Tuesday, September 8, 2009
So we made it to Paris! Only one minor issue, but thanks to the wonderful lady who works for AA we were able to save $150 and not have the possibility of me being detained in Paris on the way home. Ok, let me explain…my passport has my maided name on it, and I called the Passport people before we left to make sure that was going to be ok and they said yes as long as I have my marriage license and birth certificate. Well turns out that there is a new law going to be put in place on Sept. 14th that won’t allow you to have documents, you must have the exact same name as your passport.
So the brilliant lady at check-in said it would be fine if Sid could just change my name…Thankfully we were flying standby too! So thanks to Sid we were able to put my name on the flights in my maiden name and voila no more problems…well, hopefully. We didn’t have any with the train passes, so hopefully I’ll be fine…the only other thing I’m a little worried about is our flight to Athens, but we’ll just hope that goes well too.
We spent a lot of time at the airport this morning. First we wanted to change out of our nice clothes and into something more wearable around the hot city of Paris. Then we waited and waited to get our stamp in our passports. J That was pretty fun! (Another stamp…yay!)
We ended up getting on the Metro to figure out where our train would be departing from and get that all taken care of. So after a little research we found the right train to be on and made it there…everything went smoothly, but we came to find out that the place to store our luggage was back at a station really close to the airport…basically where we just were. So we ended up spending a little too much time on the metro, but we finally made it out to some sunshine!
After getting off the metro we were filled with so many choices for lunch at a café. There were probably 2 on every corner. No joke! We walked by a few and then just decided to pick one. We were sure they weren’t going to be bad….and they did not disappoint! I was so happy to eat some delicious paris food. I got a 3 course lunch – 1st course: soupe l’onion (French onion and it was sooo yummy!) 2nd course was lasagna bolognese – it had a red sauce and a cream sauce and I was practically full before I even took my first bite, but ate the whole thing because it was so tasty! And finally to top it all off, a crème brulee. Sam and I shared that and it was also delish! Sam had a really good ham and cheese sandwich on a delicious baguette. We couldn’t figure out what he was going to get because we didn’t know what “emmarnet” meant…I think that’s how you spell it. But it just was a different kind of cheese…he said it tasted like swiss, so he was quite happy too. We probably sat down for an hour and Sam said that he loved how if he were home and out to lunch he would be very irritated that the food was taking so long, but he didn’t care because we’re in Paris and we just want to relax! I totally agreed.
Ok, enough about our food…We then headed over to Sainte-Chappelle and saw that there was a line that went on for far too long. We weren’t sure we wanted to stand in line for that, so we headed over to Notre-Dame. It was really gorgeous just walking up to it. We then stood in a line to get up to the top floor and see the gargoyles and towers. It was worth the wait…but they definitely did not put enough emphasis on how hard 400 steps really was to climb. It was quite the workout and by the time we were going back down my legs were pretty shakey. Not as easy as it sounds…let me tell you!
But we had such a wonderful view of Paris. We could see the Eiffel Tower and all the amazing churches and cute buildings. We were just so intrigued. It was a very memorable experience. It was also cool to see inside. I love stained glass windows and they had some really great and tall ones. I especially loved the huge pipes on the top floor from the organ.
After Notre-Dame we headed over to Luxembourg to see the Gardens that are there. It was pretty amazing. There was a huge palace right in the center of everything. It was quite spectacular. We walked around for a bit admiring the random statues that were placed all over. We ended up also finding a really cool playground for little kids. Sam and I were tempted to jump on this rope that was all the rage because there was a huge line to get on. We refrained though…not wanting to upset the French or give Americans a bad name…hehehe. But I was definitely jealous, this was an awesome playground.
We then began to head over to the train station and ended up running into a little trouble with our tickets that we bought. We still don’t really know how they work, but we bought 10 and had reused a few over and over and then all of the sudden none of them worked. So we went to buy some and they wouldn’t take our credit card….so then we had to find a ticket center and were behind schedule and began to be frazzled and stressed thinking we may miss our train. We ended up running through the last metro station and Sam said we ran over a few people. Sorry! I honestly had no idea…but I did say excusez moi every time I was cutting someone off….and thankfully we made it. We are currently on the train to Rome and boy are we exhausted!! We maybe got 3 hours of sleep on the plane and then just pushed ourselves through the day. I’m sure we’ll sleep well tonight…if only we had a shower then I could really relax, but unfortunately we’re stuck smelling like the French do, and I guess that’s ok, because we’re fitting in just fine! ;) Well, I think that’s about it for today. We took quite a few pictures and are excited to post them…hopefully tomorrow I’ll have internet and so you’ll have 2 posts for one day…sorry!
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