Je t'aime Paris

Paris Day Two. We decided not to rush ourselves as much for the rest of our time in Paris, as London was whirlwind and our first half day in Paris was a bit crazy. So we got breakfast at the same little bakery and then went to a cafe so Mom and Katie could get coffee. They got grand creme, which apparently was quite the stellar coffee, but seeing as I'm not a coffee drinker, the taste I had wasn't good. I imagine if I did like coffee it would've been fab. Ha. Next we went to Notre Dame. With our museum pass we'd be able to go up the towers, so we got in line. It ended up being the line that just went into the cathedral, but that was okay because we wanted to do that too obviously! After we looked around inside, we went to find the tower line and discovered it was extremely long, so we decided to hit that up way later in the day and went to get crepes instead. I got an apple one and it was soo good. I could eat crepes all day. We walked over to St. Chapelle and waited in line there. However, they stopped letting people in for the hour between 1 and 2 and thus, we just missed getting in before 1. Ha. The line moved pretty fast so we figured to come back at 2 and it'd be cool. We went to Shakespeare and Co. and I think maybe we went walking over Pont Neuf bridge. Shakespeare and Co was awesome. Eclectic bookstores rule. Famous authors lived there and wrote there, like Ernest Hemingway. After that adventure, we went back to St. Chapelle and got in pretty quick to just bask in the beauty that is a chapel of pretty much all stained glass windows. They're in the process of cleaning the glass so one wall was covered in scaffolding and still dirty. But the rest was absolutely breathtaking. I can't imagine what it was like to make that. When we left St. Chapelle, we headed back to Notre Dame to go up the tower. The line didn't seem as bad. I got a second crepe while we waited so that probs made it better. Banana and nutella for the win! There's like 400 steps to the top of Notre Dame so that was fun...spirally staircases frighten me. But I survived and it was worth it. Amazing views of the city and got to see the gargoyles up close. I also saw some guy wearing a Baylor hoodie. Sic 'em! Oh we also got to see the huge bell in the bell tower. It was crazy big. We also got stuck up there in the wind and rain for a little bit. That was real cool. ha. We got down eventually and walked around to the back of Notre Dame to see the flying buttresses and then it was raining again and we were quite chilled so we went to Cafe Panis, which was this cafe across the street that we'd heard was good. I got warm vanilla milk, but not without a struggle. I guess when I attempted saying it in French, the waiter thought I wanted cold milk even though I pointed at it on the menu. Whatever, we got it fixed and I got my warm vanilla milk. Not sure it was really vanilla but it was warm nonetheless. After warming up, we went to Champs Elysees! We ate dinner at Paul. I had ham and cheese on a baguette [I see a trend in all the food they serve here...ham and cheese all the way! haha]. We shared a raspberry macaroon and a slice of blueberry pie, too. After dinner we walked down the street to climb the Arc de Triomphe! It was much bigger than I imagined. I feel like most everything was bigger than I imagined. Haha. It had nice, spirally steps to the top, too. Space-saving, but terrifyingly high to climb. It was so neat to be on top of it at night and see all the streets coming together and the Eiffel Tower. We stayed so we could see it sparkle too! It only does that every hour for like 5 minutes. It was late when we came back down and made our way to the metro, only to find out that our stop was closed or something weird so we couldn't take the metro and had to walk to the next nearest stop aka ALL the way down Champs Elysees. Done. Just like a Tour de France rider. only not on a bicycle or actually down the middle of the street. That would've been a bad idea. Haha. So that was a fun ending to the day!
Picture time!

inside Shakespeare and Co.

St. Chapelle

best crepe ever.

gargoyles on top of Notre Dame

Classic Parisian meal.

Arc de Triomphe

on top of the Arc with the Eiffel Tower!

terrifying spiral staircase.