Our Travels...Paris, Part One

It's the one you've all been waiting for haha! Paris. 

On the first day oh Paris, my sights were set on Notre Dame. We entered the inside of the cathedral and also went up into the turrets to see the famous bell. There is one picture of me in front of the church hunched over - pretending to be Quasimodo. Another fun fact, there was a restaurant just around the corner called Esmeralda  I thought that was hilarious. The view from the top was soo nice!! I'm so glad we did it, and the stain glass windows inside were really breathtaking. A bit of history, the church was actually mean to be torn down at some point to make room for more housing and development, but Victor Hugo's story The Hunchback of Notre Dame produced a gothic revival and the citizens protested to keep the church in place.

We also, visited the Louvre on the Friday we arrived since it was open late. We didn't have a lot of time in the museum but we got to all the highlights like the Mona Lisa, sculpture of Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory we also walked through the Egyptian exhibit - the Louvre has the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts after Cairo. That picture is of a real mummy! All in all it was OK, I'm not really a fan of museums and I don't know anything about art so I'm glad we didn't spend too much time there. 

The other monuments we visited were the Sacre Coeur, the Bastille, the Eiffel Tower, Champs D'Elysee and Arc de Triomphe. Wish we had made it to Versaille but with the bad weather we were slowed down and we didn't end up having the time. :( 

Monument for the French People, the Bastille, put up in memory of the Storming of the Bastille - when Parisian citizens stood up against monarchy and stormed the prison (bastille) in protest. That's cazz and me doing our own version of storming at the tower.

 

It's a shame but after all our sight seeing we weren't left with very much time to shop. We made our way on Monday to an antiques area where we saw some really amazing things, including shops full of piles of vintage Chanel jewellery and 17th century antiques, watches, clothes, etc. We also went to another district to shop in the boutiques where we could find more French designers and less mainstream shops, like on the Champs D'Elysee. We had the most delicious breakfast there in the shopping area because it wasn't very tourist-y. We had a Croque Madam (bread, ham, cheese, egg) , which is a play on the Croque Monsieur (bread, ham cheese). It's so funny because all the different variations have their own name, like a little Croque Family. 

Vintage Shopping in Paris!
This is not the actual fur coat that I was going to buy, the one I liked was nicer!

We went out for a nice dinner one night, and ate at a Michelin Star restaurant called La Tablette. The food was really good and reasonably priced! Good thing Cassandra and I both enjoy a good meal!