day 2

We went to Giverny (Monet’s home) on Thursday morning with Edie and one of Edie’s friends. It was an hour or so outside of Paris , so we just enjoyed the views of the French countryside on the drive out there. Honestly, Giverny was something I really wanted to see, as I have long been a fan of Claude Monet… but Lance wasn’t too keen on the whole idea, so he was mostly going just to be sweet. However, Monet’s home and garden were far more beautiful than either of us had imagined, and Lance was as overwhelmed by it as I was. He spent the entire time we were there with our new fancy-shmancy camera glued to his face, taking pictures of all the incredible flowers.

One of my favorite parts was the Japanese footbridge and the water lily pond. Those have always been my favorites of Monet’s paintings, and it was incredible to see them in real life.

Then we ate lunch a little café near Monet’s home (we both had omelettes and frites) and then headed back into Paris. After we arrived back in the city, we headed toward Hotel des Invalides.

Since that weekend was a military holiday in France , the courtyard of the museum was blocked off, so we ended up just kind of passing through it to get to Napoleon’s tomb. The building itself is just unbelievably beautiful…

And the rotunda in which his coffin rests is just impressive all the way around.

Then we went over to the Eiffel Tower … where we wasted a good 30 minutes trying to capture my joy mid-air.

We were going to go up into the tower, but the line was just unbelievably long (had to have been at least 3 hours) because they only had one pillar of the tower open. Anyway, we ended up scratching that idea, ate dinner, and then went back to the apartment.

frustration!!!

Okay, so I have now tried to post about Day 2 on three separate occasions, but blogger just will NOT let me upload images. I'm hoping it will stop hating me and allow me to post pictures.... but if not, I guess Day 2 will just have to be a narrative. I'm giving blogger two more days to play nice, and then all of you will just get a lame story with no pictures if it can't get its act together.

Sigh.

day 1

Okay, so, we flew out on Tuesday, May 5th at 5:10pm. My sweet friend Jocelyn and her preshy little Levi drove us to the airport (thanks again, Jocelyn!!!), and we made it through security in like 7.5 minutes and sat at the gate (or maybe at McDonald’s in the airport…) for almost two full hours until time to leave. Our doctor had prescribed some sleeping pills for us, so after a not-so-tasty airplane food dinner, we each took one and planned to sleep our way to France . No such luck. I think we each slept for maybe an hour or so total… out of a 9.5 hour flight. It was a bummer. Anyway, we landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning (on Wednesday, May 6th), and our friend’s mom (Edie) picked us up at the airport and took us back to their adorable Parisian apartment – with a view of the Eiffel Tower! – and we showered, ate, and changed clothes… and then headed out for the day. Edie showed us how to use the metro and helped us buy our 5-day metro passes, and then she dropped us off at the Arc de Triomphe.

Lance and I headed up to the top for some cool views of Paris (and some chilly wind gusts!).

Here are the stairs we climbed to get to the top…

Then we walked back down all those stairs (a dizzying feat, I assure you) and headed down the Champs Elysses. Obviously there were all kinds of high-end retailers…

And we stopped and bought world-famous macaroons at the intimidatingly fancy Laduree.

They were amazingly delicious... especially that vanilla one. I believe my exact words were, "I'm going to marry this cookie."

By this time, we had had a VERY long day (since we’d only catnapped on the plane) and we both started getting cranky, so we headed back to the apartment… and went to bed. At 7:30. Yes, it was still quite light outside. Ha. Anyway, we slept a solid 12 hours, so that was great. We were much less cranky on Day Two.

home!!!

Although my passport does not necessarily show it, I am officially a world traveler! On Thursday, Lance and I returned from a nine-day trip of Paris , France and Rome , Italy . It was really fantastic… and definitely an interesting experience! Oh – and about the passport comment: Since Italy and France are both a part of the European Union, we only got stamped once instead of twice. I was really disappointed by that. I wanted two stamps!

We did and saw SO much on our trip! I’m sure it will take me several days of blogging to go through the entire trip, but I wanted to at least give it a go…

But then Blogger decided to take FOREVER to upload pics... So stay tuned later I guess.