Ah Paris!

Honeymoon Day 4 - Paris Day 4

So many things happened today that I don't even know where to start.  The beginning I guess makes the most sense.  But I must say that the absolute highlight of the day was mass at Notre Dame.  With everything else that happened today, this brought me back to calm and reminded me how wonderful Trent and I have it to be in Paris together (no worries, nothing bad happened, it was just a long, trying, crazy day).

The day started off early with no problems getting packed up and to Saint Pancras Station in London.  Kings Cross was somehow connected (with the famous platform 9 3/4 from the Harry Potter movies) and no we didn't get to see it, but we were near it.  :).  We made it through customs and security and soon found our train to Paris.  Other than the screaming, crying 2 year old behind us on the train, the ride wasn't too bad.  It was my first ever train ride and was pretty fun.  It would have been so much better without all of the screaming, but c'est la vie as they say in Paris (that's life).  We got in line for a cab once we arrived (which was eerily similar to Vegas) and made our way to the hotel.  The ride was bid odd as our cab driver got a call halfway through our ride and put it on speaker so he could talk to whoever called him.  We got checked in and made it up another teeny tiny elevator to our almost as teeny tiny room.  It's actually not too bad, but it certainly is not the 2 story room we had in London and the A/C does not seem to work.

We were starving so we headed back up the street to Notre Dame which we knew we passed just a few blocks before getting to our hotel.  It was quite the site, so we found a table outside at a nearby cafe and ordered a couple glasses of wine and a pizza (yes, we ordered pizza in France...we were tired and hungry).  We knew we needed to pick up our Paris Passes so we could ride the metro/buses and get into all of the museums so we headed to the nearest place to get them.  I might add that of the 4 places listed that we could pick up our pass, all 4 were within 3 blocks of each other and were no where near our hotel.  But we were feeling adventurous so we headed out on foot.  On our way we walked through the Louvre's courtyard, spotted the Eiffel Tour and the Arc d'Triumpe.  Needless to say we were both in awe.  Such a magical place.

And then we proceeded to get lost.  And take wrongs turns.  And get lost some more.  We finally found the metro station that were supposed to be able to get our pass from and the two ladies working there had no idea what were asking for.  The language barrier became very real for us.  Instead of listening to them telling us to get on the metro and go a long ways away, we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe, which we thought was a few blocks away (and actually was) where we thought we had the best chance of getting our pass.  We arrived soon after and got our passes without any problems.  And then took a nice long break at the bar to get our bearings back.  It was at this point that I had my first freak out.  Poor Trent didn't know what to do, but I was exhausted from walking so much and getting lost so many times and now I wasn't sure we would even be able to use our pass on the metro and get back to our hotel.  Being the good husband that is, he went and talked to the lady and found our metro passes in the stuff we got with the pass and then led me back to the metro station where we worked our back to the hotel.

We had our metro pat all mapped out, but of course the station we needed to switch lines at was closed so instead of just one change we got to go way out of our way and made 2 line changes. But we made it. and got off the metro back at Notre Dame.  We decided to find a place to sit and relax, but instead ended up inside the Cathedral.  I can never come close to explaining how amazing that place is to anyone.  We walked in and heard the organ playing and beautiful singing.  And of course there was incense burning.  It was a magical place.  So calming and comforting and wonderful.  We walked all the way around the church and ended up sitting down to enjoy part of mass as it started sometime as we were walking around.  Of course neither of us had any idea what they were saying as it was all in French, but it didn't matter.  We sat through the first reading, listened to the Gospel and then listened to the homily, all the while in awe of this amazing Cathedral.

On our way out of the church we decided to walk around it, to see if we could figure out how to get up to the top of it (we never did, but are planning to go back for a tour and hope to figure it out then) and as were passing through the gardens behind the church, I saw the bridge of locks just beyond the gardens. Sadly, I saw this bridge on a reality tv show that I will never admit to watching and thought it was pretty neat and really wanted to find it. You buy a lock, write your names on it and then attach the lock to the railings of the bridge and throw the keys in the river. The railings are completely covered with locks and it was quite a task to find a free spot, but we found one, bought a lock and locked our names and wedding date on the bridge. We took a few pictures and even noted which lamp post we hooked it by in hopes that we will be back some day to find it again.

We then found a amazing cafe for dinner. We enjoyed a bottle of wine, escargot, lamb and chicken and of course crepes (Heather this was the second crepe of the day and was even better than the first!). The meal was amazing and we were both so excited to be in a place known for their amazing food and wine to enjoy and to be together on this adventure together.

So yeah, it was a long, crazy day, but we're back at the hotel and Trent is currently enjoying a game of rugby on the tv. Tomorrow we have a tour of the Louvre in the morning and a tour of the Eiffel Tour in the afternoon, with more sightseeing in between.

Love you all!
Trent & Kristen