Paris and London Day 5 & 6

Day 5

This was our last day in Paris.  We started our day at the Rodin Museum.  I loved this museum.  They have the sculptures outside in the gardens and so it's so nice to be in the middle of a city and then be able to walk through these pretty gardens and see all of Rodin's work.  The Thinker is his most famous one.  I think I like looking at sculpture more then paintings.  I love staring at the detail that goes into each one.

We had planned to take a tour of the Paris Opera house that I was excited to see but they sold out literally to the people right in front of us.  The next tour was too late for us so we had to change our plans.

Instead we went and took Le Petit Train Montemarte.  It tooks us through the streets by Sacre Couer and Moulin Rouge.  It was fun to see that area and fun to just relax and enjoy the ride.

After that we went to the Chocolat Museum and saw a demonstration of chocolate making.  Kind of boring actually but we got to sample some free chocolate!

That afternoon we boarded a train that crossed us under the English channel and into London.  It was such an easy and pretty short train ride and it was fun to see the countryside in both France and England.

We made it to our London hotel and discovered we were literally a 5 minute walk from Hyde Park.  So we went and grabbed dinner and walked through Hyde Park, saw Kensington Palace (home of Will, Kate, Henry and soon to be princess Charlotte.)  Hyde Park was so pretty to walk through.

Day 6

We woke up ready to go explore London.  We started with a  tour of Westminster Abbey.  They wouldn't let you take any pictures inside but I seriously loved it.  It was so interesting to walk through and see all the people buried there.  It's huge inside.  And I got to see the chair used for all coronations.

We headed over to Buckingham Palace which was so fun to see after seeing it on TV so much for all

the different events.  We didn't do the changing on the guard but I loved seeing it in person.

 

 

After that we hopped on our bus tour and although I usually enjoy these bus tours this one was not so great.  We hit major traffic and it took forever to get through it.  It was fun to see some other sites that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. 

We hopped off for lunch and then ended up getting on a river cruise up the Thames river to see the rest of it.

We headed back to our hotel and changed and went and ate a nice dinner and headed over to see Wicked!!  We had great seats and Wicked was good as usual but for some reason both Shane and I had the hardest time staying awake.  I guess all our touring was catching up with us.

Paris Day 3 & 4

Day 3

Day 3 started off with a trip to the Eiffel Tower.  I love the Eiffel Tower.  I don't know what it is about it but I love looking at it. We didn't go up this day but we just walked around it for a while. 

Shane had a special surprise for everyone.  The night before we left he had shaved his head.  And he thought it would be perfect to put it in a Mohawk and reveal it to everyone with a picture in front of the Eiffel Tower.  Of course he had to wear his AC/DC shirt for Razor's Edge.  So here are his pictures from his 'reveal'.  He wore it like this all day and then shaved the rest of it off the next day.

After that we went on a river cruise down the Seine River.  It was pretty cold so we just sat inside and enjoyed some warmth.

 

 

We headed over to the Louvre next and walked through A LOT of the the Louvre.  That place is huge.  The highlights were the Mona Lisa, of course (along with the rest of the world there to see it that day), and Napolean's apartments.

That evening we headed over to the Montparnasse building.  A tall 56 story building that you can look over views of the city.  This one picture shows a cemetery right in the middle of the city. We ate dinner and then headed home for an early evening as we were exhausted.

One funny story.  Shane took French in high school and remembered enough that he could still converse a little in French.  He was excited to try out his French but everytime he spoke French to someone, they responded to him in English.  Everyone in the tourist areas spoke Engligh.  Shane was a little bugged that they just all 'knew' that he spoke English and wouldn't converse with him in French.  haha

Day 4
We went out to Versailles first thing but apparently not soon enough.  When we got there, the line to get in was soo soo long.  They told us it would take 1 1/2 hours just to get in, but it ended up only taking 40 minutes.  However, Versailles itself was disappointing to me.  Every room was so crowded you literally couldn't see anything.  the gardens and fountains were so pretty though on the grounds. So I'll show you a few pictures but we walked through pretty fast.

Once we were back outside we hopped on a train that took us out to Marie Antoinette's estate.  That was so fun to see.  Not many people and you really felt like you had gone back in time to this little place she went and lived about a mile from Versailles.  They had this gazebo and statue called the Love statue and inside you could place a coin to wish for love.  I put in a coin in there for my sister!

After some lunch looking over the Versailles grounds we took a train back into Paris and went to the Orsay museum.  They have lots of art. Monet, Manet, Renoir, Picasso, etc.  We didn't stay super long but was fun to see some original art.  I took this picture for my girls since they love the episode of Little Einsteins that is based on this painting.  I was surprised how excited they got when I told them I saw this painting.  Then the ballerina picture I loved because it reminded me of my cute little dancers and made me miss them this day.

That afternoon we finally made the trek to stand in line and go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.  It was cool to go to the top and see the views of Paris one more time.  They have a top level and then a 1st floor and 2nd floor.  The 1st floor has these glass floors that you can look down to the ground through.  Shane barely stood on it and although I don't have a few of heights, it was pretty freaky to stand there and look straight down.

 

 

That night we had to make our final trek to the Eiffel tower and watch it light up and sparkle.  It sparkles for 5 minutes at the top of every hour that it's dark, until midnight.  I LOVED seeing it.  We got a crepe and sat there watching it, pretty fun.  Then we went back to the Louvre cuz I wanted to see it all lit up at night, we got some fun pictures of the pyramid reflecting in the water.

 

Paris Day 1 & 2

Shane and I went to Europe!!  And I'm just warning you now I am going to have to split this up into several posts to get it all in.  We've been talking about this trip for a while but didn't plan it until end of last year (Christmas day to be exact) when we finally decided on when to go, etc.  We had some sky miles that got us the round trip tickets and the kids were at a good age where we figured we could leave them for a while.  Both my mom and Shane's mom volunteered to watch them the entire time so we split it up and had them both do 1/2.  It was perfect.  The kids stayed at our house with Shane's mom for the first part of the week and then went to my parents for the 2nd half.  They had such a great week and were spoiled by both grandma's.  They never cried and each day when we would video call them, they were excited to talk to us but didn't seem to mind we were gone.  A true sign they were being well taken care of.

Day 1
This was our travel day.  We flew from SLC to Detroit and had a long layover.  Then boarded a flight to Paris arriving Sunday morning at 8am.  We didn't sleep much, in fact hardly at all.

Day 2
We took the metro to our hotel and it wasn't that far of a walk to our hotel with our luggage.  We couldn't check in but dropped our stuff off and went out to explore Paris.

We decided to go on the hop on hop off bus for the day.  It was fun cuz it gave us a good feel of the city and since we were tired it was nice to have someone else drive us around.  We stopped at Notre Dame but didn't go in, the line was super long.  We walked across love lock bridge...which is being taken down.  Really all bridges around Paris have a TON of locks on them.  It's cool to see but I can see why they are wanting to stop the tradition since it's ruining the bridges.

We also stopped at the Arc de Triumphe and walked up the stairs to the top (284 stairs in a spiral...it seems a lot more then that.)  It was fun to see the views from the top.

After we finished the round on the bus we were dead tired (neither of us slept much on the plane) so since we could finally get into our room, we went back to the hotel and took a 2 hour nap.

That night we went over to Sacre Couer church and walked around and got dinner.  We made it an early night and got a good nights sleep.