1 Day in Paris | bryn.ashley

There were those that said it couldn’t be done. And to them I say, HA!

We woke up at 4:30AM in order to catch our 6:30AM train to Paris!

After a 2.5 hour train ride, we arrived at Gare du Nord. We were able to purchase metro tickets on the train, which saved us a little time once we arrived in Paris.

From Gare du Nord we took the 4 headed towards Porte d’Orleans and got off at Cite.

We started off with Notre Dame. Because it’s kinda cool. No admission and you could take pictures. Double win! They did have audio tours, but we decided that it was probably similar to the one at St. Pauls so we didn’t purchase it.

We headed outside, about to head to our next destination when I bumped into one of my old residents. Had to travel half way around the world to bump into her. Crazy!

Lovers Bridge is just around the corner from Notre Dame, so we took a look at all the locks people have left behind. You are suppose to put a lock on the bridge to symbolize your love and throw the key into the Seine.

Some sort of symbolism for your love lasting forever. Which is why I found it funny that people used combination locks…..hedging their bets.

After our quick tour of Notre Dame, we headed to Saint Chapelle. For some reason, I remember Saint Chapelle being a special little church that no one knew about….when I told this to Nick, he informed me that it’s quite famous and wasn’t sure where I had gotten that idea. Oh well.

Saint Chapelle is a gorgeous {tiny} church where you feel like you’re floating in stained glass. It’s beautiful. Unfortunately, 1/4 of the stained glass was under restoration….BOO!!! You see, I took a near perfect picture of Saint Chapelle back in 2004. But there was a bald head in the picture that has haunted me. This was suppose to be my moment of redemption. But it was foiled! Oh well, I’ll get my picture on another trip.

We purchased some sandwiches and a nutella/banana crepe on the street and headed to the Louvre!

If you only have a short amount of time at the Louvre. Get the audio tour. Even if you have a full day to spend at the Louvre, get the audio tour (BTW – I have no idea how anyone can spend more than 2 hours at a museum. I literally turn into a 10 year old buy with ADD as soon as 2 hours is up). The audio tour – which is on a nintendo 3DS – has a “masterpiece tour” that takes you through all the highlights. AND it uses some sort of position location and always know where you are at. A little creepy but totally helpful. It tells you when to start walking and for how long. Best audio tour of the trip.

Don’t worry, we also saw the Mona Lisa – what sort of masterpiece tour would be complete without it? But it’s not that impressive…kinda small….so I didn’t even take a picture. There were also about a million people also trying to get a glimpse of Mona, so it was just easier to stand back and not be one of the crazies trying to flash her (get it?).

We then took a walk from Louvre towards the Champ Elysees. Along the way we stopped for some macaroons. This is the stop that every foreigner dreads. The first place that doesn’t have English signs and where the workers won’t speak English. I get physically uncomfortable just thinking about it. It was called Pierre Herme. And everyone knows that an accent over the last E means it’s gonna be fancy and they aren’t likely to speak anything but French. And they didn’t. And we got flustered. But we walked away with 6 macaroons and a couple of cookies.

As we left the store, Lisa commented, “why were we so nervous? those were 2 grown men working in a cookie store.” She’s right.

We snacked on macaroons and made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. We stopped into a few shops along the Champ Elysee and even grabbed a souvenir mug at Starbucks!

But we were quickly running out of time and we still had to knock out the Eiffel Tower. So it was off to the metro where we hopped on the 6 headed towards Nation and got off at Trocadero.

We asked some people to take our photo…..but they sucked at taking photos.

The Eiffel Tower is growing out of my head….

Then I decided to ask someone with a fancy camera. I assumed that they would know how to frame a picture….but instead, they cut off the Eiffel Tower. You’ve got to be kidding me!