France

It still seems crazy that I was in France last week.  What an adventure!!  And I did better with pictures (mostly because Carrie took pictures so I did too buy hey I did good :). So here are the highlights

Day 1 - travel - Carrie and Richard almost missed the flight to Paris and then at the last minute the Paris flight was delayed giving them extra time.  I have never been so happy for a delayed flight

Day 2 - arrival - we flew through the night and arrived in Paris around lunch time and went straight to exploring.  Of course we had to find the Eiffel tower right away.  But we also explored the Arc de Triomphe, saw the memorial to Princess Diana and took a long walk through the city to find our restaurant.

Day 3 - Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, Louvre, and the top of the Eiffel Tower

All of the building are amazing.  To think about how they built these buildings so long ago and the stained glass and all of it is crazy.  And yes we made it to the top of the Eiffel tower.  We climbed the first 500 steps and then took an elevator to the top.  Whoa!!

Notre Dame

from the outside

Sainte Chapelle

Louvre - home of the Mona Lisa

                       

Day 4 - Versailles, Napolean's tomb and WWI and WWII museums of France- Versailles was the chateaux  King Louis.  The palace was closed but the gardens were open and they were pretty impressive.  And the museums were the beginning of our history lesson for the week. 

Day 5 - travel to Bayeux and some exploring - we took a train to this quaint town in Normandy that was unharmed during WWII so had some pretty impressive architecture dating back before the 1400's.  It also had a cathedral called Notre Dame. 

Day 6 - San Marie Igles, Utah beach and their WWI and WWI museums, and Pointe de Hoc - this is where we met our tour guide who was very knowledgeable, hilarious, entertaining, could crack jokes quicker than Kevin and Richard, and he was Irish.  Good stuff!!!

this is the famous church where the paratrooper parachute got caught on the church

This shows the size of the cliffs that the Rangers had to scale in order to get to the German bunkers and observatory  points/machine guns.

Day 7 - Omaha beach and the cemetery and travel to St. Mont Michelle - this is where my camera died so I only have a few pictures.  Mont St. Michelle turned into to be way more of a tourist trap than we anticipated so we made a few changes and headed out early the next day. 

Day 8 - travel back to Paris and Montmarte - this time we took a high speed train and we played a little dominoes only getting a few stares from the Frenchmen :)  By this time we had mastered the metro so we traveled across the city to Montmarte. A fairly new church (only 100 years old) that is on the highest part in Paris.  It had a square surrounding it with lots of local artists and a true Parisan feel. 

Day 9 - Back to Versailles and Orsay and Rodin museum - This time Versailles was totally different.  Thousands of toursits and slightly overwhelming.  Orsay and Rodin were more huge museums with impressive works from Monet and a few other names we at least recognized.  Then we did a walking tour of Rue St. Clare and took a break from the rain (the only rain we saw all week) to people watch and drink a beer.  Then it was up one more time to the Eiffel tower for the light show and champagne.  

Of course we had amazing dinners every night and even had time for a couple of picnics.  We ate unusual foods and had great service and created memories that will last forever.  Never mind that it is wonderful to spend 10 days with my husband and no jobs to do.  What a vacation!!!!