Julia's overview...
Here we are in Paris, the land of croissants and capri pants! There's a reason we haven't blogged in a while, and it's that we've really outdone ourselves. If you ever asked yourself "can you see all of Paris in one day?", well we can tell you the answer to that is "hell yeah, if you walk until your legs lose all their feeling". Yesterday was pretty amazing, we saw all of Paris in the span of a few hours. I'll give you the overview, and let Jenn fill in the details, since it's her first time to the City of Light, and it's quite an experience seeing Paris for the first time.
The journey started yesterday, on May 1st - which, it should be noted, is also Ascension Day, May Day, and Labor Day all in one over here (all holidays, it turns out, that will play a big part in our day). We left our bed and breakfast in Bruges to catch a leisurely bus to the train station, and soon noticed something odd - there were NO cars or busses in the streets. What they did have were barricades and grandstands. Welcome to Ascension Day - the biggest holiday of the year in Bruges - when they parade the blood of Christ from the Church of the Holy Blood through the entire town. While we missed the procession itself, we did get the pleasure of hauling our suitcases through the cobblestoned streets all the way to the train station, while being serenaded by the bells of every church tower in the city. (Jenn: the bells never ceased...I'm so glad we left today! There are about 500 churches in this village and they all have bells and they started ringing at 10 am and never stopped! Plus, my baggage was not engineered for cobblestones so that was a painful walk. We sat at the bus stop with some locals who had no idea what was going on either. No car, bus or bike passed and we had to make this train. My baggage is a little wounded today.)
Luckily we made it to the train on time, and even made our 8-minute connection between trains in Lille, and arrived in Paris by the afternoon. We checked into our chic hotel (ok, so maybe the elevator doesn't go all the way to our floor), changed into our chicest clothes (ok, so maybe we wore big sweaters and scarves because it was cold and a little rainy), and set out to explore this chic city.
But first - an important side note - we powered up at the local patisserie across the street, with the best croissants I've ever tasted. Seriously, this croissant was perfectly flaky on the outside, and mouth-watering buttery on the inside. Tres bien. This is why I came to France. (Jenn: I got a baguette of chocolate chip bread. I don't share Julia's love of croissants, but I do heart chocolate.)
Since Jenn had never been here before, I figured she'd want to do a little more than eat croissants, so we decided to start walking around and see where the day took us. Near our hotel, we saw the Place de Vosges and Victor Hugo's house, then walked across the Seine to Ile St Louis, through to Ile La Cite, where we saw the Notre Dame. We also saw the longest line ever waiting to get inside - welcome to Labor Day, when all of France takes off work and decides to come visit the big sights in Paris. So we gave a shout out to the gargoyles and moved on... (Jenn: This church is immense in size and I'm sure it is spectacular inside. However, anyone who has read one of my blogs before knows that I neither wait in line nor pay to see churches. I saw no easy way to break into the Notre Dame without inciting a riot, so we continued on.)
Through the rest of Ile La Cite, past the Palace of Justice and Ste Chapelle cathedral (also closed for May Day... or Labor Day... take your pick), we crossed over the Pont Neuf and admired the views of the Seine. We strolled along the right bank, ending up at the entrance to the Louvre (which was also closed on Labor Day / Ascension Day, imagine that). So, what else to do but keep going - through the Tuileries gardens, to the Place de la Concorde and the big obelisk, and along the Champs Elysees to see the Arc de Triumphe. (Jenn: Bravo to whomever did the city planning here.)
And what's that big black tower in the distance? Of course we crossed over the river to see the Tour d' Eiffel, only to find out that, in fact, THIS was the longest line we've ever seen. Ok, it was dinner time, so we took a break to eat, and came back to see the tower at night, when the lines would hopefully be shorter. A (surprisingly unmemorable) steak dinner and a bottle of wine later, we were off to climb the Eiffel Tower - newly reenergized and a little tipsy. The lines were still long, but we thought we'd tough it out, and we were actually totally sober by the time it was time to climb the stairs (probably a good thing). We made it to the 2nd level just in time to see the tower light up and twinkle - a perfect end to the day-of-everything-in-Paris! (Jenn: we paid a hefty price for some terrible steak in the secret sauce. People literally lined up in the street to be seated at the 7pm seating. Apparently, in France you don't line up on the sidewalk...the French prefer to stand in traffic on a busy street. Of course, we fell in line because we were not going to give up our place in the first seating. I kind of wish we had. We were served a tough piece of cheap roundsteak and a handful of french fries. McDonalds-one of the 50 in Paris-would have been a better and cheaper option. The bottle of Bordeaux was about as fine as a $4 table wine in the U.S. BUT, don't worry, we polished that wine off very quickly and stumbled back into the streets of Paris to climb the tower for the light show.)
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