Oh La La Pareee!

Last weekend we decided to take a weekend trip to Paris. No big deal right?! I mean in utah you could take a weekend trip to St. George or maybe Las Vegas. But here we can get to Paris in two hours... crazy! Paris was a big adventure and if you go there I highly recommend you bring someone who speaks French. Basically everyone there speaks English but since they all hate the English they refuse to speak it to you and since none of us spoke French sometimes we had a hard time communicating.

This is us waiting at the train station to get on the "chunnel". The chunnel is a high speed train that travels under the ocean. After having to pop our ears several times from the pressure it got us to Paris in about two hours.
We arrived there pretty early in the day and once we got off the train we had no idea where to go. All we knew is that our hotel was right by the Louvre. After struggling to find the right metro train to get on we finally found it. The metro in Paris is nothing like the tube in London. The tube is heavenly compared to that thing. The metro is dirty and there are a lot of creepy men hanging out down there. Also I do not ever suggest taking the metro with all of your luggage. We got off the metro and wandered around in the streets for a while looking for our hotel when finally a French man asked us if we were lost. We all had the same thoughts running through our heads. We don't want to tell him where we live because it is possible we could get "taken" but he is the first person willing to speak English to us. So to play it safe we asked him how to get to the Louvre and after replying "oh la la" he pointed us in the right direction and that was that.
We finally found our hotel. (Timhotel which we decided sounded asian). We got organized and then we decided we wanted to go see the Eiffel tower. We weren't exactly sure where is was but we could definitely see it so we decided we would just start walking towards it. As we walked it kept getting bigger and bigger and we were really excited but it turns out looks can be deceiving and it wasn't as close at it appeared to be. Finally we turned a corner and bam there it was! Naturally we were all freaking out we were way too excited. We decided to save ourselves a pretty big sum of money by walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift. Boy did we walk up a lot of stairs. When we finally made it to the top it was beautiful (picture above). Worth it!!

While in Paris we could not resist two things... Gelato and...

Crepes! Might I add we had our fair share.

Top of the Eiffel Tower.
Inside the Louvre. Can anyone name this CD cover??
The Louvre was GIGANTIC. It by far dominates the British Museum and had way cooler stuff. We were there for almost a whole day and we were far from seeing everything but we were sure to see the most famous items. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa (picture above and yes mom those are headphones.) I have learned so much about paintings and artwork at school and so I really enjoyed getting to actually see them in real life!
Just trying to blend in with the locals.
Arc de Triomphe.
From the top of the Arc we could see the Eiffel tower and there was a way cool lightening storm. Once it got dark the Eiffel tower had millions of lights all over it that started flashing. Its hard to tell from the picture above but the Eiffel tower was glittering. It was very cool!
The last night we were here we wanted to ride bikes. We were so excited especially since it was against the rules. Wild I know! But to our dismay you can only ride the bikes there if you have a European credit card because they have a special chip in them. Instead we decided to ride this ferris wheel. It was fun until the creepy carnival man wouldn't let us off and kept spinning it around and around. We were almost in tears (especially Sarah) when he finally let us off.
This is the Sacre Coeur by far my favorite place in all of Paris! It was a cute sort of secluded little place. There were quaint little restaurants and artists painting in the surrounding area. I bought a cute painting from the nicest man named lulu. He was so happy and cute trying to speak english to me. When I left he said I um... maybe see you later? He was the cutest little man. After we gathered on the front steps of the Sacre Coeur to listen to a little concert by Youri and somehow we ended up in the front dancing in front of everyone. It was awesome!! We are now owners of Youri's CD, I highly recommend him!
This is all the people we danced in front of!
Us being sad because we couldn't ride the bikes.
Goodbye Paris! I hope to see you again someday! (perhaps during the Tour de France or on a romantic get away with my hubby... if I ever find one)