While Away: Paris

The drive to Paris was horrid. The TomTom did its job and guided us seamlessly to the destination but the traffic was horrendous! The Hertz drop off location was not advertised so we ended up circling around in one-way streets for a while trying to figure out why we weren’t finding it, and once we did figure out where we needed to be, finding appropriate parking was a whole other story. Needless to say, when the attendant tried to charge me extra for being a little late on delivery, I let her have a piece of my mind…I did not get charged. (I should probably also mention that the map they provided even indicated an inaccurate location for their business and we TRIED to be early but construction on the route prevented us from doing so)…

Knowing we only had a day and a half in the city, we hurried back to the hotel, dropped off our belongings, and headed back down to the center for some serious sightseeing. We managed to visit the Notre Dome Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower…neither of which had long lines (which we were pleased to see)… Views of/from both were awesome..and well worth the sore legs that resulted from all the walking.

With the Louvre reserved for the last day, we rose early to beat the expected crowds. Per the guidebook, we used the alternative entrances and were pleased to find…no line. ;) YAY! We spent HOURS at the museum and took a ton of pictures. The artwork was amazing… We hit the Mona Lisa first hoping to sneak a peak of it before the crowds got too busy, but alas, there was already a line..and none of us cared to see it up close enough to wait in line…so the only picture we have of it is from a distance and therefore a little blurry and glared (sorry!) we actually ended up leaving having not seen the entire place because we were so tired from walking and taking pictures.