that sea is cold!  It also didn’t help much on the terrorist attacks that came to be while we were there.  Shortly before we had left, a man was beheaded in Lyons, then sadly many more killed across the sea in Northern Africa in Tunisia.   Either way, I just made damn sure my eyes were wide open when I was there.

Enjoying the beach and the cute little restaurants were very relaxing. I tried so hard to speak French before my trip, but I find it one very difficult language to learn.  Basically I ended up using my phone and requesting what I wanted and Google translated into French.  That worked great!

On my last couple of days, Paris was alot of fun!  My friend flew to London to be with his sister for the Wimbledon, and since I was to fly out of Paris, I took advantage of my cozy hotel and knowing a full day in Paris lie ahead.

One thing I will say, trying to learn the transportation network was pure hell!  But everyone there is very kind and helped me quite a bit.  I made sure I spoke to only the service people there because I knew they would know English. 

That morning, I slept in until 8am, which really was 2am our US time.  That’s another thing that totally kicked our butts. As hard as we tried to stay on the Eastern time zone, by the third or fourth day, we gave up.  It got to the point for the first couple of days I was eating burgers for my breakfast at 2 in the afternoon, so we figured we needed to go to bed sooner and get up sooner.  More like 3 am US time just so I could just have breakfast!  Lol!

Paris was nice.  I got a ticket for a full day on the Hop on Hop off bus.  It takes you to all these French words on the map, all nice and pretty and color coded with numbers.  That’s about all I knew, colors and numbers! 

Cool shot!

Henry the IV

Sienne

Downtown

My first stop was Louvre,  I very old and very big museum that no one should ever pass up while there.  Below are some pictures of the Mona Lisa and the Venus dude, which was pretty awesome to see.

Mona Lisa

The Sphinx

Aphrodite “Venus de Milo”

Next place I headed to was the Catacombs.  If you don’t know me personally, but I’m a very morbid person.  This place was a crypt of around 6 million people laid underground of Paris.  It took forever to get into it, but I feel it was well worth it. At first it was creepy, spiraling down, down, and down to the never-ending staircase to the dead.  It was all tunnels.  Cold, wet and totally far out! I also truly thought I would feel the dead or sense anything, but I did not.  So I guess they all must be at peace.  And don’t even think twice about going there if you are claustrophobic.  No way Jose’!

You can read more here about this place;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catacombs_of_Paris

But overall, from what I was reading, it took many prisoners down below to construct it in the ways I observed.  Seems to me each prisoner were given a massive pile of bones and a wall and were told to have at it.  Very creative thinking I might add.  I certainly would have loved to build my own wall as well.  Here are some pics.

Me!

Incredible designs throughout.

Teeth!

 

Neverending tunnels of bone walls.

Lastly, since I had run all over Paris by this time, taking breaks, having lunch in a small cafe, I headed to the Eiffel Tower.  I was hoping it would be a bit dark by then so I could see it lit up, but by the time I got there it was almost 8, sun shining brightly, and I was tired as hell!

I made it to enjoy the beauty of it and to say I was there.  Shortly after I headed to dinner at another small cafe with a huge glass of wine.  By then, I knew my body couldn’t go on any longer.  Plus I wasn’t comfortable being alone in the dark. Who knows where I would end up?  And knowing that getting back to my hotel on the subway was a challenge enough.  My fear everything would close at night and I run out of Euros.  So I headed back.  But what a great day it was!

Eiffel Tower

Great pic, huh?

Thank you to my friend.  Without you, I would have never been able to do all of this.  Next month, England!

Lucky me!