BONJOUR MES AMIS!

Where to begin... lol! It's been an amazing three days in Paris! The city is so incredibly fascinating, and extremely chic. It's like highschool, where the entire population of the city is the 'cool' people, and you're like a lowly dork, lol. Everybody seems to walk around with an extreme sense of purpose and reason. There's a subtle urgency to every movement the Parisians make, and watching them navigate their massive city is like seeing poetry in motion. After spending a few days in the city, it's not hard to see why they are the way they are, if you grew up in this city you would be that way too. Their sense of entitlement is well deserved when you picture living your life surrounded by some of the most incredible history and monuments that both inspire you, and dwarf you at the same time. I love this city, I honestly wouldn't leave it if I had the choice. They had me on day two :-)

The adventure began on Monday really, with the day spent leading up to our evening flight to Paris. The plane took off shortly after 8:30pm, and we got to see Toronto at night from the sky. That was an incredible start to the journey for sure! Then the adventure took a slight bump on the head by means of severe (and I honestly mean every letter of that word) turbulence. I'm not a rookie to flying, with several mid-length flights under my belt, and I've experienced my share of turbulence. This flight takes first prize though, with a bout of bad turbulence that lasted over an hour and 40 minutes STRAIGHT. There was never much let up, and at times it got so bad that you wondered how on earth the plane wasn't ripping apart. Now, you have to understand that my attitude is, 'I don't want to die', but I also accepted the notion that the deal is done and there isn't much I can do except pray and put my faith in the pilots. So that's what I did, and it helped alot. I tried to sleep on the plane, as did Lindsay, however they had movie screens in the backs of every seat, and you could select from a bunch of new releases, so that made it hard to break away. After trying to nap at around 2am home time, I came to the mathematical realization that we should be close to a sunrise on the horizon with the time change. I kept watch for a few minutes, and whammy, there it was. It was honestly the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. The flight landed about an hour later at 9am Paris time, and we made it through customs rather quickly. A nice cab took us to our hotel, and we decided at that time that we are NEVER driving in downtown Paris. I can't believe there aren't more accidents here, the streets are NUTS!!! It's not so bad outside of downtown Paris, but man the downtown core is insane. What's even crazier was witnessing the pedestrians weave in and out around the streets, jaywalking at will. We're actually quite proud to say that we've become as comfortable as they are with the jaywalking, it only took a day and it all starts to make sense... like I said, poetry in motion.

Anywho, that brings us to day one in Paris. We couldn't check in right away, so we left our bags in storage at the hotel, and began our adventure. Without a map, or any idea of exactly where we were, we set out to get lost, lol. Our cabbie had told us that downtown Paris was only 200 metres straight down the street from our hotel, so we headed in that direction. If anyone reading has ever been here, you'll realize quickly that the notion of going straight down a street is an impossible task, lol. The streets all criss-cross on angles that seem to join in small pentagon like intersections, from which we pretty much said, 'eenie, meenie, miney, moe', and picked the street that resembled 'straight'. We chose correctly, thankfully, and soon found ourselves at a square called 'Place de la Concorde'. It's a majestic square that lines up with the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. As soon as we got there and saw the Arc in the distance, we just knew where we had to go. We walked up the Champs-Elysees, a long, wide, and straight avenue that leads directly to the Arc. It was a bit of a walk, but it was worth taking. Once at the Arc, we marveled at it's beauty, and took the stairs to it's top for an incredible view of Paris. Afterward, we walked back to our hotel, checked in, and slept for four hours, lol! We were wasted! Our feet were already sore, something that has been a theme for the week thus far. We woke up around 7pm and went to a local Brasserie - think a pub, but with slightly classier food. We proceeded to have one of the worst meals ever, lol, but the silver lining was the sorbet. Possibly the best sorbet we've eve had. Back to the meal though for a second, I always thought that the French would be incapable of making a bad meal... this is not so, lol, turns out they can! Afterward, we returned to our room, and slept the rest of the night away.

We awoke on day two with a plan to go to the Louvre, and the Cathedral Notre-Dame. We had croissants and coffee at a local place near out hotel, and walked through the rain to the Louvre. This place is like the ROM... only it isn't at all, lol. Not even close. Maybe slip the ROM a few ruffies, then inject some heroin into it's veins, and then maybe, just maybe, will you have an idea of what the Louvre is like. For starters, the whole building itself, and all of the window views, are pieces of art in and of themselves. The best section of the museum is the Italian Paintings Wing, which features the Mona Lisa to boot. The paintings were just so incredibly detailed and coloured, and there were so many of them. The Mona Lisa was of course beautiful, though suprisingly small. I guess pop-culture has inspired a larger than life mental image of this painting, but it's actually kinda small - like maybe three feet by one and a half feet. Anyways, we spent the better part of a day in the museum, and there were still tonnes we didn't see. Afterward we walked along the River Seine, and made it to Notre-Dame. The inside of the church is very nice, but the real beauty is the exterior, so many styles of architecture. It was breath-taking at certain glances. We finished the day at a fine-dining restaurant called Le Goumard to celebrate our third anniversary. It was a seafood inspired restaurant, and it was incredible. Second best dining experience of my life - which is no small feat. Good food, some wine, we both felt at that point that Paris is truly a place like no other.

Sleeping that night (last night) was rough for some reason. I think because our bodies are so sore, we just tossed and turned in our cheap two star hotel crappy excuse for a bed. :-) I've been up since 6am, but managed to survive the day. We grabbed a small sandwich at a local Pattiserie, and headed by subway down to a place called the Hotel des Invalide (which houses Napoleon's Tomb). It's a hotel styled building that was built over three hundred years ago to house injured soldiers as they recovered. The place is huge, and now features a war museum that was quite nice actually. The coolest part was exploring a section that acts a sort of crypt for Napoleon's body. It's actually quite majestic. Afterward, we walked a bit, and subwayed the rest, down to a place I had read about called the Catacombs. This place was originally a quarry of sorts, which went on to house the transferred remains from a local cemetery to quell diseases that were spreading from it. I'm not exaggerating an ounce when I tell you that there are millions of skeletal remains in these underground tunnels. These tunnels also acted as the secret headquarters for the French Resistance during WWII. Pretty Creepy, but very cool. From there we went up to the Eiffel Tower, and stayed until after the sunset to also see Paris lit up at night. Afterward we had dinner at a cool Italian place nearby, and are now back in our room relaxing our painful bodies and tired feet.

Tomorrow we plan to visit Versaille, pick up our car, check out the Basillica de Sacre-Couer, and finish our last day in Paris with tickets to the ballet at Paris' Palais Garnier. Saturday will have us head north to the Normandy region, for a few more adventures. We likely won't have internet again until Monday, so until then look at these pictures found here, and take care everyone!