Paris, France - Aug 6 - 8, 2009

We spent 3 nights in Paris and both fell in love with the city. It is so beautiful! Everywhere you look there is amazing architecture and lush parks. We were pretty jet lagged from the flight. We arrived at 7:30am local time. Back in Calgary it was 11:30pm. We didn't get a lot of sleep on the plane so that really screwed with our internal clocks. We spent the first morning wandering around the Republique area with our heavy backpacks. This is the first city where we actually had to carry our packs around. We quickly realized we need to reduce the weight of our packs by at least 20% each.

We ended up staying at the Absolute Hostel. It's in a convenient location and everyone there is very friendly. We didn't spend a lot of time at the hostel, it was pretty much just a place to sleep. We were very busy every day. We visited the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, Moulon Rouge, Cafe d'Amelie, the Pantheon, Arc de Triumphe, Nepoleon's Tomb, the Louvre Museum and a ton of other landmarks. We got to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo.

We saw most of the landmarks during a 6 hour walking tour. It was great! Our guide was actually from Vancouver, haha. She came here to study and decided to stay permanently.

One of Carolina's favorite landmarks was the Louvre Museum. It is massive! They have over 350,000 pieces of art!! The inverted pyramid was incredible. These ridiculous Parisians actually considered moving the entire museum further down the street so it would be in a perfect alignment with the Arc de Triumphe and the Eiffel Tower. I can't imagine how much that would cost.

The Mona Lisa was a bit disappointing. You have to fight your way through massive crowds, then it is behind bullet proof glass and you have to stand 10 feet back from it.


The Arc de Triumphe is in the centre of the largest traffic circle in Paris (possibly Europe??). Our guide told us that there is an car accident every 30 minutes!!


We enjoyed a coffee at cafe where the movie Amelie took place, specially for Neto :) This was followed by the best gelato we have ever tasted!

On our last night we went back to the Eiffel Tower. The city spends 6000 euros in electricity each night lighting up the tower and park. We brought some wine and had a romantic picnic in the park. It seemed almost unreal.


One of the highlights for me was when we checked out the grocery store. Ryan and Duke, you'll appreciate this more than anyone (or likely you will be the only ones). They sell 1 Litre YOPs in Paris!! I ALMOST convinced Carolina that it would be wise to buy 3 litres of YOP instead of bread and lunch meat, but she won that round... haha


The subway system was a little intimidating at first. Paris has 3 different train operators that offer a combined 24 lines/routes that spider-web throughout the city. Tickets purchased for 1 operator don't work for another operator... We opted to buy the more expensive day passes that worked on all 3. Once we started doing some traveling we quickly realised how organized and dependable their system is. There is a train every 3 - 4 minutes and everything is laid out in a very easy to follow way. What a huge contrast from Calgary that only has 2 train lines and can't even keep them on schedule.

We rate Paris - 4 out of 5 La Libertie Belles... or something like that...

The next stop is Brussels, Belgium!

P.S. Daddy you never wanted to tell me the story of Jacques de Molay but guess what?! My uncle Chacho mentioned it haha and the tour guide told me everything wohohohaha