so i went to paris last weekend and it was absolutely amazing! there was a transportation strike in paris on thursday and we were convinced that our flight was going to get canceled as many that day were, but ours was only delayed a couple of hours. we got to paris and there were french soldiers with guns directing people around which was a bit intimidating. we got royally ripped off by our taxi driver but finally arrived at our hotel which was worth the 7 dollars we paid a night for it - our bathroom was basically non existant it was so small and all around it was just a bit sketchy. the first pic is of me cowering in the corner :) we got up bright and early to venture into paris (our hotel was in a town called Chelle which was not 15 km out of paris as the website told us...) we hopped on a bus and then a train toward paris and met a very nice and extremely helpful english speaking man that told us how to get to where we wanted to go. from that train we took the metro and emerged about a block away from the louvre!! we ate at a cute cafe on the river seine and then headed to the louvre. the building of the louvre is art in itself its so beautiful! and its much much larger than i thought, we could have spent the whole weekend just there! it was amazing getting to see such historic stuff that we've heard so much about! the second picture is of the outside of the louvre. from there we walked to the bastille, which i was SO excited to see, but apparently i didn't pay enough attention in Ms. Zimmerman's lit class because i found out that the bastille came down two days after it was stormed, but i did get to see the monument. The sad picture of me in front of a statue depicts this part of the trip. we then walked from the bastille to Notre Dame, and from there started our quest for the eiffel tower. Understand that this walk from the dame to teh tower is very, very long but our map was not exactly proportionate. we walked through the park of invalides without even knowing it and passed some awesome architecture. we finally reached the tower at about 9:15 and stayed till 10 to see it sparkle and it was soooo worth it! from there we made our way home just to start again on saturday.