Thursday, October 18, 2012

Paris Day 1

We can now check Paris off our to do list!  This will probably be a lengthy post and to be honest I might split it up into several posts so I can get a few other things done today!

Last Week

Kerry and Melinda arrived with all their luggage (yay!) on Thursday here in Toulouse.  We spent the afternoon taking care of a few things (Kerry and Melinda took a little nap while Cam went back to work in the afternoon and I ran some errands).   After Kerry and Melinda rested for a little bit I showed them around Toulouse.  We ran a few more errands around Toulouse and headed back towards our hotel.  We spent the evening catching up on stories and munching on grilled cheese and tomato soup.  We also packed for our trip to Paris! We all went to bed at a decent time in order to rest up for our travels! 

Friday

We left for Paris at around 10 am and we walked down the street about 10-15 minutes to the train station.  Our train left right on time at 11:15 am and we were on our way.  We had reserved seats which was the way to go--our chairs faced each other with a table in the middle.  We stopped at a few different stations along the way.  We had grabbed a few sandwiches before we got on the train and we grabbed a few more while we were on the train for our lunch.  We had a great time talking and watching all the different scenery-we saw lots of greenhouses and farm land as well as trees that were planted in straight rows.  About 3/4 of the way to Paris we switched over to high speed which was crazy fast!  We finally made it to Paris a little after 4:30 pm (our total trip time was around 5 hours).  We tried to stop to use the restroom but they were ones where you had to pay.  We decided to skip it and wait until we found our place.  We were able to find a taxi out front and we were on our way! We made it to our apartment which was located at the end of a pedestrian street so it was in a perfect spot--no car traffic down our road!  We decided to head out and grab some food before our bike tour which started at 7:30 pm.  We found a Mexican restaurant right by our room and we chowed down.  We went back to the room to use the bathroom and we headed down to the Louvre which is where we were supposed to meet our guide. We walked down to the Louvre and it was AMAZING.  We had to walk around for a little bit to find the glass pyramid where we our guide was.  We finally found it right on time and we met up with Jean-Baptiste or JB for short.  He is one of three tour guides with the Blue Bike tours and if any of you get to go to Paris you should check them out--we had a BLAST.  We had to follow him to a parking garage where they keep all their bikes and after testing the bikes out we listened to a safety lecture.  We also got some sweet reflector vests as we were riding through the streets in the dark.  We headed out and I stayed really close to the front because I hadn't biked on busy city streets before.  We stopped at several different attractions within Paris and had an absolutely awesome time. I would go into detail about everyone of our stops but it would take a really long time and it still wouldn't do it justice.  About halfway through our tour though it started raining so we had to put some sweet red ponchos on and it made it even more adventurous!  We took a quick break for a snack (a crepe with chicken and cheese--which was FANTASTIC).  We finished up with the viewing of the Eiffel Tower all lit up (lights twinkling--every night starting at 8 on the hour every hour until midnight it looks like Christmas lights twinkling) and it was more than I ever could have imagined.  I could have sat there and watched the Eiffel Tower all night.  We finished our tour and headed back.  We stopped for a late night snack and drink at a place called Tennessee.  We called it a night after that and headed to bed.

I'm going to stop here for now so I can load some pictures and then I will write more about Saturday and Sunday in a little bit--have to go get some stuff done!            

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