Paris by Day

So much of what we saw in Paris deserved individual blog posts, but I'm going to try to squeeze the rest of our sight seeing into this one post. You can't go to Paris without going to the Louvre, and we were all so excited to finally be there!

The iconic glass pyramid out front!

See that big smile on her face? We were on the escalator going from the glass pyramid down into the Louvre when she looked up at me and said "I can't believe I'm really here!" This girl loves museums and history and art, so this was a dream come true for her. She loved every minute we spent inside the Louvre. She is so knowledgeable about history and art, so she is just the best tour guide ever! She definitely gets that from her Daddy.

You could honestly spend an entire day or more in the Louvre. Unfortunately we didn't have that kind of time, so we tried to hit all the highlights in a few hours. Our last stop was to see the Mona Lisa. There's usually a huge crowd surrounding her, but we picked a good time of day to go see this masterpiece and only had to fight our way through a small crowd to get to her.

If the Louvre is one of the must sees in Paris, then crepes are one of the must eats in Paris. We found this little crepe shop a couple blocks from the Eiffel Tower, and we loved it so much that we ate there twice - once before our Eiffel Tower tour and then again when it was over!

Nutella & strawberry crepe - heavenly goodness!

We met some fellow Americans there who offered to take our picture. It's a little blurry, but I still love it :)

Next on our Paris "must" list was Laduree. If you don't know, Laduree is a French bakery that's especially known for its macarons. Laurel & I love, love, love macarons! We've been to the Laduree location in NYC and in the Paris airport, but we were dying to see the original location in Paris on the Champs Elysees. It was everything we thought it'd be! So pretty!!

After leaving Laduree, we walked the rest of the way down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. This monument honors those who fought and died in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The names of all the French victories and French generals are inscribed on the monument. There's a traffic circle going around the monument. In my opinion all French traffic circles are nuts, but this one is exceptionally large and just insane!! It's just a big free for all, drive wherever you want to, cut off whomever you need to mess!

The views from the top of the monument were just beautiful.

There was some sort of celebration going on while we were there, so this huge French flag was hanging in the Arc.

We had a great time in Paris! It's a beautiful city with so much to offer, and I'm so thankful that Laurel & I got to experience it with our best friends!

These sweet girls have come a long way from pony-tailed two year olds at daycare together to beautiful young women exploring the world. They charmed this guy who was the owner of a fantastic little Italian restaurant we ate at one night while we were there. He fed us probably the best meal we had in Paris and laughed and joked with us the entire meal.

Even though this is kind of a Paris wrap-up post, I do still have one more Paris post to write about one of my favorite experiences from our trip - our nighttime Seine River cruise. Paris is beautiful during the day for sure, but it's really magical at night! Until then, I'll just leave you with these two pictures of my crazy, wild, fun-loving, adventurous, never-a-dull-moment-with BFF! Just remember my friend...

"We'll always have Paris."