Midnight in Paris

We spent a few midnights (literally) in the beautiful city of Paris.  Joy had been to Paris a few times before, but it was Dan's first time to be in Europe.  Although we only had 3 days in Paris, we took advantage of every minute and saw as much as we could.  We saw the key tourist sites, visited the palace in Versaille, walked along the Seine at midnight, and ate a lot of croissants and crepes.  Ah, Paris! 

Day 1:  

We walked from our hotel to Montmarte to view the painters in action, then went to visit Sacre Coeur and Moulin Rouge.  

Afterwards, off to Trocadero to view the Eiffel Tower.  Joy has always wanted to take a cool picture with the Eiffel Tower in the background.  Unfortunately, everyone else had the same plan and didn't move out of the way for our photo op.  Maybe next time...

It was just our luck that only one of the four elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower was working that day.  Since the lines were ridiculously long, we opted for the shorter (still long) line to walk up.  We only walked up to the first two observation areas.  We decided that the view was good enough so we didn't feel the need to head to the very top.   

Day 2:

Before we left Houston, Dan saw a show on the NatGeo channel that talked about the history and famous paintings of the Louvre Museum.  So, he was really excited to see everything he had seen on TV in real life.  It was a rainy day, so everyone had the same plans to visit the museum.  However, we were able to bypass the super long lines (thanks to our museum pass) and see all the famous paintings and statues.  Good thing Dan is tall so he could take all our pictures.   

After spending a few hours at the Louvre, we walked to Notre Dame.  We made it to the top of the Tower, walking up circular small steps, to see a great view of Seine and the city. 

There happened to be a big tent outside Notre Dame, and we discovered it was a bread tent.  When in Paris, do as the Parisians... eat a baguette! 

We happened to walk along this bridge as we were leaving Notre Dame and noticed all the locks with couples names on them.  Looks like this is the 'love' bridge. :)

Latin Square is where we found cheap food and more importantly cheap crepes. We visited the same bakery everyday to eat nutella crepes.  It was delicious!!  

Day 3:

We didn't think we'd have time, but decided last minute to visit Versaille.  King Louis XVI really knows how to build palaces.  This place is so ornate and perfectly manicured.

After spending most of the day in Versaille, we managed to make it to Musee D'Orsay in the nick of time to see some impressionist paintings. Joy loves this museum because it is housed in an old train station.  Then it's off to Champs Elysee and Arch de Triomphe.  We had some great views of the bustling city.

Since we had not seen enough of the Eiffel Tower, we decided to return to Trocadero to get one last view of the tower at night.  We're so glad we did because we got some cool pictures and got to enjoy our last midnight stroll in Paris.   

So that we won't forget, we wanted to document the location of our stay.  Our lovely and TINY hotel room.