Paris, J'taime

How very Da Vinci Code of me to be standing here under the Louvre

Mother rides the metro!

Mum and I at Notre Dame

Overlooking the fabulous Seine

In the middle of the hike up to the Sacre Coeur

Out on the town

Self -taken Eiffel Tower photo. The once straight tower appears to be leaning..

At the beginning of every train journey, one must always validate their train ticket.

Mumsy and I have arrived home from our trip to Paris, and she is leaving tomorrow...I can hardly believe it! These two weeks have just flown by, I don't know how I'll let her go!

Paris was a rousing success! We left early Friday morning on the high speed TGV train and arrived in Paris just before 1pm to flurries of snow and 30 degree weather, much to mothers dismay.

Our hotel was a quaint (is there any other kind in Paris?) little gem near La Republique and was just what we needed to sleep and do a little relaxing at night....it had a large window overlooking darling Frenchie apartments with curly wire balconies charatersitic to Paris and to France.

New Year's day (Friday) we trekked to the Eiffel tower, as it was one of the few attractions open on a national holiday.

Once we arrived at the park where the monument is, we were shocked and appaled at the lines! There were TONS of people! After a few quick photos, we jumped on the metro and headed to the Latin Quarter for a hot chocolate from Starbucks!

Saturday was jam-packed with metro rides, traipsing all over, and a little reuinion with Sarah and her friend, Alex.

We met up with the dynamic duo at a resraurant in the Latin Quarter that Sarah and I have deemed "our place" because it has a wonderful 3 course frenchie lunch for 10 euro....

It was so wonderful to see her after almost 2 weeks of being apart! We had to much to talk about, and Alex and mother could hardly get a word in with her and I talking a million miles a minute about all the important things that had happened over Christmas break.

Before lunch, we went to the Sacre Coeur but when it began to snow, we said, okay that's enough..to Starbucks, then? We did manage to find some gifties that my Aunt had requested and some nice churchie music for mother. I do love a cathedrale gift shop.

After our lunch date, we headed to The Bon Marche in search of brassieres. I have been needing some new ones since my stint with Weight Watchers, and what better place than the first department store (and only on the left bank of Paris) to purchase some! It was a total success, I got two lovely new undergraments.

A hop, skip and a jump on the metro later, we were at "les grand magasins" which is a collection of the largest departments stores in Paris (except of course for The Bon Marche), The Galleries Lafayette and Printemps.

It was a lovely day of shopping!

Sunday was a crazy day.

Our train wasn't even leaving Paris until after 9pm, so we had the whole day ahead of us!

We headed to the Louvre to go to the gift shop and look at the books. It was, however, free Sunday at the grand museam, so all of Paris was there. The lines were so long it was unreal.

We did manage to find some nice gifties for Matt and my mother's husband (better known as my father), so that was a major step in the right direction.

It was a cold, cloudy day, but mother and I decided to walk the Seine to Notre Dame and my favorite English bookstore, Shakespeare & Co.

There was a mass going on inside the famous cathedrale, which was cool and something I'd never seen before, even though that was 3rd trip to Notre Dame.

After a quick Refresh Mint tea at Starbucks, we climbed on the metro to retrive our bags from the hotel (they were kind enough to store them for the day), we were off to the train station to meet our TGV to Aix..where we arrived just after midnight to the pouring January rain.