Paris, France!!

A couple of weekends ago RT and I decided to take a trip together. This is the first time since Emily has been alive that we have left her for a whole weekend and went somewhere just the two of us. I was very nervous about it but we both thought that it would be wonderful for RT and I to have some time alone. It was! We contemplated between going to Barcelona, Spain and Paris, France. We went with Paris and it was so amazing. The more I travel around Europe, the more I love seeing how beautiful it is here. We had a hotel that was about half a mile from the Eiffel Tower which we were very excited about. We were only in Paris for two days and had SO much to see so we didn't really spend too much time in the hotel anyway. As we flew into the city, RT spotted the Eiffel Tower from his seat in the plane. From that point on, we forgot about our sleep deprivation (we had woken up at 3:00 that morning to catch our flight from Venice) and were ready to go once we hit the ground. It was so much fun. It was such an amazing sight to stand in front of the Eiffel Tower! This is one of the most famous monuments in the entire world and here we were standing in front of it. Everyone in Paris was really nice despite some nasty things we had heard about French people. We did not experience any kind of animosity and it was very easy to get around the city.
This is us outside of our hotel with a replica of The Statue of Liberty.
The first trip to The Tower.


Our hotel was right next to the Seine River, the famous river that runs through Paris. This is RT and I standing next to the river. It was so beautiful, especially at night.
We reached the tower at about 11:30. There are three levels to the tower that you can visit. You can walk stairs to the first level that has a gift shop, restaurant/bar and look out points. You can then take more stairs to the second level where the best views are. From there, you have to take a lift to the very top. There is a significant difference between the second and top level. I was very nervous about going all the way to the top plus the line for the lift was ridiculous. Therefore, we decided to walk to the first two levels. We had no idea how many stairs we were about to encounter! This is RT at the start of the stairs.
And we made it to the first level!




These are the spikes that are on the metal to make sure that noone can climb on it. I thought it was interesting.

Then it was off to the second level!

We finally finished climbing all of the stairs. In all it was 700 stairs! We had to get pictures with the last stair.


Here are some views from the second level.



We then decided to hit up our next big spot. We decided to go to Notre Dame. This is where the famous novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame is based.

Inside of Notre Dame.



While we were inside they began a service. It was really interesting. They had a children's choir sing and a priest do some ceremonial type things. I am not really sure what was going on because I couldn't understand what they were saying! It was still cool to see and hear.

We were not able to go to the top of the towers at Notre Dame because it was after 5pm and they were closing. So, we decided to try to hit up one more place before heading to dinner. Our next stop, The Louvre! This is the museum where Mona Lisa is housed. This museum is HUGE! They told us that if you were to spend one minute in front of every piece in the museum, it would take you 4 months to see everything! This is outside of the museum before we went in.

There were some interesting pieces of art on our path to Mona Lisa. I was completely surprised that we were allowed to take pictures of Mona Lisa because we usually are not allowed to with such famous and old pieces of art. Here we are with her! The crowd around her was crazy but we were still able to get a few shots of us.

After looking around at some more things in the museum we went ahead and left. It was getting dark when we came out and couldn't help but to get some more pictures. These are still outside of the museum.





We grabbed dinner near the hotel and then called it a night. We were so exhuasted and needed the sleep. The next day was going to be just as busy.

On Saturday we decided to do something that was really unusual.I had read about a place called the Catacombs of Paris. This is where we headed first. The history behind this place is creepy but I was completely intrigued. Many years ago Paris was experiencing some problems concerning disease from some of the remains of their cemetaries. So, at night priests would escort covered carts of the remains of the people from these graves. They took to them an old mine 40 meters below ground and just dumped the remains in piles. After some time, they decided to organize the bones. I cannot describe to you just how many bones there were. They seemed to go on for forever. This is open to the public now. So, we headed down 40 meters underground below the streets and water system of Paris to see the remains of all these real human bones. It was freaky to say the least. I didn't realize how weird it was going to be until we really got underground. Here are some pictures from this excursion.

This is walking in the tunnels before we actually reached the bones. The ceiling was really low at points and RT had to walk hunched over a lot.










After leaving The Catacombs we stopped for coffee and took a small break. We went back to Notre Dame to see if we could get to the top of the towers. The line was so long so we went souveneir shopping and then to lunch. We went to an authentic French restaurant and had fondue and wine. It was really good and the wine was delicious.

After lunch we walked around and looked at different sites and shops. Here are some random pictures of things throughout the city.





We then went back to The Seine River and in the area of the Eiffel Tower. It was starting to get later in the day and we had wanted to take a river boat tour all day long. We chose the perfect time to do this. We learned so much from this tour and we got to see some of the best parts of the city from the boat. We wished that we had done this on the first day so that we could have gotten more ideas of the exact places we wanted to visit and didn't even know about. These are all pictures from the river boat ride.

After the boat ride, we had dinner on another boat on the river directly in front of the Tower. The Tower is beautiful at night. It is lit up in blue lights and once every hour, on the hour, there is a light show on the actual tower. It is amazing to watch. Here are some of the pictures that we took at night.

The day that we flew back to Italy we decided to get up early and take a ride to the very top of the tower. We had to catch a plane so we didn't have too much time but I am so glad that we squeezed this in last minute. Here are pictures from the very top of the tower.





This is on the second level on the way back to the bottom. I love this picture of us!

We had such a wonderful time! We were both really happy to get back to Emily though. We talked about her the whole weekend and we both missed her very much. However, I loved the time with RT. We needed it after him being gone for 15 months.