Paris Trip Report - Part I

(My parents and sister are here for a much-anticipated visit!  I may not be getting my posts up too fast, because we're having so much fun!  But when I get a chance, like now, I'll work on our Paris trip report.) We flew in to the Beauvais airport last Friday and took the shuttle in to Paris; we knew we were in the right place when the Paris skyline opened up before us, punctuated by the Eiffel Tower.  Arriving around dinnertime, we checked into our hotel, the Marriott Rive Gauche, which was situated in a nice neighborhood on the south bank.   After dinner at the R'Yves restaurant at the hotel (Greg could not stop raving about his vegetarian lasagna!), we headed off for our evening activity, the 10:30 p.m. Vedettes du Pont-Neuf boat tour along the river Seine.  It was lovely seeing the main sights of Paris at night.  Unfortunately, darkness and a moving boat are not conducive to good photographs, but we did enjoy it.  Passing the Eiffel Tower, all lit up for the evening, was especially impressive.  We had seen it by daylight on the way to our hotel, but there is something truly magical about it at night. On Saturday morning, we started our day at Sainte-Chapelle, built in 1248 and considered the most beautiful church in Paris, largely because of its 50 foot high, stunning stained glass windows.  Part of the interior is undergoing restoration, so there was some scaffolding up and we couldn't get the full effect, but the windows were gorgeous.  (We arrived shortly before it opened and only had to stand in a short line to buy our Paris Museum Passes, which we then used to skip the lines and get "free" entry to almost every attraction we visited from then on.  The PMPs were great...there is nothing so wonderful as seeing a long line but getting to walk right past it and into the building!) We made a brief tour of the Conciergerie, the prison where thousands were held during the French Revolution while they waited to be guillotined, including Marie Antoinette.  It was then only a short walk past the flower markets to Notre-Dame on the other side of the island.  While standing in the large square in front of the cathedral snapping photos with hundreds of other tourists, I was approached by a couple of gypsy girls asking, "Do you speak English?," but as I had done my research and knew about this scam (they then hand you a card with some sob story about how they need money), I just said "no" and they immediately wandered off to look for a more promising target.  :) The best part of visiting the famed Cathedral of Notre-Dame was going up the tower.  This was not in my original plan, but we had plenty of time, so decided to stand in the (long, slow-moving) line.  They can only let 20 people up the tower at one time, so it was a tedious wait of about an hour and a half or so, but definitely worth it in the end!  We weren't able to go to the very top of the tower (for some reason, they close it for an hour and a half in the middle of the day), but were able to go to the level of the gargoyles and see the belfry as well.  Seeing the gargoyles up close was amazing and they inspired me to take about a zillion photographs of them while enjoying great views across Paris.  Don't worry - I didn't include all the photos of Notre-Dame and the gargoyles in this slideshow; I took way too many. All of the above sites are on an island in the middle of the Seine, Ile de la Cite.  We crossed a short bridge to the island next door, Ile St-Louis, strolling the picturesque streets and stopping to buy a tasty treat at Berthillon ice cream, reputed to be the best ice cream in Paris. Against my protestations that I wanted to take the metro, we walked along the left bank from here to Musee d'Orsay, the impressionist art museum located in a former railway station, where we spent a couple of enjoyable hours viewing work by the likes of Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh. We then walked to Musee Rodin, where we wandered the gardens that were peppered with his sculptures, including the famed statue of The Thinker, and made a brief visit inside the mansion-turned-museum.  A quick stop at the Hotel des Invalides followed, where we went into the Dome Church to see Napoleon's Tomb. After taking the wrong route and doing more extra walking (leaving our feet, legs, and lower backs crying in pain by the end of the day), we arrived at the Eiffel Tower.  The whole area around the tower was crammed with people, a lot of whom were running towards the Champs de Mars, where a huge ramp was set up.  We tried to see what was going on, and found out later that it was a (successful) attempt to break a rollerblading record by jumping off the Eiffel Tower onto a giant ramp (see here).  You can find lots of footage on YouTube.  We opted to get away from the crowds and walked across to the Trocadero for a few pictures before heading back to the hotel. Coming soon . . . Paris Trip Report - Part II, featuring Sunday's visit to Versailles and Montmartre and more tales of sore feet.