Paris Megapost.

Readers- prepare yourselves for the longest post in blogger history. This is a megapost complete with several hundred pictures from my weekend in Paris, France. I don't blame you at all if you want to break the reading/looking at of this post into several days. Be my guest.

These are bike stations posted everywhere, and I do mean EVERYWHERE around Paris. You can get one and "rent" it. The first 30 minutes are free...so what you do is ride if for 30 minutes and return it to the closest bike station and grab a new one. I was tempted to try this, but value my life and decided against it.
Our hotel, next to the Grare de Lyon train station.

One of the many paintings in one of the halls at the Palace of Versailles. Most of the other paintings were pretty gruesome and portrayed bloody battle scenes. Another disclaimer: This blog is not very orderly. Most of it is backwards, as in it goes from what I did Sunday through Friday instead of vice versa, and some of it is out of order.

A picture in the Palace of Versailles of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, and Stalin at Yalta Conference in February 1945 at the conclusion of WW II and the Holocaust.

The famous picture of U.S. Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945.

A painting, sculpture, and picture filled hallway in the Palace of Versailles.

A bust of someone I don't know. Haha, sorry.

Part of the beautiful gardens of Versailles.

The ceiling in one of the bedrooms in the palace. Everything was so embellished and ornately decorated. The detail in every room was emaculate.

Another view of the gardens. We didn't have time to walk through them, but it was nice to get to see them from the palace's windows.

My attempt at a self portrait in the Hall of Mirrors.

Me, Jordan, and Kelsey in the hall of mirrors...picture courtesy of my poor photography skills.

Another example of the detail in the Palace.

The Hall of Mirrors in the Place of Versailles.

One of the many bedrooms in the palace, the bed was really high off the ground. I could just picture whoever slept here having to make a running start to jump up on the bed.

Most of the ceilings in the palace looked like this.

More of the garden at Versailles.

A lot of the rooms had this wallpaper, but in each room the color of it was different. They ranged from dark red to blue to deep purple and even yellow. The only things in each of these rooms were large paintings and the odd wallpaper.

It would have been pretty amazing to be able to walk on your balcony and have this view everyday. Lucky Henry XVI.

The Palace of Versailles, which was home to political power and Henry XVI. There is a lot of interesting history behind it. It is far too much for me to type in this blog, but if you click the link I provided about the palace at the beginning of this caption you will find some interesting reading.

The golden gates leading into Versailles.

How nice of Paris to have my pink limo waiting outside my hotel for me.

One of the 37 bridges across the Siene River in Paris at sunset.

The sparkling/twinkling of the Eiffel Tower! (While I was on it.) This happens once every hour and lasts about 5 minutes. It is really something to see. People constantly cheer and whistle and clap while it's going on and it's really hard not to be in awe when it happens.

A blurry view from the Eiffel Tower. No flash + unstrudy hands= blurry pictures.

Me up in the Eiffel Tower with a view of Paris behind!

This was my first attempt at capturing the city from the Eiffel Tower. It turned out pretty interesting.

In line to get Eiffel Tower tickets. We were so excited when this sign greeted us.

Notre Dame from our boat cruise on the Siene River.

Another view from the boat of the sunset out over the Siene...and the jerk bridal party that REFUSED to sit down so everyone else on the boat could see. Wedding are no excuse for rudeness! Haha.

The un-trimmed version of the earlier picture of this bridge.

Please excuse the back of everyone's head. It was a packed boat and I was stuck in an angle where I couldn't get many good pictures sans people's noggins.

Courtney, Jordan, Kelsey, Vanessa, and me waiting to go on our boat cruise on the Siene River.

The Eiffel Tower from the boat.

There were 4 or 5 of these little cars with these outrageous animals dressed in lingerie drinking juice on top of them in one of the squares in Paris. They were giving out free juice to promote it. The adds are hilarious.

The Arc de Triomphe-- Arc of Triumph for those non-French speakers.

Me with the Zebra promoting the Orange Juice that tasted like a mimosa (orange juice and champagne, usually a drink served at a brunch-type meal). Me, I was not a fan.

France's Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Many countries have one of these. The United States has several; Tomb of the Unknown Confederate Soldier (Beauvoir, Biloxi, Mississippi), Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier (Washington Square in Philadelphia), and Tomb of the Unknowns (Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia).

My ode to London while in Paris. Almost EVERY vehicle from work trucks to coaches (charter buses) and vans and cars in London are Mercedes-Benz.

Look dad, I even found a Paul in Paris. This Paul Patisserie is a popular place.

This person scared me. I don't know why anyone would give money to this creepy person sitting around dressed as an Egyptian mummy. It's beyond me.

The view down the Champs de Elysees all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. Yes, we did walk the WHOLE entire way from the point of this photo to the Arc.

A French Monument....sorry, that's about all I know about the thing. I think it's equivalent to the United States' Washington Monument.

A random man playing the piano on the sidewalk, and yes, he did have grass in his piano.

The entrance to the Louvre!

A massive room of statues in the Louvre.

The Mona Lisa by da Vinci! Mom- this reminded me of you, of course.

The famous Venus de Milo.

Touching the top of the pyramid outside of the Louvre.

A small, yes, small, part of the Louvre. It is overwhelmingly massive and would, in all reality, take at LEAST a solid week to look at everything in it.

Me and the Eiffel Tower. It was a beautiful day as you can tell with the crowds of people that came out to bask in the sun and take pictures of the Tower.

A tree in a garden in Paris that is dedicated to the victims of the 9/11 tragedy in New York City.

A Statue of Liberty in Paris?! Yes! There are three of them in the city. Two are small (this being one of them [1/7 the size of the one in New York]) and the other is as tall as the one in New York, but not as wide.

A big face in one of Paris' gardens.

A semi-chilling, and ominous picture of Notre Dame at night.

A picture of Notre Dame as the sun was setting. It was amazing.

Notre Dame is home of the hunchback, Quasimodo!! This is apparently a salon by the same name?

A view of the Siene River en route to Notre Dame.

Our very small, very warm French rooms at the hotel.

The train station where we arrived via Eurostar from London.

There were protests going on in the train station, so this was my first view of Paris. There were also protests going on as we left the city and it ended up delaying our train by about an hour due to the fact that the English workers refused to continue working until the protestors stopped making noise.

Kelsey, Jordan, Vanessa, and me in the elevator on the way up the Eiffel Tower.

We were very excited to be going up.

The group (Vanessa, Kelsey, Jordan, Amanda, Courtney, me, Chris, Ashley, Alli, Liz) in front of Notre Dame at sunset on our first night in Paris. Poor Chris had to keep all of us girls safe from the creepies in Paris.

The girls at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Looking out over the city.

Soft serve swirl ice cream under the Eiffel Tower, life couldn't get any sweeter.

At one of the fountains in a square in Paris.

Me, Kelsey, Jordan, and Vanessa in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The first two videos are of some street performers in front of the Notre Dame.

This is what the Eiffel Tower looks like when it's sparkling/twinkling! It is gorgeous. I was on the Eiffel Tower at the time, so I don't have a good video of it happening from far away, but you can find those on Youtube. Also, no, it is not raining some kind of awesome, sparkling, lit-up rain, that is just what the twinlking effect did to my camera.

This is a video of the crowd of people that can be found sitting along the banks of the Siene River in the evening. We got mooned while we are on the boat, but no worries, I didn't capture that special moment.

This is a rather dark and fuzzy video of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. It doesn't do the view justice at all.

Bonjour!

I will try to make the writing in this blog as brief as possible due to the fact that there was already a lot to take in from the mass amount of pictures I posted.

I had a good time in Paris. The language barrier was quite frustrating, but after getting over that it was nice to experience a new country. It was so strange to go from one country to the next in a short 3 hours train ride! Europe is great. The trip on the Eurostar train in a tunnel under the English Channel was quite an experience. My ears are still recovering from the amount of pressure you feel being that far down. We arrived to screaming protesters and were shuffled off to our coach (what the British call a bus) and had a 30 minutes bus ride through the craziness that is Paris traffic and driving. They have no rules on their road so one of those small smart cars passed us by driving up on the sidewalk. It was bizarre. We arrived at our hotel and got checked in and then a group of us went out for pizza for dinner. I know what you're thinking; "pizza in Paris?!" and yes, we had pizza in Paris. In my defense, it was a real Italian place, so even though the pizza was pricey, it was delicious. After dinner we trekked to find Notre Dame. The walk led us along the banks of the Seine River right at sunset, so the view was gorgeous. We reached Notre Dame and after being awestruck by it’s enormous size and detail, we snapped a few pictures and took time to watch some street performers in front of the cathedral and went in search of ice cream and a way back to our hotel. It was fun getting to use the small amout of French I know. By small amout, I mean I can only say "Hello", "Good-bye", "Thank you", and "Excuse me, where is te bathroom?". Haha.
The next morning started with breakfast at an upscale restaurant in the hotel and then a tour of Paris at 8:45. We rode in a bus for most of the tour, which didn’t allow for an opportunity to get as many pictures as I wanted, but I got to witness a lot of the neat sites that Paris has to offer. We ended our tour at the Louvre and after touring it we had a cheese burger and fries (aka “chips”) and headed to a square with fountains and monuments (as pictured above) to take pictures and then made our way to the Arc de Triomphe. We took our pictures there and then went home to take a nap and met up with the group later in the evening for the boat tour down the Seine River and our trip up the Eiffel Tower. It was a jam-packed day, but we got to see a lot of the popular Paris attractions. The next morning a small group of us woke up early and took the train to The Palace of Versailles. We were all very tired on the train and decided to try to get some sleep on the 45 minute ride when all of a sudden a Mariachi-like band got on the bus and started playing their instruments SO loud. They then proceeded to ask for money from us for their performace, but after being woken up so abruptly we were not in a giving mood. I don’t think even these Mariachi men wanted to mess with a group of sleepy girls! After fighting the crowds there, we took a long tour through the Palace and took the train back to our hotel to meet the group to head back to London.
That just about concludes this lengthy blog and I hope you all enjoyed it…even if it took you several hours, days, weeks to read. I miss each of you. I will be back stateside in less than 3 weeks! I can’t believe it. I love you all. Have a great week!

Always,
Mattie.