Two Americans in Paris

So yesterday wasn’t worth writing a blog about. We spent the entire day traveling to Paris. And after 2 bus rides, 2 flights, a 2 hour delay, a train, and a metro, and getting lost multiple of times, we finally made it to our hotel around 8pm (we left our Edinburgh B&B at 8am). So we were too tired and stressed to do anything else.

We sure made up for it today though. We had a very busy day! After breakfast we went to the metro station and bought a 5 day visitor pass. However the woman did not speak English so it was quite an ordeal to figure out what we were supposed to do. Once we finally got on the metro, we headed to Musé e d’Orsay. We had to wait in line to buy our tickets for a half hour, but it was worth the wait. The museum is in an old train station and houses the Louvre rejects. We spent most of our time looking at impressionist paintings, particularly Monet. We also enjoyed the many paintings by Van Gogh. We bought lunch at the museum’s café. I was really excited when I saw that they sold Prince cookies which I haven’t been able to find since I was in France 5 years ago!

After Musé e d’Orsay, we went on a river cruise on the Seine. We got off the boat and walked down the Champs Elysee.

The weather started to turn on us, and it began to pour! Of course it had to be windy as well so our umbrellas kept turning inside out. We sought cover under the entrance to Virgin Records with many other people doing the same thing as us and waited for the rain to pass.

Once it finally did pass, we went to Laduree, a well known tea room and patisserie in Paris. It was absolutely amazing inside. I felt like I had died and gone to heaven. It was very traditional Parisian-looking with colorful pastries all along the wall. People were there behind the counter to help you pick out what you wanted and wrap it up nicely with adorable packaging. Laduree is particularly known for their macaroons so we bought 6 total. We bought a variety of flavors: vanilla, chocolate, coffee, lemon, and even rose. Our favorite was the vanilla, it tasted like a warm version of vanilla ice cream. The rose one was the most interesting. It tasted like we were eating rose perfume!

Of course after Laduree we kept heading up the Champs Elysee and visited the Arc de Triomphe. Luckily we found someone to take our picture, and he actually knew how to take a good photograph!
We got back on the river cruise and went to the Eiffel Tower. We again had to wait in line. We felt like most of our day was spent just waiting (kind of like how it is at Disneyland). When we got to the middle level, we saw a rainbow in the distance!

We got back on the elevator and went all the way to the top of the tower. We were so high up! The view was absolutely magnificent! We were lucky that it didn’t start raining on us agaub. We actually had a very clear view. However, it was so cold that our hands and feet were completely frozen. We decided to leave the Eiffel tower, but of course it took forever to get back down. People were being so aggressive too! They kept pushing us every which way.

Here’s the Eiffel Tower as we saw it from our river cruise.

And here’s the Eiffel Tower after we were leaving it. Notice the significant weather change!

Once we finally got out of the Eiffel Tower, it had begun to rain again. We got a little lost trying to find a metro. We finally found one and were relieved when we got inside and defrosted ourselves. On the way back to the hotel we picked up some soda and cheese and had a makeshift picnic in our room with stuff we had left over from breakfast and lunch.

Tomorrow we’re heading to Versailles!!!

Oh yeah…we’re also seeing Wolverine. Since it comes out 2 days earlier in Europe (shown below on a bus from London). Um yeah, be jealous.