European Vacation {Day 3} – Paris: Notre Dame, Saint Chappell & Catacombs

I woke up super early today, like 5:30am-ish and couldn’t go back to sleep.  Sleeping three to a bed probably didn't help.

We hit up McDonalds on our way to Notre Dame this morning where I ate my first of four croissants of the day.

When we arrived at Notre Dame we found out that in order to climb to the top you had to have tickets. The earliest tickets we were able to get was around 1pm so we had some time to kill in the area.  We waited in line to enter the inside of Notre Dame.

Then we walked over to Saint Chapelle to check out the beautiful stainglass windows.   It was stunning with the sunshine streaming through.

It was hot in Paris.  Our hotel gave us two bottles of water a day, but we drank that pretty quickly and finding free water was a rarity.  We were pretty much dehydrated and didn’t eat a whole lot either.  We went in search of a highly rated smoothie place, but didn’t have any luck.  We spent a lot of time walking around it seemed.

Thankfully, we passed by Amorino and decided to treat ourselves to some yummy gelato.

We climbed 387 stairs to the tippy top of Norte Dame to view Paris from the gargoyles perspective.

We also got to go into the bell tower.  Good thing we’d watch The Hunchback of Norte Dame recently so it was fresh in our minds {wink}.

Next up was visiting Luxembourg Gardens which was a nice relaxing break from the busy city. I could have sat by this little pond for hours.

Instead we ended up waiting three hours to get into the Catacombs. We knew when we arrived it would take a least two hours to get through the line.  Abigail was ready to bag the idea, I was indifferent, and Carly was the one who decided we should stick it out.  I’m glad we did.  We didn’t have anything else planned for the day and it is definitely not something you see everyday.

Carly takes awesome notes on each of our vacations.  I’ve come to rely on her travel journals to help me remember what we’ve done on our trips.

After nearly three hours in line we finally descended into the catacombs.  There are around 6 million skeletons in the Paris catacombs.

We stumbled upon a bakery on the way back to the hotel and shared a warm baguette. It was so good I sent the girls back in for another.

We topped off the night watching the Eiffel Tower sparkle. Perfect day in Paris!

European Vacation {Day 2} - Bonjour Paris! Eiffel Tower & Arc de Triomphe

Customs in Paris was a long process.  When we finally emerged we headed straight to our hotel on the metro.

It was only around 10 or 11am so we weren't able to get into our room yet. The girls didn't want to do anything picture worthy before they had a chance to spruce up so at the recommendation of the hotel concierge we walked down to the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe to kill a little time. The girls let me take a couple photos on the phone cause hello, we're in Paris!

By the time we'd circled back to the hotel they had our room ready. Our room was small which is to be expected in Paris; however the location was perfect. A short walk to the Eiffel Tower and several metro stations. We even had a bit of view of the Eiffel Tower! I booked the hotel with points and couldn't believe how few points we had to use to get such a fantastic hotel.

Our phones weren’t working unless we had wifi, which was not available outside of the hotel.  This was a major bummer and not at all expected. When traveling we rely heavily on the data on our phones for maps and travel recommendations.  Thankfully the hotel includes free use of a cell phone that they encourage you to use out in the city.  It wasn’t the fastest device, but it was a huge lifesaver.  (Come to find out Justin had our international data blocked for some reason and didn’t realize it until we were already a few days into the trip – thankfully once he called and lifted the restriction we were good to go).

Even with little to no sleep we were still able to take full advantage of our first day in Paris.  The Eiffel Tower did not disappoint and offered incredible views of the city.  We decided to go the very top of the Tower, but actually preferred the views on the second floor.

Jardins du Trocadero 

   

Champ de Mars (not as green as I’d imagined)

We ate dinner at Sapori di Parma, a cute little Italian restaurant that we found on Tripadvisor (deli by day - restaurant by night) where the menu was in French and the staff spoke Italian.  The whole experience could have gone very wrong in so many ways, but thankfully turned out to be quite enjoyable.   Total mom and pop place and absolutely delightful.

The funniest part of our day was when Abigail fell asleep mid-conversation during dinner.  She asked Carly and I a question and before we could reply she was asleep.  Totally out.  She jerked awake after Carly and I had plenty of time to get a good laugh.

We topped off the evening climbing up 284 steps to the top of the Arc de Triomphe to watch the sunset. 

After being awake for 32+ hours and spending a full fun-filled day exploring Paris with my girls I was so ready to call it day (or two!) and finally get some sleep. 

We walked many, many miles and I'm loving the memories we're making!  I don’t think we got to bed until midnight and even then my brain couldn't hit pause and I got very little sleep.