Paris Part One

 On our free weekend a few weeks ago—I am a little behind in blogging, I know!—a group of us went to Paris.

 We were able to fit so much into our three days there…perhaps it’s a little overwhelming to begin a blog post describing everything I experienced. So, I am going to separate all of it into several posts. This one concentrates on the first day—

  This is a picture of the French coast as I flew in from London to Paris. I couldnt quite get a good picture of this, but you can see both the French and British coastlines at the same time while flying over the Channel. I knew they were very close, but it was amazing to see it for myself!

  After flying into Charles de Gaulle early in the morning, I had all the rest of the day to explore Paris.

First glimpse of Paris after emerging from the Metro!

  Firstly, we got settled in our apartment that we had rented out for the three days we were in Paris. It took a little while to find, but it was on such a charming street and what is even

better: near the Metro! This is the street we were on--the one on the right side of the picture.
  So we went upstairs to unpack and decide what we would do first in Paris.

It had SUCH pretty windows!

  Of course, we had to eat before making any decisions, so we went to this amazing French restaurant seemingly 100 blocks away from the apartment.
   I had this chilled soup that I was very skeptical about but it was awesome and so refreshing!

Obviously, the first thing to do would be to see the essence of the Paris skyline—the Eiffel Tower. We trekked to the Sacré-Cœur; the beautiful church at the highest point of Paris. We spent almost an hour soaking in the city and people watching. Parisians are very different in their personal interactions so we were tickled to observe the French from such a perfect vantage point.

First sight of the Eiffel Tower from Montemarte!

Later, we traveled by train to the Eiffel Tower itself.

We decided to take the hike up the Tower and –aside from being slightly annoyed with the obnoxious 9^th grade German group behind us—had a delightful trip up. I learned quickly how very out of shape I am...

But the views were SO worth it!

We were in the Tower as the sun began to set. Then we headed back down (which was almost scarier heights-wise than going up…don’t ask me why) and found a baguette shop owned by an asian lady and grabbed dinner to take back the base of the Tower.

It was amazing to watch the sun go down and the stars come out and for the Eiffel Tower to light up—all while sitting in the grass eating dinner!

Then, right before we left, the Tower began to sparkle. It was SO beautiful!

It was a perfect welcome to Paris.