You know what happens after the girls go to camp? Bryan & I head to parent camp! This is our 3rd year of taking a trip while they are away, but this time we had company:
My mom had a milestone birthday & she has been talking about going to Paris for quite some time. I don't know how we lucked out but her birthday just happens to fall while the girls are at camp! So while the girls were being dropped off at camp, Bryan & I jumped on the red eye flight to Paris. We flew all night & landed at 9:00 Monday morning. My parents & my sister were already there so we made a quick stop at our hotel, dropped off our luggage, changed clothes & then went to meet them.
We stayed outside of Paris by Disneyland at the cutest property out in the country. Literally, I felt like I was walking through the opening scene of Beauty & the Beast while Belle was walking through town!
My sister stayed with my parents & they had a 2 bedroom, but see this tiny blue door below, that was our 1 bedroom:
The only downfall to staying here was our commute to the city & let's be honest, we did it all. Bus, subway, train & Uber! Since it was our first trip & we were in a hurry, we caught an Uber who dropped us off at the Louvre to meet them for our guided tour:
I had no idea the Louvre was so big! Our guide, Barbara, said you could spend over 3 months walking through it before you saw everything. She did a great job showing us some of the highlights - Venus of Milo, Michaelangelo, Mona Lisa, etc. Of course I took lots of pictures to share:
I'm not really a big history fan or art aficionado, but my favorite part was the architecture, especially the painted ceilings:
This is kind of an akward picture of my dad, but we were standing there looking at something & I realized that the Louvre was officially opened as a museum on his birthday:
I won't bore you with all of the history we learned that day, but I will show off our childish pictures we had fun taking outside afterwards. Ha!
That took up most of our afternoon so we headed to a cafe for an early dinner afterwards. Bryan & I were especially hungry from traveling. I plan on writing a separate post afterwards just on eating gluten free in Paris but I will share one picture from dinner that night:
This picture makes me laugh because they were so excited to order these drinks as soon as we sat down because someone else had them but they both thought they were awful. Ha! Literally, Bryan said it was one of the worst drinks he had ever had in his entire life.
After dinner, we went to the train station & bought our pass for the week. Since they had already been there a few days, they had their maps & figured out our mass transportation plan so we headed home for the night because I do not sleep on planes so at this point, I had already been up for 36 hours straight & needed a good night's sleep.
The next morning we were up early for another tour at another museum:
This is the Musee d'Orsay. It used to be a railway station which was eventually shut down & turned into a museum. It is still big, but not nearly as big as the Louvre. I actually liked this museum better, partly because it was smaller & less crowded, but also because it is a contemporary history museum & houses the largest collection of impressionist art pieces in the world. My mom & my sister appreciate art the most so they stayed together while I toured with Bryan & my Dad. We were supposed to have a guided tour, but it took us so long to get into the city, we missed it, so we went on the audio tour instead:
We were walking through most of the exhibits pretty quickly, until we got to the 5th floor - that was one of my favorite parts. It was the impressionist period with Monet & Van Gogh. Art I have actually seen before! It was pretty amazing to see the original pieces:
This was definitely the most crowded part of the museum!
On the way down, I found a banquet hall that was beautiful! The chandeliers & the painted ceilings - truly amazing the time & effort that went into designing it:
Eventually we all met up for lunch at a cute cafe afterwards, across the street from the museum:
There are literally street cafe's everywhere you turn & they are all so cute! We would literally eat wherever we could find a table.
Early afternoon, we took the subway & then walked to see Notre Dame. I knew you can't go inside since the fire, but I was still excited to see it from the outside & it did not disappoint:
You could definitely see all of the cranes & construction work happening while we were there:
I hope one day we will get to go inside if we ever go back with the girls.
At this point, we loaded up on the train to go back to our hotel because Tuesday was my mom's actual birthday & we had plans that evening! Come back tomorrow for part 2 & her celebration!
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