Well... we leave the most romantic city i've ever been to tomorrow morning and head to Amsterdam. A slight change in plans, we decided to cancel our one day stay in Den Haag, stay tonight in Paris and then head straight to Amsterdam, saving us Euro on multiple train rides and such.

And since we've both loved Paris so much, it wasn't a very hard decision! Okay- where did we last leave off?

Saturday night we took the metro to see the Eiffel tower at night. The lights are beautiful. It's such a magnificent structure during the day, but at night… it's mystical, magical, romantic, and breathtaking. We were able to purchase tickets and take the elevator up to the second floor.

The first and second levels are accessible by stairways and elevators, and because it was so cold, we rode the lift up and down. Katherine got some great pictures on the way up with her fancy camera too!Had we climbed the stairs, the actual count of stairs includes 9 steps to the ticket booth at the base, 328 steps to the first level, 340 steps to the second level and 18 steps to the lift platform on the second level. The majority of the ascent allows for an unhindered view of the area directly beneath the tower, which is where Katherine was able to snap those great shots. After getting to the top, which is much higher than it sounds when I say the "second floor" we didn't stay too long. The wind and freezing temperatures didn't make us want to spend tons of time up there! We took a few pictures and made our way back down the elevator.

After the night visit to the tower, we grabbed a quick bite to eat at a local French eatery near the tower. I had steak and fries (a Parisian classic) and Katherine had some pizza. We called it an early night, as it had been a long night of touring and we knew we had a big day on Sunday!

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, we got up and took the train 30 minutes outside of town to the city of Versailles where we got to see the Versailles Palace and infamous gardens. King Louis the 14th of France, the builder of the Invalides military hospital in Paris, decided in 1668 to build a new palace, the palace of Versailles outside Paris. The objective was to settle at a distance from Paris rebellious inhabitants and closer to the hunting forests, West of Paris. It was also to materialize his new absolute power as king of France. The largest in Europe, the palace of Versailles housed 20 000 nobles. It was the center of the French monarchy until the 1789 revolution which overthrew King Louis the 16th.

Its facade on the park (above), 70 meters long hall of mirrors (below), the king and queen luxurious apartments and the Le Notre French style park (left) owe the palace of Versailles a universal reputation as the perfect incarnation of French classicism.

We liked the Palace but the Gardens were our favorite. We enjoyed a lunch we'd packed… cheese, bread, some prosciutto and some nice French red wine. We sat on the back steps of the Palace overlooking the musical fountains, praying the rain would hold off and just admired the French countryside. After an audio guided tour inside the Palace (where we saw King Louis XIV bedchambers, the hall of mirrors, the art museum, the Queens quarters, we took the garden tram down through the gardens and saw the Grand Trianon, and Marie-Antionette's estate. We stopped at the final stop, and enjoyed some hot chocolate and some delishious French pastries, warmed up a bit and then headed back out into the rain and cold to start the trek home. We both slept on the train and tried to warm up!

When we got back to our room, we were still freezing, so we crawled under the covers, uploaded our pictures, and chatted about our plans for the evening. We decided on a place called Aux Trois Mailletz, tucked away in the Latin Quarter and named online as the best little cabaret in Paris, we sat down for dinner around 11:00pm and didn't leave there until 2:30am. We enjoyed act after act of singers, and amazingly flexible dancers, drank two bottles of French wine, I danced with some French girls, took a picture with the very gay singer, and we both had what we thought at the time was our best dinner so far in Paris (I had chicken curry and Katherine had grilled chicken and frittes…we discovered tonight though (Monday) that tonight's dinner was in fact our best meal in Paris- more on that later!

After leaving Aux Trois Mailletz, we headed out in the pouring snow (YES! I said SNOW!) and walked around the corner to another bar where we were ushered in by the owner (I'm sure we look American). The bar had mosaic tiles on it and had a stone upstairs window area where we took lots of pictures of us and of the snow out the window! We were just so shocked it was snowing. We closed down the place around 5:00am and were in bed by 6! Seeing as though our bedtime was a little late (or early depending on how you look at it) we didn't wake up until almost 3:00pm today! Our plan originally had been to hit up the Lourve again and see the things we didn't see on our first visit, but since we woke up in the middle of the afternoon… we decided instead to do a little shopping!

Our favorite new store- called Naf-Naf, had us revealing for over an hour at all the cute stuff. Katherine and I both did a little retail therapy and figured we'd enjoy saying when someone asked where we got what we were wearing… "Oh, this old thing? I bought this in Paris!" After that we walked around the Chatelet area where we'd been shopping, found some amazing sites we didn't realize were going to see (the back side of Notre Dame, Ste Chapelle, some Parliament buildings, St. Jacques Chuch, and some other fun things… we decided randomly to have dinner at a little café overlooking Conciergerie (which is where Marie-Antionette was held captive before she was killed) and this brings us to our best meal in Paris! We started with a French bottle of wine, then moved on to some French onion soup, then I enjoyed the beef tartar and Katherine had Chateaubriand!

After our leisure dinner, we came back here to the hotel - packed up some of our stuff and took it over to the Marriott where we'll be staying when we return to Paris at the end of the weekend and now we're about to go to bed, we have an early morning train to Amsterdam tomorrow! More pictures to come soon!

We love and miss everyone!