Last of Our France Trip

After our Seine River Cruise, we searched for a restaurant around the Eiffel Tower so we could watch it light up at dark. (10:00) We found this place & it was very yummy.

These are Jeff's snails:

I actually have eaten snails before and they really aren't that bad, but these were still in their shells. Yuck! Jeff didn't seem to mind though. :0)

I had this:

Yummy tomatoes, mozzarella, and french bread. :0)

After dinner, we walked back to the Eiffel Tower & waited for 10:00. We found a gelato vendor & I finally got to have some gelato!!

Then a little before 10:00 the tower lit up. (It doesn't get dark-dark, until about 10:30-10:45.)

And then it twinkles for 5 minutes on the hour every hour until 1:00.

These pictures don't really capture it very well. It is really pretty in real life. :0)

Then we wearily headed back to our hotel.

The next day, we figured our how to get to Notre Dame.
This was the first building we saw when we got off of the metro.

I have no idea what this building this was, but any time we saw something that we didn't know what it was, Jeff would say, "This is the building where someone famous did something famous." LOL!

Then we saw Notre Dame!

We had picked up some lunch at the grocery store before, so we decided to eat it before going in to Notre Dame, so we headed to the Seine River for a nice little lunch. Too bad it was cold and windy!

Jeff classing it up on the Seine. ;0)

This is a statue of Charlemagne outside of Notre Dame. (He looks kind of creepy to me though....)

The outside of Notre Dame is very elaborate. There are 3 doorways and each one is intricately carved.

The line to get in wasn't too bad. It's free to get in to see the main church, you have to pay to get into the towers, which we did not do. (We didn't want to walk up all those stairs!!

The inside was beautiful too. The ceilings were SO high and there were so many statues, and carvings.

These carvings tell the story of Jesus after the Resurrection & when He visited the apostles.

This model of the church was amazing!

More doors from the outside:

We had originally planned to go to mass on Sunday morning here, but it was really hard to get to & there was a Saturday evening mass, so we decided to go to the Lourve, and then come back for mass.

We headed to the Lourve and had to cross the bridge. Notre Dame is on an island in the middle of the Seine River.

We saw this cool stature on the way to The Lourve, and I almost got ran over by standing in the road to take this picture. Jeff thought I was super smart right about then. ;0)

We finally made it to The Lourve!!

This is the outside, and then you could walk into an enormous courtyard.

The Lourve actually was a palace to begin with, but one of the kings decided it was "too cramped" for him, so he built the Palace at Versaille. If this was too cramped, I can't imagine how big Versailles is!!

This is another big landmark in Paris; The Arc de Triomphe.

We didn't actually go into The Lourve, (much to the disappointment of my niece, Rachel) but we did get to look in this window and see these statues:

We slowly made our way back to Notre Dame and waited for mass to begin:

No, I did not take these pictures during mass, but a lot of rude people were taking pictures. Jeff & I could not understand their rudeness.

After mass, we headed back to our hotel and stopped in a little pizza place that was right next to it. This pizza was so yummy that we ate here for lunch again the next day!

The next day was our last whole day in Paris. We really did not do a whole lot but relax. We roamed around a bit, then went back to the hotel and I took a nap while Jeff watched the Paris Air Show from our window. 

Later on, we ventured out for dinner, and went a different way than we had gone before:

We stopped in a little bakery & got two of my favorite things from France; a croissant with chocolate, and a macaroon. Yum!!

The next day we packed up and headed home. We didn't actually get home until Tuesday because of a layover in Philadelphia, but we eventually made it & were greeted by these 3 amazing cuties:

We were SO happy to see them, and I'm pretty sure they were happy to see us! :0)

We had such a wonderful time in France. I am so glad that we got this opportunity!