So, let’s get back to our European vacation. I know.. this is turning into the most drawn out travel blog of all time!
When we left off, we had been to Rome, Venice and had arrived in Paris. We had a busy first day and got to see history in the making with the French election results rolling in. After an early night, it was time to discover more of Paris on Sunday.
We were up early (again!) to get to Notre Dame for the high Mass. It was lovely being able to walk through the park to the train station when there was hardly anyone around –
Even though Mass was all in French, it didn’t matter. Bill had printed us French – English Missals so we were set to follow the liturgy. The music and atmosphere was beautiful and we were able to spend time after the Mass in the Cathedral without a crazy amount of crowds.
When we were wandering around the back of the cathedral, they had some displays about the history of Notre Dame. There was one photo that both had us saying the same thing.. “That is Alec Baldwin!” What do you think?
Bill tweeted Mr Baldwin with the photo and asked what he was doing at Notre Dame… and he got a reply saying “I hang out there a lot!”
After Mass, we made a mad dash to Sainte-Chapelle. This ended up being the longest queue we encountered on our whole holiday.
We waited outside for about 45 minutes and then when we got through the gates, it was about another 30 minutes. We were desperate to get a sneak peak. Much of our own church, Queen of All Saints was modeled on this chapel. When we finally got in, it did NOT disappoint! Stained glass windows surrounded us at every angle. It was absolutely beautiful. These pictures do not do the chapel justice.
We then decided it was time for lunch – so we ended up at a random bistro on the river where I had the most amazing Croque Monsieur EVER!
Bill got quiche and it was as good as my sandwich –
I need more nutella crepes. Every day. Without fail.
They also had free wifi so we were able to FaceTime mum and dad and have them ‘virtually’ with us. Here I am showing them the Seine… crazy huh?
After lunch, we wandered into a local homewares shop for some fun shopping and we picked up some prints for the kitchen and some cute espresso cups and tried to be ‘locals’. What was so funny is here we are, looking for French inspired things for home when all over the place they had prints of New York City, cups with Yellow taxis and so many other things with New York on them… it didn’t really make sense!
We then wandered to the Pont des Arts bridge and we took out the padlock that we had carried with us through our whole trip and put it straight onto the bridge. Awwww! Love time! I love you so much Bill!
After that we just wandered and wandered until we ended up waiting for our bus around the Arc de Triomphe and attempted so many self portraits of us but with our gigantic heads we were always blocking the main view. Gah!
Here I was back in the same area and being a dork in 1999 –
After all our walking, we started to head back to La Villa Paris.
I loved our little neighborhood!
We wanted to grab dinner locally and get a head start on packing all our stuff. We had an early day on Monday as we were doing a 15 hour day long day trip to the Normandy Battlefields and then we had to leave for London early on Tuesday morning. No rest for us!