PARIS

As I was lying in bed tonight, I couldn't stop thinking about Paris. Perhaps one of the dirtiest cities we visited on our trip, it was also one of the grandest (I say this after visiting only 3 cities). There were so many beautiful buildings and statues all over town; I wish that I had more time to be able to explore them. Of our 13 days of vacation, 2 of those days belonging to air travel, we spent our final 6 days in Paris.



On our first night, Eliza's birthday, we went out to dinner. I told Eliza to choose the restaurant. Being a little pregnant and sick, she chose the only Mexican restaurant in town, Arriba Mexico! I don't know how we found it, but it was the best place to start our expedition in Paris. By this time, we had already been to London and Barcelona, and Eliza was ready to go home. Fortunately, that little splash of Mexico transported us home for the evening. We spent the night in a cute little hotel manned by a wonderful staff and two cats. We had a room on the fourth floor that was right on this corner. We would spend all six nights in this hotel, but our room would change without us even knowing it.



After the activities of the second day, we arrived back at our hotel to find people in our room on our bed. Completely confused and a little upset, we asked why they were in our room. Apparently the cleaning lady let them in. So we asked them about our things, which were mysteriously not there, even though we let everything everywhere after unloading our back packs the previous night. They didn't know where our stuff was. Fuming and ready to kill, Eliza led the way back downstairs to the lobby to speak to the manager. After a very confusing French/English argument, everything was "no problem" because our stuff had been moved to a smaller, less awesome room without our knowledge. No problem. This is the room we stayed in for the remainder of the trip. Why they couldn't keep us in our room and move the other people in the other room is beyond me. But, this is Paris. There are no problems in Paris.





I can't tell you how much we loved the museums in Paris. It is so amazing to actually see the art that is in every social studies book you've read since elementary school. I'm not talking about the Mona Lisa. That kind of sucked. I'm sure I would have enjoyed her more if I was allowed to get closer than 15 feet away from her, but I just couldn't appreciate her from such a distance. Now, the Venus de Milo was awesome, as well as the Winged Victory (both in the Louvre). The thing about the Louvre, for me, was that I felt like the building outdid the artwork in most rooms. The palace is amazing.

We brought home our own little bit of art. We found a woman drawing on a bridge over the Seine, and fell in love with her simple paintings. We

bought this painting from her, and decided to eat at the little cafe on the corner just to make the painting more special for us. This was a great meal. I ordered a ham and cheese sandwich, and Eliza ordered a hot dog (I don't know why she had such weird food preferences ove

r there). My sandwich was a good sized sandwich, but Eliza's hot dog was huge! It actually consisted of two hot dogs laid end to end on a baguette smothered in cheese. As you can see in the picture, it was pretty awesome.

There is more to tell about our Paris excursion, but I'm really tired now and I don't want to think about Paris anymore. To Be Continued...