This is the view that Sam and I first had upon arrival at our Airbnb in Paris, France…
But these pictures are from the train station in Frankfurt, Germany (where we got coffee and sandwiches before departing)
and… a shot from the train
Sam’s excited to head to Paris
We arrived in Paris on June 25, 2017… after a few nights in Frankfurt, Germany.
The problem was that I didn’t get a local SIM card so we couldn’t contact the Airbnb host for check-in… so we dropped our bags off outside the building we were going to be staying in, while Sam walked around the corner to a cafe that was nearby to get wifi to contact the host.
Ahh, the joys of travel! Unsuspected minor problems….
While Sam was over at the cafe contacting the host, I just sat and people watched. It was entertaining for sure, but nothing compared to the people watching at the cafes on the streets. But I’ll get to that later…
That night, we went out for Croque-Monsieur and some wine.
The next day we woke up and decided that we were going to go visit Notre-Dame de Paris.
(Notre-Dame de Paris means “Our Lady of Paris”), also known as Notre-Dame Cathedral or simply Notre-Dame, is a medieval Catholic cathedral on the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France.[3] The cathedral is widely considered to be one of the finest examples of FrenchGothic architecture, and it is among the largest and most well-known church buildings in the world. The naturalism of its sculptures and stained glass are in contrast with earlier Romanesque architecture.
in front of the Notre-Dame de Paris
and the other side of the Cathedral
and then we went to a cafe to have some coffee and people watch…
Which led us to decide that we should go visit the Eiffel Tower because it was so nice outside. Luckily we did, the next day it was rainy and colder.
We had a nice little picnic of grapes, a baguette, some delicious cheese and great wine. It was awesome just hanging out with my girlfriend and enjoying the view.
I also had the opportunity to take pictures of people taking pictures… which is honestly one of my favorite things because of how people pose.
For instance, people love making it look like they’re holding whatever landmark it is inside of their hand.
I spun that a little bit and tried to make it look like the man was in my hand…while the Eiffel Tower was in his hand.
While it was a little off… you get the idea.
The next day we did an open bus tour throughout the city… and it rained pretty much the entire time, but that didn’t stop us. We still sat upstairs on the bus and got soaked.
This took us all around and we got to see much more of the city than by just walking or taking the metro.
Arc de Triomphe Paris France
I didn’t get too many other pictures of this because of the rain and trying to not ruin my phone by getting it wet…
Funny story, we planned on going to the Louvre after this bus tour and actually got out, walked to the entrance and found out that the only day that The Louvre was closed is on Tuesdays… and it happened to be Tuesday…
There was a private event going on, but it was a black tie and we didn’t have nice enough clothes to try to crash the event… and neither of us speak fluent enough French to talk our way in.
So, we postponed our original plan of heading out the next day and extended our stay one more night so that we could go to the Louvre.
The next day we ended up visiting the Louvre!!!
Venus de Milo
That little device above, the Nintendo, was really great in theory. It’s supposed to update wherever you are and give you a guided tour of the exhibits.
Turns out, it only worked about 30% of the time. It was really helpful being able to type in the number of the exhibit and then an audio explanation would start playing and you could learn more about each individual thing.
But, they still have a lot of work to do in order to make it better.
Here are a few other pictures from The Louvre…
Actually this is one of the creepiest things I saw in there…
What about seeing the Mona Lisa?
Exactly! That’s what I went there for… actually its the only thing I knew about the Louvre. I’m so cultured.
This is what you see when you walk up to see the Mona Lisa… it’s the painting in the middle.. where EVERYONE is simply taking a picture of it with their cell phones.
To me it was really weird. Immediately outside of the museum and in the gift shops and stuff they sell professionally done photos and paintings of the same exact thing, but people were using their phones to capture it.
So instead of being normal and taking a picture of a picture… we took a selfie with the Mona Lisa…
Some of the most impressive parts (at least to me) weren’t what I originally was excited about seeing (Mona Lisa)
The ceiling in a few of the rooms was incredible.
I’m in no way an artist nor do I understand the amount of work that goes into doing paintings or anything similar to what was inside the walls of this museum… but it was incredible seeing some of these things.
