In the city of love

Matthew and I had the BEST honeymoon ever. We spent 5-6 days in Paris! It was so great. Here's what we did:

Tuesday 8/18:
Got on a plane to Paris. We enjoyed expanding our repertoire of movies thanks to in-flight movie feature.

Wednesday 8/19:
We landed and took the RER into Paris. Met up with one of my best friends, Kate, who was doing an internship in Paris (the one I was supposed to do). She bought us falafel, and we talked for a while. Kate's so great. We walked around Parc Monceau, one of my favorite parks in Paris, which was really close to my apartment when I lived there. Extreme jetlag eventually got the better of us, and we crashed and took a nap for a bit. We felt more refreshed when we woke up, so we went out and bought a baguette and cheese (yes!) and some other stuffs at a little street market grocery store and headed down to the Eiffel tower. We didn't actually go up it that night, but we walked around it, and under it. Matthew was very impressed by it, and how big it was. We found some grass up by Trocadero, and ate our food in the presence of the lighted and sparkling tour eiffel.
Thursday 8/20:
We slept in super duper late this morning (thank you jetlag!). Then we walked around the outside of le Centre Pompidou, a modern-y sort of building built "inside out".
Anyway, you get the idea. The multi-colored building on the street is Pompidou. All the colors mean something - as in the blue pipes are AC units, etc. (I just made that up. I don't know specifically what colors are for what, just an example.) It's a pretty sweet building, that houses some pretty crazy modern art.
Le Centre Pompidou is really close to a crepe stand that my friends and I used to frequent on a daily basis when we were there on study abroad. We made friends with all the Egyptian-y guys who worked there and made us crepes. They also happen to make the best crepes around. So of course we went there to get our crepes. And whadaya know, the same guy was still working there, and he remembered me! In fact, he remembered all of us girls who would go there. And we had a nice chat while he made our crepes. It really was so happy.
Later, we walked over to one of the islands on the Seine, where Sainte Chapelle is. I've heard awesome things about this church, but never actually was able to go inside. It was gorgeous! The entire church, all the walls, from almost floor to vaulted ceiling were stained glass. Each of the 14 windows of glass represented a certain book or event (the atonement) from the Bible. We had fun trying to pick out different scenes on the glass.
We then headed to Rue de Rivoli, one of the main big streets in Paris, with awesome shopping. We spent a bit of time doing some shopping, mostly at H&M and Etam.
We then headed down to my old neighborhood. I showed Matthew where I used to live, where I used to shop, and told him all of the stories I could think of. :)
My street.
We walked around for a long time, and since it was quite late at this point, stopped at a restaurant for some dinner.
I've gotta say, we both agreed the potatoes we ate were probably the best we've ever had. ever.

We headed to the Arc de Triomphe, and walked around the base, and then sat on the base for a while, before heading home.

Sitting on the base of l'Arc de Triomphe

Friday 8/21:
When we finally got up (around noon) on Friday, we headed out to the Louvre. Before we actually went inside, we ate lunch against the walls of the Louvre.
Ok, we didn't eat ALL of this for lunch, but this was the type of stuff (it you can see it...) of what we carried around, and ate pretty much all the time. It was GREAT!

Le Louvre

We really enjoyed some of the signs that were posted in and around the Louvre:

No walking on water!

No yelling in Egyptian!

Matthew really liked the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa of course:
And I've thought, and Matthew agrees, that some of the coolest art is just the architecture of the building itself:
After spending a few hours in the Louvre, we went to a nearby cafe/teashop called Angelina. It has amazing hot chocolate, that's more like melted chocolate than anything else. It's a pretty steep price, but so worth it.

We walked by briefly L'Opera Garnier. This is the opera house that the Phantom of the Opera is based off of. A lot of the shots in the movie highly resemble the inside of the opera. This is one of my favorite places in Paris. It's gorgeous!
We headed back over to the Eiffel Tower. We grabbed a baguette at a bakery (we paid for it too) which we both agreed was the epitomy of good baguette. Crusty, but not too hard on the outside, soft on the inside, and really good flavor.
We walked down the Champs de Mars, the green park area in front of the Eiffel Tower, and then climbed up, and saw the last bits of the sunset from the top.

On the Eiffel. It was beautiful.

Saturday 8/22:
This morning first thing we stocked up on lots of food to take back to the states with us. Our stash included a lot of nutella, petit ecolier cookies, brioche tranchee, chocolate, and the best kind of apricot jam I've ever had.
We headed over to the Arc de Triomphe (which was within walking distance of our hotel) and then walked down the Champs Elysees, the biggest and most famous street in Paris. Lots of really ritzy stores are found on les Champs.

We went inside a perfume store and smelled a bunch of different kinds until we got kinda woozy, then went inside the virgin mobile store and listened to music, went briefly in the disney store, ate lunch, walked some more, and then headed to the Rodin museum. Rodin is a famous scupltor who did also famous works like the Thinker, or the Kiss. It's one of my favorite museums in Paris.

Matthew thinking with the Thinker.

Since we were rather close, and just like it, we decided to walk by the Eiffel Tower again.
Then we went back to Rue de Rivoli, finished some shopping, went to a bunch of food places and got baguettes, pastries, water, and macaroons.

Sunday 8/23:
We went to French church this morning! It was a lot of fun. I suppose Matthew didn't really understand anything, but he said he liked it too.
That afternoon/evening, we went to Parc Monceau again. We sat on a bench and people watched for a while.
And then we walked around ourselves.
(I know its super blurry, for some reason, when they were taking the picture, it just wouldn't get un-blurry. But you can still tell that its absolutely beautiful.)

We headed over to Notre Dame, and had a lot of fun looking at and analyzing and interpreting all of the different little scultpures on the outside of Notre Dame. Everything is a symbol. It's very fun.

Gargoyles!

We stopped by Sacre Coeur, but since it was late, we couldn't get up close.

Monday 8/24:
We basically had time in the morning to stop at a bakery and get a baguette for my dad, and then go to the airport to barely be on time to our plane, and then in Chicago, barely make our plane to Minneapolis. But we got home.

Paris was so amazing, again. It was absolutely fantastic to be there with Matthew, who I love so much, and show him and be surrounded in the language and all the things and all the places that are so beautiful to me. It was perfect.