Bonjour mes aimees!

Here Mandy and I are in Paris! We finally arrived in our hotel last night at 11:00 PM. My flight was good, Mandy was waiting for me right outside the door at Heathrow like a good daughter. We then proceeded to drag our HEAVY luggage (that is my fault) onto the Tube for the hour ride to the Eurostar station, where we then dragged it around until it was time to board the train to Paris. The train ride was 2 hours, and then we dragged our luggage onto the Paris Metro and arrived in the Latin Quarter at about 10:00 PM. Now, if you have not been to Europe you need to understand that using the Underground involves going up and down MANY stairs, and in our case carrying heavy suitcases up and down stairs. In London there are some escalators, in Paris almost none. (What do the poor handicapped do? Yay - I just found the question mark! The European keyboards are crazy!!!) However, several times throughout the day some gentlemen helped me with my bag. No one offered to help Mandy and she said no one has ever offered to help her. I told her that it is good to know that in Europe they still help the elderly.



After we got out of the Metro we needed to find our hotel. Mandy spotted a Starbucks and decided we should ask there because everyone who works in Starbucks is nice. They were nice but gave us the wrong directions. I then asked someone in a cafe, wrong directions again. Finally I asked a waiter at another cafe and he got a map before giving us an answer and it was right! After dragging our luggage all over the Latin Quarter we found the hotel and it was 2 blocks from the Metro stop! Oh well...



The hotel is so charming and so French. I can't wait to post the pictures so you can see. Today we slept in a little and then headed over to the Museé D'Orsay, only to find out it was CLOSED! Turns out May Day is a huge holiday over here, apparently like our Labor Day. Everyone who does not work in the service profession takes a 4 day holiday. So we then went up to Montmarte to see the Sacrè Couer Cathedral. It sits on the highest point in Paris and you can see the whole city from there. Well, because of the holiday every tourist in Paris was up there today. It was insane. Poor Mandy needed to use the restroom and they had one porta-potty with a 45 minute line! It was kind of a bummer, but what are you gonna do? When you gotta go you gotta go. We climbed the stairs to the Cathedral and it was a LOT of stairs. (Aren't you proud of me, Matt and Steve, that I climbed them? I have a picture to prove it!) The view was amazing!



Then we headed over to the Champs Elysees and strolled all the way down the boulevard. We had a craving for coffee so we went to McCafe. Seriously - McDonalds has these cafes in Europe that serve coffee drinks and pastries. It was awesome. We need those in the U.S. And we got to see the most beautiful sunset behind the Arc de Triomphe. I got some amazing photos.

After walking down the entire boulevard we took the Metro back to the Latin Quarter, just got slightly turned around on the way to the hotel, and then went in search of dinner. We found the cutest Creperie, where we sat downstairs in what looked like a wine cellar, and had the most delicious dinner and dessert crepes along with wine and cider. All in all a very succesful first day in Paris.

Hopefully I won't be too stiff and sore tomorrow, because we have another full day planned. We are going back to the museum in the morning, and to the cemetary to kiss Oscar Wilde's tomb for Amy in the afternoon. I don't have any red lipstick - hope pink will do the trick!