Paris!!! Day 1

This year for Thanksgiving we were in Paris! It was different to be away from our families and not have a traditional Thanksgiving meal, but it was still a wonderful trip. I'm going to be doing a post for each day in Paris since it was such a long trip and we saw so much.

Daniel took Thursday and Friday off so we could have more time in Paris. We decided to fly since it was cheaper than taking the Chunnel. We got in at 1:30 but the airport is not in downtown Paris so we had to take a train into the city. I took French in middle school, high school, and college so I like to think that I know a fair amount and can get around ok. I can think of sentences in my head for different situations, but as soon as someone talks to me in French, I freak out and say "Parlez-vous Anglais?" hehe. They talk so fast! Side note: I'm determined to learn Spanish! There's so many Spanish speaking people in Texas and it's awful thinking they could be talking about you behind your back. I'd love to be able to become fluent in French and Spanish! We'll see if that ever happens hehe.

Before our trip I tried planning out everything we would try to do so we could get in as much as possible. It didn't quite work out for me in London but I went ahead and did it anyways. My plans were messed up pretty quick on the first day because it took us so long to get to our hotel. It was already almost 4 when we got to the room and dropped off our bags so we had to skip the Catacombs and go to the Arc de Triomphe and the Champs Elysees. Here was one of our first sights on the way to our hotel.

I loved being able to see this right when we got off the RER (trains that act like the metro inside the city but also go further out to the suburbs). It was really foggy so we couldn't see all the way to the top.

The Arc de Triomphe was commissioned in 1806 but not finished until the 1830s. It was to honor the men who died in the French Revolutiony Wars and Napoleonic Wars and it's 164 ft high. Ok, enough boring facts, on to the pictures hehe!

The Arch! It's so pretty. :)

The underside of one of the arches.

The top of one of the arches. I think they are rosette type patterns.

There are 4 of these scenes around the arch.

Just under the arch is their Tomb of the Unknown for World War I. It was very pretty with all the flowers around and the flame.

We decided to go up to the top so we could the traffic circle and down the Champs Elysees. To get to the top we had to climb up a spiral staircase.

This is actually the staircase going down but it's identical to the one coming up. My legs were burning so bad on the way up!

The Champs Elysees. It's the most famous street in Paris and runs from the Arc de Triomphe down to the Place de la Concorde (which is the square right in front of the gardens leading up to the Louvre). We ended up walking from here all the way to the ferris wheel you can see in the distance, and then back.

You can see how crazy the traffic circle gets. There don't appear to be solid lane designations within the circle itself. People just push their way in and then honk a lot, lol. We were actually watching a Top Gear just before I started writing this post where the 3 hosts took 3 different really nice sports cars through there. It was hilarious to see how freaked out they were about getting hit or doing anything to mess up the cars. I'm a pretty aggressive driver but I don't think I'd like to drive in there.

The Eiffel Tower way off in the distance. At this point we figured we wouldn't want to go up there that night like I had planned. We wouldn't have been able to see anything from the top.

After going back down the long spiral staircase, we decided to walk along the Champs Elysees and look at all the fancy stores.

These lights were on trees about every 10-15 ft along both sides of the road. They changed colors every couple of minutes.

There are tons of famous stores, upscale car dealerships, and fancy cafes along the street.

It's hard to tell from this picture but that's Louis Vuitton across the road.

They also had really pretty light displays for Christmas.

I love blue Christmas lights. :)

I was also really excited to see that there was a Christmas Market!

There were booths lining both sides of the street with tons of different foods and items for sale. Our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a chicken and cheese sandwich for Daniel, he's still having trouble with his acid reflux :( , and a potato and chicken dish for me. It was really good but not quite a real Thanksgiving meal.

We walked all the way from the Arc de Triompe to the Place de la Concorde with the Obelisk and this ferris wheel. I'm not sure if that's a permanent ferris wheel or if it's just there for the holidays.

We decided to walk back on the other side of the street and take the same metro stop back to our hotel for the night. As we were walking back we saw a lot of people congregating and heard some music. When we got closer we saw that an actual band was in the display case of one of the stores. It was pretty cool. There were a few more band members on the other side too. There was a red carpet going up to the door in between the two display windows so a fancy event must have been going on inside.

The Arc de Triomphe all lit up at night. After I did my research I read that the Champs Elysees is 1.18 miles from the Arc to the Place de la Concorde. So we walked almost 2 and half miles there and back! It was all really pretty, especially at night, and the atmosphere was amazing.

We decided to head back to the hotel and get a good nights sleep so we would be able to wake up early and see a lot on Friday. Our hotel was really close to the Eiffel Tower but we didn't have a view of it from our window.

There was a really nice picture of it on our head board though!

Our plans for the next day included Versailles in the morning, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, the Conciergerie (a past prison), and the Deportation Memorial (for the French persecuted during WWII) in the afternoon, and the Eiffel Tower in the evening. Check back tomorrow for a post about all these sights. On Saturday we went to Caen for a D-Day tour, and Sunday we toured the Louvre and the Catacombs. I'll do a separate post for each day so it's not a crazy long post. I already tend to write a alot hehe.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Janelle