Paris

Oh, the lovely Paris. My husband was kind enough to grant my wish of going to visit a very dear friend of mine and her husband, Leslie and Dave Arnold, who live in Paris. Leslie joined Dave to live in Paris one year ago when they were married and I knew if I wanted to make this trip, it had to be before baby #2 came, even if it meant being 7 months pregnant. It was such a wonderful trip, spending quality time with a great friend of 12 years and touring this charming city that was only something I had seen in movies. I must include several pictures for my own benefit, so enjoy what you see until you get tired of me and that's just fine.

A few pleasant surprises about Paris:

1) It is INCREDIBLY clean. Trash cans readily available on every street and they never fill up.

2) Clean drinking water readily available, even on the streets! They have nice little statues that you would think are just pretty fountains with a thin stream of running water. It is actually for you to fill up your water bottle and it tastes great! Those alone must have saved us 50 euros!

3) No bumbs, no crime. Everyone out and about that city is respectable seeming. I wouldn't have been scared wandering a strange street at midnight by myself, everything is just charming.

4) The city is not very big. I didn't realize how close in proximity all of the fabulous sites were. Dave took me on a little vespa tour of the city my first night and I think I saw it all in less than 25 minutes and we were back at his front door. I had no clue.

5) Everything about this city is charming. I guess that wasn't so much a surprise. The Arc de Triomphe. This is where I took the bus into from the airport. Les was here to meet me as they live only a few blocks away from this gargantuan landmark.

Les and me after my first marvelous dinner in Paris. Yes, all the streets are this cute.

That dashing cute couple, Dave and Les.

Notredame at night, so beautiful.

A woman I tutor frequents Paris and suggested I must go to this place for ice cream. It is over on the little island Saint-Louis. Dave was able to translate all the flavors but the one I wanted. It looked like "gold medal ribbon" from baskin robbins and I said I wanted it anyway. This pic was before I took the venomous bite I will never forget. Immediately upon swallowing my throat was in flames. All I could do was run to get a bite of Leslie's to tame the sting as I blurted out "this has liquor in it!" Well, we decided to google this flavor when we got home and it was a type of brandy swirled with prunes! Could you imagine anything more gross!!!?? Trust me.

A lamborghini with Saudi plates, just chillin on the side of the road.

View off of Dave and Les's balcony
We took a little ride on the metro just outside the city to St. Germain and enjoyed an afternoon of lots of cute little streets and shops and plenty of beautiful things to look at.

There's that lovely couple again...

Too many beautiful things in Paris, even down to my cone of gelato being shaped into a flower

Le Louvre. It was just so freakin big, this picture does not do justice, a panorama shot would be much cooler. DaVinci Code was on TV the day after I came home, it was definitely kind of fun to watch since I'd been there 2 days prior.

Okay, totally lame pic of the Mona Lisa. I have a new camera with a different software and I can't seem to find the "crop" feature to get this dude's head out of the way. What's funny is, does anyone really care that I have a picture of the Mona Lisa? Frankly, I don't really care but for some reason I felt pressure to take a picture when there were 100 gazillion people pushing and shoving to get their stupid picture of it. I stood there wondering what in the world ever made this the most famous painting when as I looked around the room there were so many beautiful paintings 10 times the size and 10 times more beautiful, I don't get it. Art history majors - any thoughts??
My fabulous tour guide ;) I think we had just as much fun people watching in this place as we did "art watching" ;)

I thought this pic was pretty sweet. It was actually taken through a glass window from inside the louvre but you can't even tell.

Hotel de Ville, Paris' city hall.

side shot of Notredame in the daytime.

Doors at the entrance of Notredame. All of the intricate carvings and fine details throughout the design of this chapel are just so unbelievable on both inside and out.

This gives a decent view of the inside of chapel but I could have done a whole post dedicated only to the massive windows of the incredibly beautiful stained glass.

Beauty in Paris definitely goes beyond the architecture...

An author was doing a poetry reading of some sort in front of this favorite bookstore of Dave and Leslie's "Shakespeare & Company" - but what I want you to notice is this FABULOUS fountain with pure drinking water, my bottle got some great use! This is what I was talking about at the beginning of my post
Routine had it that Dave would call to find our whereabouts at the end of a work day and come cruising up on the scooter to meet us for a lovely dinner. Here we dined in a hip little crepery to enjoy some fabulous crepes.
Sacre Coeur was definitely my favorite place to visit. It is located on the highest point of the city and is a beautiful Roman Catholic church or "basilica" dedicated to "the sacred heart of Jesus". When we walked around inside there happened to be a religious session going on with people in attendance. Of course it was all in French but it made it a fun experience all the more.

It was fun to walk right around sacre coeur. It was a cool little atmosphere with this place called "painters square" where all these painters had their artwork on display and you essentially walk around this big square to view and buy the art.
How cute is this little truck? It was visibly clear by the textures that this pic was hand painted.

This was in the Jewish district. Leslie had been telling me we had to go get fallafels at this particular place and they were spectacular! We enjoyed them on a bench in a park and I now wish I lived there just so I could come order from this place every single day for lunch!

The bikes in Paris are free to use, you just have to slide in your bank card when checking it out (so they can charge you if it doesn't get returned) and then there are all these places around the city you can check out and return bikes. Easy access and so much fun, we biked over to the eiffel along the river and I took lots of video footage. I cannot show the video footage b/c you would think I was endangering my unborn child. I promise I wasn't, I learned the art of dodging scooters on a bike in Taiwan and I never had one accident.
Seine River
Goodbye to lovely Paris, thanks for treating me well and thanks to the Arnolds for being the host extraordinares!