Europe Trip: Day 12 - First Day in Paris!

This was our first day in Paris. We woke up around 8 or 9, and took off as soon as we were ready. For breakfast we stopped by boulangerie and grabbed some mini quiches (they were quite good). Since our hotel is only about 2 kilometers from Sacre Coeur (and we could see the top of it from the main street by our hotel) we decided to walk there. It was a pretty long walk, and we didn't really know our way, but we just followed the dome over the tops of the buildings – this was also when it actually registered in our head that the entire 2km walk was uphill, which makes sense since the church is at the top of a hill.

When we arrived there we took some pictures and looked through the tourist shops before doing a walk through of the church. It was xmas morning, so naturally there was a lot going on inside the church, but we were able to walk fully around the inside of it. It's a more modern church, and Lauren and I really like it's style, but it's still a church. The inside was pretty neat though (no pictures allowed).

Then we went down the stairs towards Paris to try and find a metro stop. The stairs were lined with vendors, including four especially aggressive friendship bracelet makers that were basically blocking the stairs that we had to push through to get by. We were able to find a metro stop relatively quickly and we headed out towards Invalides. When we got there (it is a large war museum where Napoleon is buried) we walked around the outside and took some pictures, though it was unfortunately closed since it was xmas day. We also walked over to the Rodin museum next door, but it too was closed for the day.

We then walked around the other side of Invalides (for better pictures) and headed off towards the Eiffel Tower. When we arrived, we took lots of pictures (while avoiding the throngs of identical looking wandering vendors of crappy Eiffel Tower models). We walked all the way up towards the base, and were considering going up it, but the massive line made us decide to do it another day (probably early in the morning) if at all. We have both been up it before after all.

Then we decided it was lunch time so we headed over towards the Cafe du Marche, which Lauren loves. We arrived there, and had a leisurely 1.5 – 2 hour lunch and dessert. By this time it was 4:30pm, so we decided to take a rather ambitious walk all the from near the Eiffel Tower, along the Seine, to Notre Dame. This walk took well over an hour and was 2+ miles, but we got to see all the sights down the Seine, so it was worth it.

Finally we arrived at Notre Dame. We wanted to go inside, but the line was huge (being xmas evening and all), so we decided to skip it and just take pictures from the outside. When we were done, we walked a little ways north to the metro station, where we were able to take just one metro back to our hotel stop. We got a nutella crepe at the stand right next to our stop, then headed back to the hotel, where it didn't take long for us to fall asleep.