Hang on to your berets and grab a baguette, people, because I've got tons to share from Paris! The city was absolutely everything I wanted it to be...and more. I'm in love. Every. Single. Thing. we did was wonderful. Cinque Terre has been bumped to my number two spot, because Paris completely stole my heart.
We got in late Thursday night, navigated our way through the Metro, and immediately went to bed so we could make the most out of our weekend. On Friday morning, we headed to the Eiffel Tower to take a bike tour of the city. In this first post of what I will call my "J'adore Paris" series, I'll share all of the pictures from our bike ride around the romantic city.
The Eiffel Tower. Can you believe the city thought about tearing this thing down? It was built for the World's Fair in 1889 and has many little stories to go along with it. It was once "sold" for scrap metal...but that just turned out to be a big scam. One of the first bungee jumps was done off of it. A guy even (very unsuccessfully) tried to fly off of the second level.
The park at the base of the tower served as the perfect picnic spot for us on Saturday, which will be blogged about later.
At the end of the park is a monument dedicated to peace. It has "peace" written on it in tons of different languages. If you look carefully, you can see one pane of glass is missing. They say this pane of glass will be filled in when world peace has been achieved.
Take a moment to look at how "Parisian" John Ralph is looking. Pants rolled into capris? Somebody stop him before he buys a pair of jorts and starts wearing glasses for fashion purposes only.
On the tour, he was a little sad he couldn't do some BMX tricks. Beach cruisers just aren't the ideal bike for hopping curbs and racing mopeds.
Paris is the perfect city to bike around, so much so that the city has actually started a public bike system. I loved riding around on this bike. I think a new bike is going on my wish list.
This is the military school of France, or Ecole Militaire. It is where Napoleon Bonaparte studied (that's him on his horse up there), and it is still in service today.
We rode along many lovely streets on the tour. Paris really takes pride in having beautiful buildings. None are over about seven stories high, contributing to the "quaint" feeling of the city. Above you can see a skyscraper in the distance. This is the only one in Paris. The city built it with plans for 6 more to follow, but decided once it was complete that it was just too unsightly and cancelled the plans for the others. They are now taking it down, floor by floor.
Here we have Les Invalides, where Napoleon's tomb is located.
The dome is covered in 24 karat gold leaf. One of the Louis kings had the inside of the dome painted, but once it was complete he decided the dome was too high and he couldn't see the paintings. He ordered for the dome to be lowered...what may seem like quite a difficult task. However, the guy in charge came up with the smart idea of building another dome within the dome. Louis was none the wiser, and happy with the end result, so the guy was rewarded with a nice chateau.
This is just the back view of Les Invalides, and the front view of a military hospital.
The bridge at Pont Alexandre is quite the spectacle. A ton of different art styles make up the design of the bridge and statues and it's a lovely sight to see.
Taking a little breather.
On the way to the Tuileries Gardens.
We had lunch at an outdoor cafe in the gardens. The weather was perfect, especially in the shade. I enjoyed a nice salad and John Ralph had a sandwich. We both had a beer, but mine was mixed with Sprite, a fancy thing they do over here.
These are the gardens. They lead up to Lourve
France is known for having one of the highest qualities of life, and now I know why. Everyone gets to sit and relax in the sun while enjoying their two hour lunch.
I think I'm going to adopt the French way of life. Picnic lunches outside everyday for the preschoolers!
European men.
There is really nothing else I can say about this.
Making our way back towards the Eiffel Tower.
This was our last stop on the tour. One couple on the tour with us were both dressed really nice (considering it was a bike tour) and I was really hoping I would get to see an engagement. Didn't happen.
Even though I didn't get to see a proposal, I guess celebrating 10 months of marriage at the base of the Eiffel Tower in Paris isn't too shabby. We had such a wonderful time on the tour, and it was a great way to start our trip. I would recommend it to anyone visiting Paris!
Alright...who is still reading? That was a pretty long post, but like I said at the beginning, I thought Paris was amazing so I took plenty of pictures. Up next in the J'adore Paris series: Macaroons and all things sweet. Stay tuned!
Au revoir!
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