Since we only had a week in Paris, we started out with a plan.  Carl was going to stay in the area near our rental with Sylar and Annalea while Grace and I made two full day trips by ourselves into the city.  During the days in between we would explore our neighborhood 🙂  We were excited and set off early in the morning to find the metro.  We realized that driving into the city each day we went in, requiring Carl to spend hours battling traffic and navigating while doing it, didn’t make much sense when we could buy a daily pass to the metro!  The nearest stop was only a ten minute walk from our rental and then it took us about 20 minutes to get to the stop nearest the Eiffel Tower!

Upon finding our way out of the maze and up into the light, the Tower view hit us like a mac truck! BAM!

It was a bit surreal to look around and realize we were actually there!  It was fun walking around with Grace, chatting about how big it was and how metal it looked in the daylight!  We walked down to the ticket booth under the tower to see how much it cost to head up to the top, and how long the line was.

We decided, based on the length of the lines already forming, that we would walk up the stairs to the second level.  But we were going to wait until night time to do it so we could get the magical view Grace was looking for.

Now that that was decided, we set off to find some food!  There was a fair like set up right on the river near the Tower so we walked down that way and had some amazing sausages from this lady.  We walked, ate, and shared the atmosphere of Paris and realized that it was beginning to grow on us! We took a leisurely stroll by the river taking in the sights as we found them….

and eventually found our way to Notre Dame.

At this point it was starting to rain so we stopped and had some coffee at a nearby cafe.

After the rain slowed to a drizzle, we headed across the street to take in the sights of Notre Dame.  We knew this would be a long one because of my Dad’s wife’s interest in all things Notre Dame and planned on spending most of the afternoon inside and hopefully going up to see the bells.

It was gorgeous inside.  I was completely taken aback at the statues, stained glass, and quiet of the whole place.  It’s a functioning church so there was service, singing, and people waiting to go in to confession.  It was beautiful.  And very emotional.  I actually spent some time speaking to a priest (even though I’m not Catholic) about my father’s passing and how he would have loved to have lived vicariously through me in regards to being here.  It was cathartic to say the least.

When we headed outside we realize that it was still pouring, getting dark, and we weren’t going to make it up to the bell tower.  We’d have to come back the next day!!

Now that we had a feel for the city, and what we wanted to take time looking at, we had some dinner and made our way back to the subway to head home.  The Eiffel Tower would wait another day, we wanted clear skies for our viewing pleasure!