France Day Three

PARIS DAY!

Megan and I rose at 5 a.m. to leave at 5:30 for our 6:30 train into Paris. We arrived at the Gare de Nord around 7:40 a.m. I couldn't believe I was in Paris, especially when Megan led me onto and off of the Metro and to this:

My first thought was "Wow, Disney really got it right," which is kind of stupid since I don't really remember what Notre Dame looks like in the Hunchback of Notre Dame, not having seen it since I wa very young. I tried to stop thinking stupid thoughts after that and instead enjoyed what I found inside (and outside):








It was really awesome, to the point where I had the feeling that I wasn't fully appreciating what I was seeing.
We hung around in the church for a bit because Megan wanted to get a rosary for her youngest brother, but the problem was that we were there too early for... well, everything. None of the stores or restaurants or even stands were open. This meant that Megan couldn't get her rosary and we also couldn't go up into the bell tower, since we had to get to our next location before heading to our tour. So cue to next sight that I didn't feel I was fully appreciating:

When I saw this, I squealed, "Look! It's all tall and Eiffel-y!" Basically, my mind shuts down when I see exciting things :p






The line to get up the tower was ridiculous. The tower opened at nine. We arrived at 9:40 and the line was a mile long... and I'm not sure I'm exagerrating. We waited for about an hour and a half, finally buying our tickets to get to the top of the tower.
Because the line was so long, it ate into our time to see other things. So after we went up to the third level and snapped pictures, we got crepes across the street from the tower.

It was pretty good, but I'm not sure if I liked it more than any other crepe I've had. They folded it over a lot before putting the chocolate in, so it was mostly the flavor of the dough-type stuff. But it was still good.
We headed over to the ticket office and picked up the actual tickets for our tour. We were early, so we crossed the street to the Jardin Tuleries, which, contrary to the picture in my head, did not have many flowers, though it did have lots of statues.

On either side of the garden were the Louvre, the obelisk, and the Arc du Triomph. All pretty awesome to see, even from a distance.



At 1:15, we went back to the tour company and got on the bus to head to Giverny, where Monet's house is. As it turns out, sitting down was a bad idea. I couldn't figure out why I was so tired until I realised that we had already been up for almost nine hours and been on our feet for seven of those hours. For most of the hour and a half ride to Giverny, I was trying hard not to fall asleep and so was Megan. By the time we got to Giverny, however, we were pretty much recovered, which was good because it was a pretty cool sight to see.

I'm not much of an art person, but I do know of Monet and his work, and the site was awesome.








We spent about two and a half hours there before we all had to be back on the bus to go to Paris again. When we got back, we had enough time to grab dinner before hopping on the Lille-bound train. We were in Lille by 10:15 and back at Megan's room by 11:00, exhausted, but in a good way.