"Je t'aime Paris": La Première Partie

Hello all!

Today's post is all about Mackenzie's new favorite place in the world, Paris! She swears that later on in life when she is rich ("when" not "if"), she is going to have a chateau overlooking the city, preferably next to the Eiffel Tower :) I, on the other hand, was not expecting to love Paris as much as I did, after everything that I have heard about Paris being overrated... well, it wasn't. It was wonderful. I am extremely excited to go back in a couple days and meet up with my roommate, Melanie, after she has been spending her spring break with her sister in Monaco. Mackenzie is excited to go back too; both of us have not seen nearly enough of Paris for our liking :)

Le Pont Archeveche (aka one of the two "Lock Bridges" in Paris) with the Notre Dame in the backdrop. The two famous "lock bridges" are adorned with millions of locks that people have placed there over the years... the story goes, that you are supposed to lock a padlock onto the bridge and throw one of two keys into the Seine River, then at the end of your life, you should come back with the other key and unlock your padlock from the bridge. 

So of course Mackenzie and I bought our own lock and added it to the bridge! We even got to engrave it ourselves (the scratches looked like the handwriting of a kindergartener...haha). We wrote "MEV" on one side (both of our initials) and put a heart with the date on the back side (the heart we thought was appropriate to depict our feelings about Paris as well as our last name). 

Mackenzie locking our padlock smack dab onto the middle of the bridge.

After we crossed le Pont Archeveche, we headed over to the Notre Dame and proceeded to wait in line for over an hour in order to go up to the top of the towers. We made the time pass by eating some French crêpes (mine had nutella and banana, Mackenzie's had just chocolate). But I have no qualms about eating all this junk food because we immediately worked it all off by walking up 422 steps to the very top of the Notre Dame to see the panoramic views out over the city of Paris!

Mackenzie's picture captures one of the best views of Paris, with the Eiffel Tower in the center of the background.

We were allowed to go into the Notre Dame as well and I was absolutely floored by all of the stained glass windows. Some of the prettiest that I have ever seen, hands down.

After the Notre Dame, we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower to eat lunch... unfortunately, we missed the end of the lunch period for the only restaurant that we can afford because the ticket machine in the metro station was broken and we had to take a later train than the one we were originally planning on. But we will try again on Saturday!! This is definitely one thing on both of our bucket lists: to eat on the Eiffel Tower! We ended up eating at a cute restaurant down the street, which was ultimately the best thing we could have done because Mackenzie picked up some fabulous posters for her room at the best price we saw all day. 

Our next stop took us to the Louvre! The glass pyramid in the background is actually the entrance to the Louvre. We were pretty beat by this point, so we didn't have much time in the Louvre, but we did manage to see...

...this pretty girl. Of course we stopped off in the Greek Antiquities room to see the Venus de Milo as she is one of the star attractions.

And we were able to elbow our way up to the front of the room to get a picture of the Mona Lisa photobombing us. It's amazing how small the painting actually is, especially compared to the ceiling-to-floor portrait that was placed on the opposite wall that covered at least 400 sq. feet. 

This morning before we checked out of our hotel and headed off to Bayeux, we strolled around the Luxembourg Gardens, situated just a 5 minute walk from where we were staying. The gardens were beautiful...

...and the palace was absolutely massive. We are counting our blessings that we have gotten 4 days of sunny skies... standing on the top of the Notre Dame would not be nearly as much fun if we were getting soaked simultaneously. Rome was almost too nice in the sense that it was a good 80 degrees, but all we brought with us clothing-wise is sweaters and boots. 

To commemorate the first half of our visit to Paris, we decided to buy a box of French macaroons. I don't think that box is going to last until tomorrow...

Although we arrived in Bayeux, France earlier today, the real sight-seeing begins tomorrow on our full-day tour of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Our tour revolves around many of the scenes found in the mini-series "Band of Brothers," which was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. So more pictures to come!

Au revoir!