Oui oui, Paris!

Our trip to Paris started with a nice train ride through the Chunnel from London to Paris. I would tell you more about it, but per usual I passed out for the whole ride. However, I did wake up at one point to find a man staring at me sleeping with my mouth open, so there's that. Once we arrived in Paris we were hit with the harsh reality that this was the first country on our journey that we didn't speak the language. We oriented ourselves and eventually found our way to our apartment. At this point, we were praising The Lord to have our own space not shared with others. Granted, the apartment was close quarters, but it had what we needed and fast wifi. 

Here's a nice panoramic photo of literally 98% of the apartment, just to give you an idea of its size.

After all our travels, and honestly not being on a set sleep schedule yet, we opted to grab some groceries and cook dinner at home. We got some pasta, sauce, lardons (delicious little bacon bits) and salad fixings. Oh, and wine of course.

After a relaxing dinner, we lounged for the night before heading to bed. Not that exciting of a night, but just what we needed at this point. 

Sunday I woke up feeling homesick and overwhelmed. I essentially had one day to see all of Paris. For Natalie, this was fine-she's been there before. I, however, was feeling this overwhelming sense of "ohmygodwhatifinevercomebackhereandidontseeeverythingwhateverwillido". Obviously, I got over this and picked my top things I really wanted to see/do: Notre Dame, have a coffee in a coffee shop on the streets, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and of course-a nice French dinner. Conveniently, these were all located fairllllly close to each other and we devised a route and managed to do all the above! 

Some thoughts: 

Notre Dame: beautiful Cathedral, didn't see a hunchback though :/ also the line was massive so I did not go on a tour...see below.

Coffee was delicious as expected :)

Eiffel Tower: actually kind of ugly, in a crazy sort of way. I do like that it's just this massive item stuck in the middle of a city though. I wished I had seen it at night, since many many people recommended that, but since we're here in the summer, it gets dark around 10pm and we had other evening plans. Bucket listed!

Louvre: amazingly huge. Like, really...just so huge. Again, we didn't go in-perhaps spending an entire day in the Louvre will have to be added to my bucket list as well. I DID, however, get to see a woman bathing in the fountain outside...fully washing her...undercarriage....I saw bare ass. So that can obviously be crossed off my bucket list. For everyone out there,  do not drink the water in the fountain.

And now the most interesting part of our day- Dinner! 

We wandered over to a little restaurant near our apartment. We're seated and we're pursuing the menu before we realize it is all in French. Now, I've always been told not to go to restaurants with photos on the menu, because they are more expensive and probably not authentic. But I'm saying I really could not tell you what anything was on the entire menu. Natalie and I stared blankly at the menu, until our server came over at which point we stared blankly at him and said the one thing we semi-recognized. Risotto. Which is Italian....but whatever right? This waiter was already not thrilled with us for not speaking French,  so we weren't about to ask him to translate the entire menu. Anywho, the risotto was absolutely amazing, so no regrets. 

After dinner we stopped into an Irish pub (yes, in Paris) to watch the last half of the World Cup game. This place was absolutely packed, and while I really couldn't care less about "football" I did enjoy being a part of something so huge for France (they were playing that night).

After France won (!) we walked home to our apartment along the canal and over a cute little bridge and crawled into bed, happy with our day and ready for our trip to Barcelona the next day.

Overall, Paris is beautiful. I want to return. I'd like to learn from French first...