The City of Lights. The city of love. My absolute dream city that I had always dreamed of visiting, and the one city I was the MOST excited for. We arrived in Paris at around 6 pm, hopped on the metro conveniently located in the airport, and we finally arrived at our station: Republique. I was a little skeptical of Paris at first because, well lets just say underground Paris isn't the best first impression. But we quickly ran up the stairs of the metro into the city and voilá! C'est Paris! The Paris I had seen in tons and tons of pictures. I smiled literally from ear to ear as my ultimate dream, since my first French class in 6th grade, became reality. Off the bat I had to use my long lost French skills to find our way to the hotel. We arrived, pleased to see a nicer and bigger hotel than London. We took the tiny elevator that fit only us and our bags to the fifth floor. Although the room wasn't a huge room like a normal hotel in the states, it was huge to us! Finally enough space to actually walk around the room, a window, a tv free of charge, a bathroom big enough so that when you are doing your business your feet don't have to be in the shower, and last but not least... We finally had wifi! Boy have we learned to appreciate the things we take for granted back home. We didn't waste time, after all we are in PARIS! We headed out to the streets to walk around and finally eat something since we hadn't eaten since the morning. After searching for a French restaurant that was actually open and that wasn't so expensive for quite some time, we ended up in this very nice restaurant with the best prices we had seen. When we sat down that is when we really looked at the menu, turns out it was a Turkish restaurant! I couldn't stop, but laugh! At that point we couldn't really do anything but order some wine and you know, Turkish food. It was 8, almost 9, when we finished and to our surprise the sun was still out, just about to set. Tired from a long day of traveling and everything just about closed, back to the hotel it was, only problem was... How to get back to the hotel. Thanks to my wonderful sense of direction we got lost. From then on I told Sandy to not listen to me relating to directions. The next day was a jammed packed day! We started off with a delicious breakfast at the hotel, a baguette and croissant with butter and jam along with orange juice and coffee. For some reason I could have sworn that this was one of the hotels with complimentary breakfast, while Sandy kept telling me other wise but like a good boyfriend he listened to me. He totally shouldn't have. Breakfast was not only NOT complimentary, it was 9€ each! Yeah, ripped off is an understatement. Whatever, there was nothing to be done now, so off to Notre Dame it was. We decided that throughout this trip that if we could walk there, even if it was for 2 hours, we would. After walking for about an hour and a half, we finally reached the beautiful, gothic-style cathedral, just how anyone who watched the Hunchbak of Notre Dame would picture it. We waited in line to go up for another hour; the stairs are so narrow and only a certain amount of people can go up at a time. The wait and climb up the numerous stairs was definitely worth it. There are three different levels you are exposed to the view of the whole city! It was breathtaking and it was the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower in real life. I could say that that was when it really hit me that I was in Paris. Amazed with the views and gothic architecture, we made our down to go into the actual church. To no surprise it was no disappointment. With it's high ceilings, enormous organ, minor details galore, paintings and history all around, no wonder why it is so well known and a must see on everyone's list. Now off to the Louvre, but before we conquered such a huge museum we had to get some food in our system so we opted for a tuna baguette at a small café. The time had come to enter the glass pyramid, go underground to get our tickets, and see an indescribable amount of historical art that take us back in time to the great lives of many artists and infamous individuals. Needless to say, the piece to see was the Mona Lisa. We were prepared to see this little painting since we had been warned several times that many get disappointed by its size. Thanks to these warnings, we were actually pleased with the size of it, just not the crowd of people surrounding it. So many people, but we managed to get as close as possible and get some pictures. The museum is so big there is no way that you can appreciate most of the collection in one day. Impossible. We did the best we could, and even then we didn't even go near seeing half of it. After hours of being memorized, it hit us that we had been on our feet for way too long. We headed out and immediately encountered le Jardin de Toulieres. We laid on the grass and enjoyed a rather warm day in Paris. We got a little rest before walking all the way back to the hotel. I had been talking about crêpes since we got to the city and had seen a bunch of crêperies and street vendors, and the time finally came to eat a Nutella crêpe!!! Sounds good, eh? Well it tasted even better!! After eating this traditional French dish, I was satisfied with my trip to Paris... Except for one thing... Le Tour Eiffel, bien sûr!!! That deserves a separate blog on all its own :)