Thursday was our last full day in Paris, so we slept in a little since we didn't have an early tour & then headed into the city for brunch. I made reservations at a cute little cafe that was fully gluten free but the weather was not on our side, so we sat inside instead:
We knew there was rain in the forecast all week so we had packed ponchos just in case! Thank goodness we did, because that did not slow us down. We were able to continue walking the city & go on with our day like normal. We had brunch close to Notre Dame & while we were over here, my sister really wanted to visit a certain bookstore which had a lot of history:
This was another really cool place that we couldn't take pictures inside. But we did get a book for Sadie here because she is the reader in our family.
Bryan really wanted to do the bus tour where we could hop on & hop off at our leisure, so we ended up catching that this morning to get out of the rain:
One of the main landmarks we hadn't see yet was the Arc de Triomphe. We had driven around it several times, but I wanted to get out & walk to it. Did I mention the traffic was horrible while we were there? I mean, this was probably the worst. I don't know if this picture shows the reality of it, but it was crazy!
Thankfully our bus had a stop on Champs de Elysee where we could get out & walk underneath the roundabout to get the Arc:
This is a view from the arc, looking down Avenue Champs de Elysee with all of the crazy traffic. This avenue is one of the wealthiest spots for shopping & I was excited to walk down there next!
More pictures of the ceiling from underneath. I tell you, I am obsessed with the ceilings! I am in awe of the detail & cannot imagine how they did it back then or how long it took.
Remember when my mom & my sister were shopping for art? I was actually shopping for something different!
What can I say, I love my bags & I have 2 daughters who will probably love them too!
After we shopped, we jumped back on the bus & did you notice that once we got to the arc, it stopped raining, so this time we were able to sit on the top:
It ended up being a cloudy afternoon & a little cooler with no rain, so it was the perfect weather to ride around & see everything. Of course we got excited to see the Eiffel Tower again during the day:
and some other landmarks that I can't recall what they are?!
Until traffic got bad, again. Ugh. The traffic there is horrible! It really was easier to take the subway & train underground. I know these pictures don't fully explain the mess we were in, but literally cars just drive every direction in no lanes. It is so funny watching it from above:
We eventually got frustrated on the bus since we weren't moving, so we hopped off & we just happened to hop off in front of an ice cream store & I did need a little snack......
Finally we made our way to the Catacombs, which was our next tour:
The catacombs are underground ossuaries which hold the remains of 6 million people:
I know that seems kind of odd, but it was opened in the 18th century to help clean up the city. They actually copied the idea from the Romans. It took 15 months to move all of the bones & they did it over night. We had to take a lot of stairs to get down there & we had an audio guided tour to walk us through the tunnel:
I know it sounds kind of creepy, but it was very interesting learning the history. Every now & then they had plaques & inscriptions for where the bones are from, uprisings in France, directions or who built what area of the tunnel:
Once we left the catacombs, these 2 were ready for a drink!
We did a little shopping & then we parted ways with my family. They were getting up to leave the hotel at 5:30 Friday morning to go to Normandy for the day & we had to fly home to pick up the girls from camp. They headed back since they had an early morning, but Bryan & I decided to live it up on our last night in Paris! We walked around, found a gf cafe for dinner & enjoyed the city by night one last time before we had the 1 hour subway/train/bus commute back home:
Friday morning we slept in & then headed to the airport for the long flight home. All in, we spent 4 full days in Paris & I think we did quite a bit! It was definitely busy, but if we never come back, at least I can mark most of the items off of my bucket list. I have lots of opinions about Paris that I won't dive into here, but we really did appreciate the history of the city & are fortunate we got to experience it & learn more about it. But most of all we enjoyed doing it with my family & celebrating my mom's birthday. Thanks mom for organizing our trip & letting us tag along with you!
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