Trip Of A Lifetime...Part One

I am SO excited to finally blog about my trip!!  EVERYONE keeps asking us to fill them in, so finally the travel log is here.Things have been so crazy since getting back, but I now have a minute to relive all of the wonderful memories.  However, it will take several posts, so be patient.  Ryan and I were gone ten days and took over 1200 photos, so I will have to spread the joy out over a few days. So here we go!

This story begins over three years ago when our friends, Nate and Carolyn, announced they were moving to Dubai with their company.  

Dubai?

Never heard of it!

Where is it? 

How do you even pronounce it? 

Nate was extremely excited to go and over the next few years he kept inviting us to come and visit.  We really wanted to go and planned on making the trip after our student loans were paid off and Ryan could get a sizable chunk of time off.  We also wanted to go in winter when it was pleasantly warm there and miserably cold here (my dad warned me of 120 degree summer days when he was serving in Iraq).  So we waited...

Finally, this winter, we paid off the student loans, but I was in school and Ryan has a huge trial heating up.  We actually wondered if we would get to go because we knew that Nate was leaving Dubai to come back to the states this summer.  The window of opportunity was closing rapidly, but Ryan's trial was postponed, so we decided to go right after I finished finals.  I started researching flights, and many of them took us to Paris as a layover.  Now, Ryan teases me that this was his idea, but I know that all of you know better.  Of course it was MY idea to stay a few days in Paris on our way over!!  I mean, who is he trying to kid?!  He's so silly! Anyway, we BOTH decided to go for it and booked a trip to both Paris AND Dubai!! I couldn't wait!!!

But things are never easy, are they?  Trying to get ready for a large, overseas trip during finals wasn't the best idea.  It was hard getting everything ready and staying on top of school, kids, and housework, but we managed.  I wasn't too worried about being away from my kids because my wonderful Mother-in-law was taking care of them most of the time, so that wasn't hard.  But suddenly, a little island called Iceland decided to make it's presence known by erupting one of it's volcanoes.  Mass chaos ensued, flights were cancelled, people were stranded for days, etc.  Denise called my little crisis "Jen Versus the Volcano".  Funny,  Denise, very funny.

I was so worried that we wouldn't get to Paris....

And then I was worried that IF we got to Paris, we couldn't get OUT of Paris...

And my kids worried that ash would get in my plane and cause it to crash (it broke my heart to see them worrying about it)....

Buuuuuut, it worked out in the end.  The volcano let up on it's tantrum and we were off on our trip of a lifetime! 

So!!  I'm going to go through our trip chronologically.  I'm warning you now, I LOVED everything about this trip (well, almost everything), and I may get redundant about my happy feelings on certain things.  I don't think I have used the word "lovely" as much in my whole life as I did in the few short days we were in Paris! (Ryan would ask, "What do you think?" and I would respond, "It's just so lovely!" over and over!) So, just letting you know it might get a little "sappy".

We arrived in Paris at around 11:30 am after a red-eye from Salt Lake (non-stop...fabulous!).  After a very crazy taxi ride through the streets of Paris, we arrived at our extremely charming hotel.  I would definitely stay here again!

Here is our very Parisian room.  Loved it!  Small, but very nice.

The view from our window, our first glimpse of Paris (besides from inside of the taxi cab).

It had a great, but small spiral staircase.  Loved it.

So, we started out with a plan to make it to the Champs Eylsees and the Arc de Triomphe first.  We only walked a block or two and we came to Les Invalides, a beautiful building that houses the tomb of Napoleon. We didn't go inside, just walked around it.  It was huge! Also, look at that blue sky!  I was already quite impressed with this city and the weather.

This is the other side of it.  This used to be a military hospital. 

Les Invalides opens up to a huge grassy area that borders the river.  What a beautiful view.  I was just trying to take it all in.

We made it to the Seine River and crossed this very ornate bridge called Pont Alexandre.

On the other side of the river was this beautiful building called the Grand Palace, with it's amazing glass roof.  It houses a museum that we didn't have time to see.

Past the Grand Palace is the Champs Elysees, which, if you didn't know (because, honestly, I didn't), is a large street that runs from the Louvre and Tuileries Gardens all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe.  It was lined with square trees!  They were beautiful.  The architecture was amazing and it was fun to walk up and down the street along with the many other people and just soak it all up.

One of the first things I saw was a crepe cart, so I made a beeline and ordered a Coke Light (to help with the jet lag, of course) and a chocolate crepe.  I watched her make it on a huge hot plate and drizzle it with Nutella.  YUM!  As a warning, I took pictures of everything we ate on this trip and will be including several photos here...weird, I know, but I love food, so what can I say?

So, we made it to the Arc at the top of the street.  I must say, it was much larger than I thought it would be.  Paris doesn't do anything small.  The huge carvings on the pillars were under renovation, but the detail on the parts we did see were amazing!  It was really neat.

We were standing under it, looking at the details on the arches.  So cool!

So, then we went to the top, but there are no elevators, which is great with me.  Instead we climbed this really narrow spiral staircase (I'm telling you, they were everywhere, you'll see).  This thing is huge and I bet it took us a good ten minutes to climb our way to the top...but it was SO worth it!!

See, I told you it was worth it!  This is looking down at the Champs Elysees.  See the square trees?  And at then end is the Garden of the Tuileries and the Louvre beyond that.  On the right is the Grand Palace with the glass roof, and if you really look close, you can see Notre Dame just above it.  Amazing views!!!

This is Sacre Coure.  That is the one place we didn't have time to visit that I was disappointed about missing.  But it gives me a reason to go back!

During our trip, we came to realize that we could see the Eiffel Tower from many places around the city.  Up on top of the Arc was a really good first view.

All of the streets meet at the Arc de Triomphe in a kind of star burst effect.  At the base of the streets, the buildings were constructed in the same shape and designed with the same facade.  It looked really neat!

Then we went back down and walked along the Champs Elysees again.  I loved how the street signs were on the sides of the buildings.  We were hungry, and set out to choose which sidewalk cafe we would eat at...tough choice!

There were many to choose from, including this one...

Yes, even McDonald's has a Paris style sidewalk cafe!  Hilarious!  But we chose to eat at this one instead.

Sitting at a sidewalk cafe on one of the most famous streets in the world was pretty amazing.  The people watching alone was great, but our dinner was really yummy too.  Ryan had pasta and I had a really yummy chicken and potato dish.  I probably shouldn't include this next bit of information, but I'm trying to preserve the memories from my trip.  Both Ryan and I ordered Cokes and when the bill came, they were 20 euros...that's about $26!!  Our dinner was only about 25 euros, so we learned our lesson to stick to bottled Cokes from the carts for the rest of our trip!!

We headed back across the river towards the Eiffel Tower.  You will see a lot of river shots, too, because it was so beautiful!  Behind Ryan is the Pont Alexandre bridge that we had crossed earlier in the day.

Everyone told us that Spring is the best time to go to Paris, and we don't have anything else to compare it to, but we have to agree.  Everything was in full bloom and gorgeous!!

We arrived at the Eiffel Tower a little before sunset.  It was amazing!  You really can't appreciate it until you've been right there looking at how huge and massive it really is. 

Ryan got really creative and starting taking artistic shots.  We still may not know how to use our fancy camera, but I think he did a great job anyway.  We are going to enlarge this one and put it in our house.

So, being the amazingly buff and athletic people we are, we decided to take the stairs to the main level in the tower (the first leg of the trip to the top) instead of taking the elevator.  I was OK going up the 170 flights (that might be a small exaggeration) until the next day when my thighs were NOT happy with me, but it was worth it.

Because we eventually took the elevator to the top and looked out on an absolutely beautiful city.  I was love struck! The sun was setting and the views were amazing!

Then, when it was dark, the tower lit up

Once we were back down on the ground, we took this neat shot of the tower and the moon.  Neat, huh?

So, that sums up our first day in Paris.  It was wonderful and we couldn't wait to see the rest.  I will blog about each day of our trip on different posts because, as you can tell, there's a lot to cover.  I'm so excited to get these memories down so I will never forget this trip of a lifetime!