GinaMarie After an excellent steak dinner and a bottle of French champagne, we were ready to hit the town! Their New Years celebration wasn't quite what we expected, but it made for an awesome setting for Lins to say "I love you" for the first time. I suppose you could say we fell in love in Paris, but to be honest we fell in love a long time before this :)

GinaMarie What made this whole trip so incredible was seeing it all with Lins. Even with how much I love art and loved the Louvre, THIS was my favorite moment in Paris. We were walking away from the tower and Lins and I stopped yet again in awe of how cool it was. Best.Christmas.Present.Ever. Thanks hun :)

GinaMarie We went to the Tower right after our Louvre adventure, and I was completely beat. I was like half asleep on the train ride over, but once we walked out and saw the Tower it was SO worth it! Seeing it all lit up, right there in person was absolutely incredible. I didn't think I'd be THAT impressed with it, but I couldn't stop staring and taking pictures!

GinaMarie New Years Day we hiked up to Sacre Coeur for mass and it was really stunning! This place is enormous, and every inch, inside and out, is beautiful.

GinaMarie We only made it through two wings, the Denon and the Sully. The Denon was mostly old European paintings and a few sculptures, and we had to fly through it because it was SO overwhelming. We also saw the Island-culture arts hall, which was pretty impressive! In the Sully we saw the old Louvre architectural exhibit (which was totally awesome, like an underground castle) and the Egyptian exhibit (which was very extensive! They have an insane number of artifacts in this wing). With all that, we spent almost 3 hours running through this place before it closed.

GinaMarie We though this was pretty cool because we saw Arcimboldo's later versions of two of the seasons at the Denver Art Museum in October when Lins came to visit. Arcimboldo did some weird stuff when he decided to mix still-life fruits with portraits, but it's definitely intriguing to look at.

GinaMarie If you can't already tell, this painting was enormous! It took up the entire wall across from the Mona Lisa. It was really impressive. Stark contrast in size to the Mona though.

GinaMarie You could tell which paintings were famous by the Chinese tour groups gathered around them.

GinaMarie The view from the outside was awesome, but we rushed there just to stand in line for a half hour lol. It was a popular day to go apparently! We were lucky the weather was pretty mild at about 40-45 F, and it barely drizzled while we were in line.

GinaMarie This garden was like walking through an art history book. It was so pretty, you just wanted to do a 360 panoramic shot to capture it.

GinaMarie I have to say that the French countryside was not nearly as cool as the German countryside. Yet another area in which the Germans are superior... unsere land ist besser als dein land, Frankreich.

GinaMarie Lins and I saw like 2 homeless people the ENTIRE time we were there, and we walked all over the city! It was nuts how clean and well kept this place was. Way to go Grand Duchy.

GinaWilson We had to do a lot of self-portraits since we didn't know how to ask other people to take our picture in French...

GinaWilson The walk along this river was totally gorgeous. Even in the dead of winter it was still green and super peaceful. I don't know if it was the timing or what but we were shocked at how peaceful and empty this city was.

GinaMarie The Casemates would have been awesome to tour, but they were closed. We did get to go down and take some pics from within the upper windows, though, and it was an excellent view!