Our final day in Paris! We had a big day of final sightseeing planned for today but our exhaustion got the better of us! We had planned on spending the morning at the Louvre and the afternoon along the streets of Montmartre. We decided to be lazy and take the Metro to the Louvre and spent the morning amongst the hoards of visitors that were pushy and overly aggressive. Despite the Louvre’s massiveness there were very few corners uncrowded. However, the works of art that we saw were beautiful and wondrous. We spent a large majority of our time in…
Paris, France: Day 6
Today began like many others have on this trip, with morning arriving a little too quickly for us. We were planing a day trip to Versailles, Rick Steve’s guidebook encouraged us to leave Paris by 8:00 in the morning, in order to arrive there by 9:00 (or shortly before) to beat the lines. We didn’t arise until a little after 8:00… The morning was pristine and the walk to the Metro stop was pleasant. We purchased the specialty tickets we would need to get to Versailles and were soon waiting on the train platform alongside hoards of other tourists all…
Paris, France: Day 5
Bobby was under the impression that the tourism booths opened at 9:00 in the morning. So, he thought it would be best if we got up a little early and got there close to the opening time to find out if the strike was still going on. After forcing ourselves to get out of bed a little after 8:00 we made our way to the booth and found it closed. Turns out they don’t open until 10:00 in the morning… After looking over our remaining itineraries for Paris we decided to head to the Musee de Orsay, hoping that it…
Paris, France: Day 4
Last night we had another successful night at a restaurant! We were seated, ordered, got the check, and a box only communicating in French. Our next step is to do it without getting out the phrasebook to double or triple check that we’re doing it right. Eating pizza out on a patio (arcade) with space heaters going (it was a little chilly and windy) was the perfect way to end that somewhat lazy day of ours. We had been told that the tourism employees would be striking today. Our days original plan had been to go to Versailles the only…
Paris, France: Day 3
Yesterday’s itinerary included a visit and climb up the Arc de Triomphe, a visit to the Musee Jacquemart-Andre, a stroll through Luxembourg Gardens, and a tour of the Pantheon. The day started off with a little bit of luck! I had us on the correct Metro train but going to the wrong stop. We realized that the stop I had us going to would be going outside of the zone with which our tickets were good for so we hopped off to purchase the correct tickets. Then we realized that we had hopped off at the station directly outside the…
Paris, France: Day 2
We forced ourselves up this morning despite the fact that we both wanted to keep sleeping. We are trying our best to switch to our new time zone as quickly as possible! We set off to find a patisserie for some breakfast. Today we were a bit smarter and brought our phrase book with us! I had been memorizing how to say “We would like…” all morning. Now was the big moment! My palms were sweating, my mouth went dry, and I prayed that my pronunciation was close to correct. I stepped up to the counter and tried to act…
Paris, France: Day 1
We arrived at the airport, exactly according to plan at 4:20 in the afternoon, our flight, with Icelandair was scheduled to depart at 7:20 p.m. However, the volcanic eruption that occurred in Iceland earlier in the week was still delaying flights. The flight didn’t leave until almost 8:30 p.m. We settled in for our 5 1/2 hour flight that we were hoping to sleep right through. Sadly, the best laid plans are often disrupted. We dozed off now and again for the first 2-3 hours of the flight but then something happened that we didn’t exactly expect… The sun was suddenly…
A Change in Plans
We had originally wanted to book our apartment in Chamonix through a website called Home Away. When Home Away put us into contact with the individuals who own and rent the apartment we had chosen, our experience took a turn for the worse. The individuals only accepted bank transfers which meant we were going to incur additional transfer fees from our bank and possibly of the bank we were transferring to. They also didn’t supply me with all of the necessary information needed and when I contacted them asking them for the other information it took them a week to…
Rail Europe
We decided that it would be really fun to take a train from Paris to Chamonix so we could see the beautiful countryside we would be traveling through. We started looking into purchasing tickets and found several options at the Rail Europe’s website, http://www.raileurope.com/index.html We found many options including high speed trains and night trains. Because we wanted to watch the country side fly by we decided that the high speed train fit the bill perfectly. I started researching tickets several months ago and discovered that tickets weren’t available that far in advance. I was disappointed and concerned about how I…
Preparation for France Trip 2011
Bobby and I are planning our 2011 trip to France and are very excited! When we decided to embark on our first European adventure together we sat down and discussed what are goals and expectations were for a trip like this. We found that we had very different ideas… I had decided that I really wanted to see the big tourist sites, experience the people-made wonders of the world. While Bobby had decided that he really wanted to experience nature in other parts of the world and have outdoor adventures! After we discussed the benefits of each of our goals…