Paris Highlights

On Adrienne's 18th birthday, we left for Paris. For me, it was a trip of a lifetime... for her, I hope it was one of many! So many people have asked me what was my favorite part of the trip. That was a really hard question to answer as it was ALL good... (OK-we had one rude taxi driver, other that that...)... the weather was perfect, we walked everywhere and saw so many beautiful neighborhoods, we ate ice cream and people watched along the Sienne River, all the buildings have ornate details that make you stop and wonder how in the world did they make that,.. then there were the gorgeous gardens, the pastries and baguettes, the coffee, not having to cook, not having a schedule, finding special musical moments like hearing the organist practice in one of the great cathedrals and watching a renaissance choir rehearse through a window overlooking a courtyard... But, I think my favorite part was watching Adrienne converse with the french people. The first day she was very timid (granted we had been up for an insane amount of hours and probably tried to do too much on that first day), but after that, it was a beautiful sight to watch my daughter, the one that's going to be moving on soon to a new chapter of her life, be comfortable in who she is and what she loves.

Here is Adrienne in our beautiful, little room! Two twin beds, an updated bathroom and a balcony.

We spent a lot of time on the river bank people-watching. Our hotel was about 3 blocks from the river. Notre Dame is in the background.

We spent some time at the Eiffel Tower. It wasn't what I expected...I had it in my head that the tower itself is black and I thought it would be "quaint". But, the structure is a brown color and the crowd is HUGE! We went there on our first night and both agreed that the rest of our time in Paris would be spent away from the crowds. We quickly left that area and got on a riverboat instead.

We traveled all over the city using their Metro system. Luckily, I am an amazing map reader and Adrienne can read french. By the way, if you are ever traveling in Europe, I would highly recommend Rick Steve's tour books and a good map. I covered our book and map with contact paper so we didn't look too much like tourists.  We traveled very easily on our own and saw parts of Paris that we wouldn't have found if we would have been just looking for the big sites. This next picture is of a billboard in the Metro. It's advertising an upcoming movie, "Adam and Eve: the Second Chance"... HA!

I had to take a picture of our breakfast. Every morning we came down to our hotel dining room and were served this beautiful breakfast of croissants, baguettes, juice and coffee.

I miss the coffee- it was heavenly!

We shopped in the food markets to buy our lunches of fresh fruit, baguettes and dessert.  We usually found a place to picnic to eat our lunches. One day we splurged on pizza and pasta and ate in a restaurant.

Here is Adrienne on our balcony. A favorite part of the day was bringing our dinner back here to eat while we watched the neighborhood below and reminisced about everything we had done that day.

A view of the city from the Sacre Coeur.

In Pere LaChaise cemetary we saw where many famous people are laid to rest. I came here specifically to see Frederic Chopin's grave. We were able to find it in under an hour!

This is my favorite picture of Adrienne. The Notre Dame is in the background. To the side of her is a green metal container that looks like a trash can but is actually where artists store their artwork that they sell.

Here is Adrienne with the french president's house in the background. We stumbled upon this on our last day. See the policeman in the background. There was one every 50 feet around this block.

I took a couple hundred pictures and narrowed it down to about 120 pictures and put those into a slideshow. If you want to see more pics from Paris you can watch that slideshow here. (It takes about 10 minutes to watch.)