paris

the last chapter of our trip! we made an unexpected journey to france after we found out (while we were in iceland) that lindsay and travis were being delayed five whole days on their move over to denmark. since denmark is incredibly expensive, and we figured spending a week there was probably enough for our touristy impulses, we decided to splurge on a plane flight somewhere else to spend those five days--and paris was the winner. we chose paris mainly because we found cheap plane tickets, a cheap hotel, and because tommy had done a summer internship there four years ago, so it involved little planning and no guidebooks, and he was a built-in tour guide for me. it's still pretty amazing to me that we were able to plan this totally last-minute trip to a foreign country where neither of us (really) speak the language, but everything went off without a hitch!

let's just say that paris is beautiful. these pictures don't even show half of what we did, but i didn't think it was necessary to bore you with every little place we went. it was SO cool to visit all the places that i've read about and heard about for ages. we got to visit the sites from the hunchback of notre dame, phantom of the opera, les miserables, and tale of two cities--all favorite books of mine--and plenty of other books and movies. i loved it all. but we were SO extremely tired by the end--this was at the near-end of our trip--and it was good to know that we were going home soon.

our first view of the seine after coming out of the metro. note the dangerous-looking thunder clouds--it started pouring not short after, while we were on our boat cruise. yay.

the first night we were there, we did the necessary trek to the top of the eiffel tower. it only took about 5 hours and was absolutely freezing up there. but so cool, and like i said, necessary.

the arc d'triomphe, which we also went up to the top of to look out of (wow, lots of prepositions in that sentence).

we also went up to the top of notre dame to hang out with the gargoyles and see the giant bell. i've never liked the disney movie of hunchback of notre dame (it's so sad) but now i want to re-watch it after being there . . . maybe i can give it another chance. i thought i'd uploaded another picture of us in front of it, but apparently i didn't, so whatever.

the notre dame from the other side. it's really incredibly beautiful.

we went to the paris ward! tommy went here over the summer when he lived here. i got to meet his boss who he worked for, who is a byu alum (which is why tommy got the internship) and the fam. they have five cute cute kids and they were so incredibly nice! we went out to lunch with them on monday to the paris hard rock cafe and had a good time talking to them.

we also spent some time relaxing by the eiffel tower. we wanted to take a picture of us (so cute!) but failed.

monday was the louvre (and other things not pictured here), which was fantastic. here was where i channeled da vinci code. we saw about 1% of the museum but it was still worth it.

cute tommy, looking out from the sacre couer.

tuesday, our last day there, we went to versailles. beautiful, fantastic, crazy, huge, what else can i say?


a small paris alleyway, for austin (who was disappointed not to find any of these in copenhagen).
and last, but NOT least, our classy hotel: the hotel baby. oh, baby.
je t'aime, paris! (look at all the french i picked up!)