Bonjour Paris!

You know how sometimes you have those moments where you just can't possibly find the perfect way to describe something because it's just too amazing for words? Well that is what I am currently going through in trying to describe my trip to Paris. It really couldn't have been a more perfect trip. The people I went with were incredible. The things we saw were incredible. Everything was great.

But I'm going to go ahead as usual and try and find the way to describe everything. And I'll try and choose the best of the over 250 pictures that I took on the trip to show as well.

The trip started out early. And I mean early. As I mentioned in my previous post, my flight out was at 8:30. Which meant I had to be at Barajas Airport by 6:30. Which meant I had to be on the bus to the airport by 5:30. Which meant I had to get up by 4:30. Ugh. I am definitely not an early riser, and getting up several hours before sunrise was rough for me. However, eventually the excitement of going to Paris kicked in and I realized that it was all for a good cause, so my mood got a little better. But only a little. :)

This is a picture of the sunrise over Madrid. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of sunrises. I love seeing them and I love taking pictures of them. However, I like them a whole lot better when I can go back to bed for an hour or two after I see them. haha But this was one of my last views of my wonderful Spain before I left for gay old Paris.

I've become an old pro at snapping welcome signs in airports and train stations, and this trip was no exception. By all means, if someone or something is willing to welcome me to France, I'll be more than willing to take a picture of it.

So I went with two girls, Cherrie and Lindsay, but we took different methods of travel. The girls took the overnight train on Thursday night and got into Paris at 9 in the morning, whereas I took the plane on Friday morning and got into Paris around 10:30. The original plan was to meet the girls in Versailles at noon and spend the rest of the day together. However, and this is something I have learned extremely well throughout my time here, plans never work out. So, of course, my flight gets delayed for about an hour, and then it takes me awhile to get to the hotel, so I don't even show up to check in until 2:30. Obviously very very late for my noon meeting time.

However, the girls had left me a note at the hotel saying that they had got in late too and that they were going to go ahead and go to Versailles but if I didn't make it there, then we would just meet at the Louvre. Which sounded good at the time, but we didn't realize that three people meeting at the Louvre was like reuniting three needles in a stack of needles.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

So after I realized that I wouldn't be going to Versailles (which I wasn't too horribly upset about. once you've seen one European palace, you've seen them all), I decided to go exploring. I mean, if you're in Paris, you don't just sit around with your thumb up your butt. So naturally the very first place I went was......

The oh-so-incredible Eiffel Tower. It has always been one of the places that I have most wanted to see in the entire world, so I made a bee line for it. And I'll never forget the moment when I finally walked up to it and stood underneath it for the first time. It was the most incredible feeling in the entire world, like I had just accomplished something amazing. And I was pleasantly surprised by how enormous it was. For real, the Eiffel is gigantic.

So after walking underneath it for awhile (and calling my family to scream that I was under the Eiffel Tower) I decided to walk down the field to get a few shots of the entire tower. Which I think turned out very postcard-worthy.

Here is a picture of the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background. This picture is from a little later in the day when it started getting kind of overcast and chilly. But it wasn't a problem, because Paris weather is like Oklahoma weather. One minute it was sunny and hot and the next it was rainy and freezing. But the bad weather never lasted long, which was nice.

Finally the time came to go the Louvre and meet up with the girls. I got there a little early from our meeting time, so I walked around, shot some pictures, and just kind of checked things out. The Louvre is incredible and it has this huge glass pyramid as the entrance. The whole building is really incredible from the outside and it's a perfect representation of what is inside.

So back to my story about meeting up with the girls. I was supposed to meet them "at the entrance" at 5. But there are a ton of different entrances into this plaza, so meeting them was nearly impossible. So I waited until 7 and decided, okay, screw it, I'm going in. I didn't want to miss out on this, too.

So I go inside, and after completely giving up on ever seeing my friends again (slight exaggeration), who do I run into? You guessed it, Cherrie and Lindsay. Which just goes to prove that once you aren't looking for something, that is when you find it. :)

So we proceeded to look around the Louvre for several hours because you could literally spend days in there and not see everything. But we hit up all the big stuff, like....

The Mona Lisa. Which to me was slightly disappointing. It's very tiny and not even that great. I don't really understand why it's so famous, but then again, I'm not really much of an "art" person.

We also saw the Venus de Milo, which was really cool. After seeing all these great works of art for my entire life, actually seeing them in person was crazy.

The next day (Saturday) we had a full itinerary worked for the entire day. There is so much to see in Paris and so little time to do it in. So the first item on the agenda was Notre Dame. And this cathedral really is incredible. It's huge and ornate and everything you could ever imagine. We didn't plan on staying long there, but after getting in and seeing the beauty of it all, we decided to just sit for awhile and take it all in. We sat in the pews and listened to the choirs singing ever so softly and just closed our eyes and appreciated it all. What a great experience.

Next item on the agenda: Napoleon's Tomb. This picture is of the Paris dome, which houses old Napoleon himself. You can see up at the top that the dome is made of gold, which is very standard all over Paris. The "sun king," which was Louis XIV or XVI or some other roman numeral, decorated the entire city with it. And this place was no exception. Of course, this building was perfect for Napoleon, because he had the original "little man syndrome." His Napoleon complex was the very first one, and everything was gigantic, including his actual resting place.

This is his actual tomb. You can't really tell from the picture but it had to have been at least 20 feet tall, probably much more. Napoleon himself is resting inside of this giant hunk of rock and I would imagine he's probably still smiling to himself about how he pulled off being buried in a giant casket in the middle of Paris. Such an over-compensater.

After we left Napoleon's Tomb, we decided to walk to see the Arc de Triomphe, which required us to walk down the Champs-Elysees. Which I was totally cool with. :) So, of course, I had to take a picture of the street sign just to prove I was there.

Here is a shot of the view down Champs-Elysees. You can see the Arc de Triomphe down at the end. You might also notice that this picture was taken from the middle of the busy street. No worries, everyone was doing it. And I follow the practice of "follow the Europeans." If they do it, then it must be okay for me. And it worked out fine, because all of the drivers know to just zoom around the picture-takers rather than running into them.

Oh, and Champs-Elysees is the place that has all the big-time shops and designer stores, but they were just a bit further down closer to the Arc.

Here the three of us are in front of the Arc. This is just another one of the landmarks that was incredible to see in person. And we were able to go right up under it and look around. Under the Arc is also where the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is, so we got a few pictures of that too. You can go up to the top of the Arc, but we decided to go the top of the Eiffel Tower instead because it's much taller. And because it's just cooler to say that you've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Here is a picture of one of my favorite French guilty pleasures: the crepe. Kind of embarassing to admit, but I had three while I was in Paris. The first I ate had chocolate and bananas on it, the second one I ate had ham and cheese, and the third had nutella. The second and third were my lunch on Sunday, though, so don't judge me. But I can honestly vouche for the fact that crepes are delicious. I might try to learn to make them once I get home.

So finally, we made our way over the Eiffel Tower to end our day there. We wanted to spend plenty of time hanging out in the lawn in front of it and going up to the top, so we got there a little before sunset so we could see the transition from night to day. And we were all so excited to be there that we took the following pictures:

This is Lindsay.

This is Cherrie.

And this handsome devil is, of course, me.

For real, though. Who can help jumping for joy when you're in front of the Eiffel Tower?

And, being one of the most romantic spots in the world, Lindsay and I decided to go for the dip. No kisses, and it was slightly awkward looking, but it was still fun. haha

And then Cherrie and I decided to represent the University of Oklahoma. If this picture doesn't somehow end up on the OU website, I'm going to be really sad.

And then night finally came, which meant that the Eiffel Tower lit up with all of its splendor. I guess normally it just lights up white, but for some reason it was blue that night. And I matched perfectly with it. You know, me and the Eiffel Tower, we're pretty tight. So Cherrie and Lindsay took a picture of me matching with the Eiffel.

We got our tickets to go up to the top, but being the intrepid adventurers that we are, we decided to walk the stairs instead of taking the elevator. Which by the time we got to the second floor we were slightly regretting that decision. Over 650 stairs makes for a tough time. haha

But really, it wasn't nearly as hard of a hike as I thought it would be. And now I can say I've climbed the Eiffel Tower. This picture is looking down from the first floor I think. And you can tell how high up we were already. Like I said, the Eiffel Tower is huge, and climbing up the stairs with just a little chainlink thing separating you from the ground was kind of scary!

But we made it to the top safe and sound and took in all the beauty of Paris lit up at night. And it truly is the "city of light." Here is a picture of the three of us from the viewing deck at the top.

One incredible surprise at the tower was that after dark, every hour on the hour the tower lights up and twinkles for a good ten minutes or so. And it was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The photos really truly do not do it justice even slightly. I took several videos of it, so once I get back to the states if any of you want to see them, just let me know.

Sunday morning we had a few hours to get a few last sights in, so our first stop was Moulin Rouge. It was actually just about a block from our hotel, so it was an easy walk. We went inside of it to check out exactly what goes on in there, and we were surprised to find that lots of photos of naked women everywhere. It's definitely not a whorehouse anymore, but more like a really risque burlesque show. Very cool to see, but a lot dirtier than what I thought it was.

After Moulin Rouge, we headed up the hills in Paris to Montmartre, the art district of the city. It was incredible for two reasons. One was because there was more art here than I have ever seen. Way too expensive to actually buy, but really cool to look at. The other reason is because since it was at the very top of the hill, it gave some spectacular views of the city. It was a very quaint little district and it was extremely artsy. There were even the little old men playing accordions at the bistros. It just seemed very, very French.

Lastly, we walked down to the Musee D'Orsay. But it ended up taking us so long to get there, that I didn't have to go in. So we just walked around the area and checked out the street vendors. We actually found a really cool surprise at one of them, though, as you can see in the next photo.

We found a poster for sale that was from a concert that took place at OU! How wild is that?! We were so excited to find something from Norman that we had to take a picture with it.

After buying a couple of pieces of art, it was finally time for me to get on the train and head back to Charles de Gaulle airport to get back to Madrid. It was sad leaving the girls even though I would be seeing them again in a day. But after being together for such an incredible experience, it felt like we had this really really tight bond. We are a team now, and Team Paris didn't want to be split up. :)

On my way home, we flew over some body of water and it looked really cool, so I took a picture of it. I'm starting to become an old pro at taking pictures out of the airplane window as well. haha

Getting home was nice because I was finally able to sit back and relax. I got plenty of sleep in Paris but after doing SO much walking and exploring, I had never been so exhausted. No matter what, it was totally worth it because this was one of the best experiences ever. How lucky am I that I get to just make a quick jaunt up to Paris for the weekend? :)

And finally, here are the two pieces of art I bought outside of the Musee D'Orsay. I fell in love with them as soon as I saw them. I'm starting to become quite the art connoisseur. :)