Paris is for lovers.... And I am in love!

But not in love with a dirty Frenchman. Just in love with the city!

We left Bucharest at the crack of dawn and flew into Paris. While we have been travelling, I decided to extend my ticket to stay the 5 more days with a few people in my group to go up and see Normandy and Northern France. So when we landed I marched myself right over to the Air France counter. Oh wait, my flight is operated by Delta so I need to march myself to the Delta ticket counter in the next terminal which seems like roughly 68 kilometers away. I find myself face to face with Pasqual. A gay Frenchman who has been working for Delta for 20 years ("Can you beeeeleeeeeve I even look zat ooooold? I neeeeed to head to Loz Angeleeeez for some siiiiiilicone."). He tells me zat Air Frooonce has beeeen giving heeem headaches all morning and heeeez head is going to explode. I head to Air France who tells me no, Delta needs to take care of it. So I head back to Pasqual who looks up at us and says "Zey sent you back??? Lets go, girls. Iiit iiis too bad I cut my nails yesterday. MEOW!" Nope, not kidding about Pasqual. He takes over my marching and takes us right back to Air France to get us taken care of. Love heeeeem!

We headed in a taxi and got into this totally charming hotel. Its tucked away on a street about 2 blocks from The Tower and is right next to all of these fantastic bakeries and restaurants. We check in and immediately get started. First we headed to the Musee D'Orsee (far too lazy to look up correct spellings) and it was fantastic. It is so cool to see all of these things youve seen and studied in every Freshman art history class in real life. I loved this museum and it just added to the ambiance that it is in a train station. I loved it. We headed after that to stock up at a grocery store to have lunches for the next week and came back to our hotel for a picnic.

After a good nap we walked over to the tower. Now heres the deal with July 14. Its Bastille Day. The French Independence Day. So millions and millions of people all make the trek to the Tower for free concerts and apparently the most amazing fireworks show on the planet. We fight through the mobs of crazies and find ourselves a spot on the lawn. Right next to a group of people who have brought in the makings of a full service bar, including cutting board and knives to get limes in the drinks. And they also brought about an acre field worth of pot. So we had quite the show! People get quite passionately patriotic with that much help. We sat on the grass and listened to the music and were completely enchanted with people watching. There are some crazies in this city.

The sun set behind the Eiffel Tower, it lit up and started sparkling, and then it started. The most incredible fireworks show on the planet. They had projected scenes up on the tower and set it all to music and it seriously was amazing. I cant even explain how amazing it was! After the show the masses all started moving and we were lucky to get out alive and even luckier to find our way back to our hotel!

The next morning (Wednesday? I think?) we headed out to the Louvre for the morning. Oh wow. Priceless works of art EVERYWHERE. Overload. Totally amazing. The Mona Lisa room looked like the fireworks scene the night before. Mobs and Mobs of people all clicking away and shoving and yelling to see it. We wandered around, got lost a few times and probably only saw about ten percent in the 3 hours we were there.

I cant for the life of me remember what we did after the Louvre so hopefully it will come back to me...

Later that night we walked over to get some fantastic crepes made by a lady with flaming red hair on a side street about a block from our hotel. We ate with the other ladies in our hotel and the headed out to the Pompediu (again, sorry for the spelling) to see that. We got there after the main exhibit had closed and only got to see the Kandinsky gallery but it was awesome.

We left there and headed to the Tower to go to the top. We couldnt go all the way because it was closed but we got up there and got to see the breathtaking view of Paris at night. It is so awesome to see everything lit up and the lights off the Seine. Amazing. Offset by the group of Brittish teens on a school trip who were screaming at each other. With the Brittish accents you cant really take any of them seriously and keep expecting someone to pull out a wand and conjure up some spells Harry Potter style.

Thursday morning we SLEPT IN. It was definitely needed. We took the metro to the Arc D Triomphe and then walked down the Champs de Elysees to do some shopping. Oh the shopping is amazing. Billion dollar items line the streets like glittering beacons constantly reminding me that I chose to teach school instead of choosing to be a billionaire. Sigh. Fortunately for us we came right in the middle of summer sales so we picked up a few things from the back of the sales rack so we could claim "shopping in Paris."

We then had decided to to a bike tour of Paris so we hooked up with the Fat Tire Bike company at the Tower and walked over to their office to pick up some bikes. Its run by American college students and we had a group of about 20 of us with our fearless Captain Rohan to navigate us through the city. We started out on the bikes and I am telling you that is the way to see Paris. We rode past so many amazing landmarks and saw so many beautiful sights all while pedalling along on my red Beach Cruiser. We ended on an hour boat tour on the Seine, complete with wine (or Cokes and Sprite for the 3 Utah girls and the 2 underaged boys). We are on the boat and start to notice clouds rolling in and lightning behind the Tower which added to the whole ambiance. When it started to rain we were talking to Captain Rohan and stayed outside to brave the elements. The rain steadily got heavier and we were soaking it all in as part of the experience when QUARTER SIZED HAIL STONES STARTED PELTING US!!! Then we decided it was time to take cover. The problem is that everyone else decided to take cover round about the first rain drop so there was no room in the inn for us. We huddled by the wall and as soon as the hail went away we decided to make the most of it and be the only people out on the deck in the torrential downpour. We took pictures and danced and got completly soaked. Our boat docked right as the rain stopped.

We road our now very clean bikes back to the shop, said our goodbyes to Captain Rohan, and walked home...