Birthday Party in Paris (06/30/12 - 07/02/12)

To celebrate Derrick's birthday, we hopped over to France for our first trip to Paris.  Derrick's parents were in town visiting and were also able to join us on the trip.  Derrick's mom Tina was our unofficial tour guide, which was awesome for me, because usually I have to do all the planning for these trips.

When we got into Paris late Friday night, the hotel had some trouble finding our reservations, so we didn't even get into our rooms until around 1:30 AM.  Once we managed to drag ourselves out of bed the next morning, our first stop was the Louvre!

The Louvre glass pyramid from underneath 

The pyramid from up top.

Derrick's parents in the plaza of the Louvre 

Arch in the plaza of the Louvre.  If you look straight through it you can see all the way down to the Arc di Triomphe.

 We didn't actually go inside the Louvre on Saturday, we saved that for Sunday morning.  It turned out really well though, because unbeknownst to us the museums of Paris are free the first Sunday of the month, so we were able to tour the Louvre for free.  Score!

Next we decided to take in some of the city, and of course check out the many beautiful bridges across the Seine river.

Hahaha, Tina posing next to this homeless (or maybe just drunk) man to get a shot of the river.

See you can't tell she's standing next to a homeless dude.

Besides the homeless dude, I thought Paris was super beautiful and very clean.  Apparently Paris doesn't have a reputation for being clean, so I don't know if I was just wearing rose colored glasses that weekend or maybe Paris has cleaned up its act in the past few years.

Cool Egyptian looking fountain.  Tina had found this in her guide book, but I can't remember the name of it (guess I should have taken a picture of the sign).

This was an awesome street consisting of flower shops and pet stores!   How cool is that!

 One of my favorite things we saw in Paris was the Sainte Chapelle church.  As you'll know from my previous blog posts, I like stained glass, and the Sainte Chapelle church has walls made entirely of stained glass!  Its also apparently the last surviving building of the Capetian royal palace in Paris.

These pictures don't even do it justice, so here's a link to try to give you an idea of how cool this place was: Sainte Chapelle.

Pretty gates outside the Sainte Chapelle

After Sainte Chapelle, we headed over to the Notre Dame cathedral.  They were actually ordaining new priests that day, so we had to wait quite a while to go in, but we were able to see the parade of priests and bishops decked out in all their regalia.

Once we made it into the Notre Dame my camera had started to die, so I don't have as many shots of the interior as I would normally (maybe some of you are all right with that, lol).

 Another cool thing tour guide Tina had planned for us, was we took the steps to the roof of the Notre Dame cathedral, which gave us amazing views of the city and the gargoyles!

Good thing we wore our comfy shoes, it was high!

Derrick made a friend =-)

Incredible views from the top of Notre Dame.

 

They even let you go into the actual bell tower.  I was not a fan, because the whole room was made of wood, and who knows how old that stuff was.

No sign of Quasimodo in the bell tower, but we did find these two.

Saturday afternoon we met up with some friends who were wrapping up a one year work assignment in Paris.  Unfortunately my camera had really given out at this point so I don't have any pictures for you guys.  They were lovely hosts though and were able to show us a little bit of Paris outside the tourist spots.

Saturday evening we headed over to the Eiffel Tower area, and after dinner took a river boat tour of Paris down the Seine.

Obligatory Eiffel Tower shot!

Picture of the Eiffel Tower from our riverboat cruise.

On Sunday we went to the Louvre in the morning (for free!), and then checked out the Arc di Triomphe.  I actually stole these pictures from Larry and Tina who had gone to the Arc earlier on Saturday while we were visiting with our friends.

Sunday night concluded with us watching the final of the Eurocup tournament (sadly Italy lost to Spain) on an outdoor screen that was set up in a park just across from the Eiffel Tower.  A perfect end to Derrick's birthday weekend celebration!