2 Days in Paris

I probably should have titled this post How to Cram a Week's Worth of Sight Seeing into Two Days.

I don't believe I actually did a week's worth of sight seeing but that is sure what it felt like, the two and a half days we spent in Paris were incredibly busy but even more so wonderful!

Paris is a magnificent city. So magnificent in fact, the time I spent there felt a bit surreal... Every now and then I would think 'You are actually in Paris right now - isn't that wonderful!'

Before I start listing the details of my sight seeing extravaganza I must deliver some bad news - we did not go to the Catacombes. I know, I know, in my last post I went on and on about how badly I wanted to see some skeletons on Halloween. Well apparently so did a lot of  other people because when we got there around noon on Sunday, the line up was massive and  it was about a 2 hour wait. At first, I felt very sad because there is nothing I enjoy more than being surrounded by skeletons in a dark tunnel. But as it turns out there is actually loads of neat things to do in Paris so - the sightseeing continued.

FRIDAY

So. Much. Driving.

Due to exceptional amounts of traffic and contstruction, Max and I didn't arrive in Paris until about 10 PM Friday (our original ETA was for 7 but oh well, what can you do). Anyways, at first we were all 'Yeah lets go out and do some cool stuff! It's only ten at night! We're young and hip, we stay up late!' However, upon arriving at our friends' place we became quite lethargic and decided to hit the hay and save the sightseeing for the AM.

Here's Max looking frustrated with all dat traffic.

SATURDAY

Up bright and early to head down town! Naturally, a trip to the Eiffel tower was in order - and we decided to do that first and foremost, since it's kind of a big deal. Did you know that on the Lonely Planet site, visiting the Eiffel tower is rated the #1 thing to do in all of Europe? C'est superfantastique!

A close up view... It's pretty big.

 

After the Eiffel tower we did loads of walking (and metro riding) around the city. We had a great time exploring the Latin Quarter of Paris, which houses the Sorbonne, and the Pantheon. 

 

After walking around the Latin Quarter for a few hours we ended up at Notre Dame!

As you can see the Notre Dame was quite crowded with tourists so we just took a quick walk around the outside. After that we stopped to get some coffee at a little cafe where I made friends with a stray dog. 

He was allowed in the cafe even though he wasn't a paying customer. 

Once we had re-fueled on caffeine, we headed to the Cimitiere du Pere Lachaise. One of the most visited cemeteries in the world and the biggest in Paris - it's over 100 acres. We took loads of pictures at the cemetry so here are a few of my favourites. 

Oscar Wilde's tomb.

A tree covered in fan messages outside of Jim Morrison's grave.

Going to the cemetry was a great idea - it was really nice to get away from all of the crowded touristy spots and it wasn't very creepy at all, it was actually really beautiful. It's free to get into the cemetry but for 2 Euro you can buy a map that marks where all of the famous graves are, pretty cool! 

After the cemetry we headed back to our friends' place to have supper and make some plans for the evening. It turned out that our friend James knew a girl who was having a Halloween party so we ended up celebrating Halloween after all!  The party was fun but Max and I were exhausted from walking around all day so we ended up leaving shortly after midnight. 

SUNDAY

We got off to a bit of a late start on Sunday as we were pretty sleepy from Saturday's marathon of sight seeing. We headed to the Catacombes first, but decided to skip it because the wait was too long. We hopped back on the metro and headed to l'Arc du Triomphe. 

Here's Max looking dorky.

After visiting the Arc we took a nice walk down the Champs Elysees, which is the big shopping street - Yahoo! However I couldn't get into the shopping mode because if Max spends more than five minutes in a store he gets very frustrated and starts repeating the phrase 'Oh come on' a lot. So, we decided to ditch the shopping and go to the Musee d'Orsay. The Musee d'Orsay is a really great art museum in an old train station. The building is absolutely gorgeous and has huge windows so there is a ton of natural light throughout the museum. The collection at the Musee d'Orsay is spectacular! It consists of mostly classic paintings and sculptures but there is also a huge section of antique furniture, which I loved!

Here are a few photos from outside the Musee d'Orsay (no pictures allowed inside). 

On Sunday evening, Max and I had a lovely dinner with Laura and James and then we went to a movie and then out for drinks at a cute little bar! It was a really nice night but nothing too exciting to write about... However, I did enjoy the movie - The Social Network, and the movie theatre was awesome and the seats were about 200x comfier than the typical theatre in Canada.

MONDAY 

Before heading back to Germany, Max and I made a stop at the Chateau du Versailles.

My favourite of all the touristy photos.

Overall the weekend in Paris was spectacular, but it was also very tiring and I was pretty happy to get back to Heidelberg on Monday night. Instead of doing my German homework as planned, Max and I put on our PJs and hopped into bed to watch episodes of Breaking Bad while eating some tasty broccoli soup. It was good to be home. 

If you want to see about 100 more pictures from our weekend in Paris you can check out the album on my Facebook page.