Paris

Our weekend was an absolutely unbelievable adventure! We started at 5 a.m. Friday, driving to the port in Dover where we put our car on a ferry to Calais, France! We were incredibly excited as we drove the car off the boat and into France!! We saw and did SO MUCH over the weekend, it will be impossible to cover it all in the blog. We'll cover what we can, in no particular order.

(Also, we've recently received requests for more photos with ourselves in them; so instead of the postcard-perfect photo of the Arc de Triomphe, for example, you get ME in front of it. Disappointing, I know.)

There's probably no better place to start than with food. You can see where Jacob's priorities are; it's all about the baguettes! The above photo is our first picnic at the Parc du Champ de Mars at the Eiffel Tower . Notice the cheese in addition to the baguettes. (For those of you who don't know, I'm a huge cheese fan.) The video below is our Saturday dinner picnic; we purchased the food at a street market we stumbled upon between the Eiffel Tower and Les Invalides. We took the video just to show how idyllic the setting was: absolutely perfect!

We were both excited to visit the Louvre, and it didn't disappoint! The architecture of the museum is amazing, not to mention the art and artifacts. One of my favorite items was the Venus de Milo (photo below).

Some of you may wonder whether we saw the Mona Lisa. We did, but we were disappointed we couldn't take a closer look. The museum keeps guests at a distance, which seemed unnecessary because she's behind a thick glass panel.

We walked up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. And due to an unfortunate footwear choice on my part, we even made a purchase on the Champs Elysees. The Arc de Triomphe is spectacular!
This is the Sacre Coeur Basilica at the top of Montmartre Hill. (We could actually see the Basilica from our hotel room.) I love the clouds in this photo, and the Basilica is beautiful. It was almost worth the hike to the top of the hill.

Here's the Notre Dame Cathedral. We were amazed at how white and clean the facade is after 800+ years!

We also visited the Pantheon where such people as Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Emile Zola, and Marie & Pierre Curie are entombed; and we saw the sister statue of Liberty Enlightening the World; and many other gardens and statues and monuments and buildings and bridges and fountains, etc. We wish we could share all the stories and photos of our amazing trip!

Overall we had an excellent time in Paris this weekend! I knew enough French to survive and was proud of my efforts in that area, and Jacob's flawless sense of direction and working knowledge of subway systems were valuable beyond estimation. Paris is an exciting, wonderful city to visit!

I can't resist just a few more photos...

(From the street market where we purchased that picnic--it ALL looks amazing, doesn't it?)

(Another shot from inside the Louvre.)
(The Champs Elysees from the Place de la Concorde)