PARIS

August 8-9, 2012
Paris

On these two days, Marcy and I decided to do something crazy.  We went to Paris.  Why is this crazy?  We were docked in Bordeaux.  Go look at a map.

Since the ship was scheduled for an overnight in Bordeaux, we figured it was now or never.  So we hopped on a bullet train, and here's the rest of the story:

Here we are at a restaurant just down the street from the Eiffel Tower.  Did you know that Paris is one of the most expensive cities in the world?  I found out this day.  You see the drinks we have in our hands?  They were $16 each!  The worst part is that they were an after-thought.  We had just ordered food, which by the way was cheaper than the drinks, when the waiter asked us if we wanted something to drink.  We thought, why not?  Seriously, why would drinks be more expensive than your food?

We thought we'd see the most of the city in the shortest amount of time by taking a canal tour.  They had these speaker paddles that had every main stream language on it.  Not only that, our guide spoke all of these languages as well.  And he spoke at over 100mph because he was repeating everything in every language.

The locals hang out and dance on the edge of the canals.

Oh yeah, and we went to the Louvre, see?  There it is.

Marcy presents, "Tree."

Okay, so the sun has gone down and there's still way to much to see before we get on the bullet train the next day before lunch.  So, we decided to stay up as much as we can, and see the sights by night.

The Arc de triomphe has this eternal flame thing going on underneath it.

We found the Paris Opera house, a statue of Molier, a fountain, the Louvre Hotel, and a statue of Joan of Arc.

Moliere

Joan of Arc

We hopped on a bus by the Louvre, and got off not too far from our hotel.  Crossing the bridge, we took this picture.

End of night 1.

Morning, day 2.
Today's priorities: Chocolate croissants, Notre Dame, and the inside of the Paris Opera House.

Yum.  OMG, Yum.

 Here is the Archangel Michael fighting Satan over the body of Moses.

 Made it to Notre Dame.

The gargoyles of Notre Dame have inspired many stories, but did you know that many of them are just rain gutters?  The ones that stick straight out are gutters.

If you look closely, you can see many of the gargoyle rain gutters.

Ah, the Paris Opera House.  We've arrived.

Wait, where is she going?

Of course.

Creature of habit.

The ceiling inside the theater

All in all, it was a pretty incredible trip.  I'm happy with the amount of things we managed to see in 24 hours.  Many of those hours were the middle of the night, and we even managed to get a little bit of sleep.  This was good because the train we jumped on to get back to the ship was sold out so we ended up standing in the meal car for three hours.  We passed the time watching Mission Impossible 2 on Marcy's computer while we slowly ate the food we ordered.

And for fun, here's a video of the two of us singing at the Paris Opera House: