Last stop: Paris

We arrived in Paris after a full day of travel on our last Sunday of the trip. It was literally a 12 hour day of buses, planes and trains. We got to Paris around 6 or 7, grabbed a quick (but super delicious) bite to eat and then went to bed...Paris day 1: check. The next day we started out early and walked EVERYWHERE! The concierge at our hotel was incredibly helpful and told us the best way to walk to take in as much as possible...more helpful than Rick Steves himself! We started at Notre Dame and worked our way around the city!

Brian had been to Paris before but it had been many years so he was happy to explore the city with me again! We had amazing weather and got to see everything we wanted and more!

Walked along the river and past the Louvre (didn't go in, we saved that for another day)

Stopped and the Arc de Triomphe

And climbed to the stop for amazing views...

And hilarious views if you looked down...

Then walked to the Eiffel Tower (didn't go up either...saved it for another day)

That night we had what was probably our best meal of the trip. Not probably, it was the best. First of all the food in Paris was to die for delicious...I mean I heard it would be, my expectations were high, but I also thought we would have to hit some fancy schmancy French restaurant to get some of the fab French cuisine. Not so my friend, everything was delicious, even just the little corner cafe. Anyways that night I had a seafood risotto and I seriously wanted to lick my plate clean, I thought better of it, I didn't want to give American tourists a bad name - but seriously, it was THAT GOOD!

The next day was Tuesday. We had planned to spend the morning at the Louvre and the afternoon at Sacre Coeur, but evidently the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays...who knew? Not us. So we went over to Sacre Coeur in the morning and spent most of the day on that side of town. It was gorgeous and a very cool area of Paris.

This was the area that Brian remembered having the "best crepes ever" so that is what we had for lunch. Let me just say that I did amazingly well staying gluten free the entire trip....until Paris where I indulged in half of a croissant and my own serving of banana nutella crepes...totally worth it!

And as we were catching the subway home we walked right past the Moulin Rouge...where I'm sure Brian, as well as the Parisian locals, enjoyed my rendition of Lady Marmalade a la Christina Aguilera...I sound just like her, if you ask nicely I will totally sing it for you....; )

We headed back to our hotel for an hour or two rest (we were seriously dead tired by the time we were in Paris, I'm really proud of us for going out and seeing everything because we literally felt like we could have slept those four days away by that point) then we headed out for our night time stroll to see the city at the night and get some pictures!

Since we had gotten some great views from the top of the Arc during the day we decided to do the Eiffel Tower at night. Amazing views!!! And we decided since there was a 3+ hour line to take the elevator all the way up, not to mention it something like 20 euros per person (redonk!), that we would walk it...workout for the day: check!

We even got to the light show they do apparently every hour (we saw it at 9 and 10) which was so pretty!

Our last day we had planned to spend in Versailles at the palace but since we hadn't done the Louvre yet we packed out day and did them both. I got some pictures inside of the amazing art, and of course of the really famous pieces (some of which I totally got, some of which I will never understand why they are so famous, if that makes me uncultured so be it) but it is probably nothing you haven't seen before, and the quality isn't the best (no flash allowed) so I won't bore you with it....
But Versailles....holy cow.....incredible!!!

We walked through the whole palace which takes quite awhile...

Then we walked through the gardens, which if you were to walk through the whole thing would probably take you triple the time....we saw quite a bit and I wish we could have spend 3 days there roaming every path...

I just loved this fountain....we waited here a long time to get a good shot without Joe Schmoe tourist standing behind it

Absolutely beautiful!
Even though we were tired, Paris was a great end to our trip! We were definitely ready to get home to Scott by the end of our time there (and if I'm being honest I was ready to get home to him much sooner than that) but we were also just ready to be home!
We left from Paris and flew back to London, had a few hour lay over then took the 10.5 hour flight to LAX....where my parents and Scott were waiting for us...much past Scott's bedtime (but I really really wanted him to come, I left the final call up to my parents whether it would be a good thing for him to be up that late or not and as luck would have it, Scott had a super duper late nap that day so he was ready to pick us with bells on)
It was the best thing ever to have Scott there to pick us up! He told us all about his adventures on the drive home and we were amazed with how many news words he had and how even his old words had improved! My favorite was that my mom said, "Scott, tell mommy and daddy what we did while they were gone." He said, "SNACK"!!! Good to know he wasn't starving...haha!
Scott also started calling my dad "papa" which is just as cute as can be!
It is a trip I will never forget and now its good to be home and settled back into our routine...just in time for the fall...can't wait!