A day in Paris...

Wow, Paris is a pretty sweet city! Walking through it in the dark last night was not too much fun and we were in a rush to make our check-in time at the hostel. However, we woke up today, ate breakfast and met my friend James. James is Lauren's (girlfriend) cousin who currently is studying/working in Paris, teaching French as part of finishing his masters degree. He had the weekend free and thankfull was willing to show us around the city. We were so thankful to have someone who not only knew the city but also spoke French. I cannot thank him enough for getting us around the city...he was incredible today! I honestly don't know what we would have done without him.

Well we met this morning and started heading out to Versailles, which is the palace built by Louis XIV. The palace was incredible! Louis was not shy about his wealth and loved showing everyone how much gold he had haha. The gates are covered in gold, part of the palace, statues and busts, and so many other things. We saw so much gold today haha. We toured the palace, then walked through the gardens and around Hamlet, which is this little village area built by Marie Antoinette. Apparently she went from party girl to shepherdess and decided to build this whole village for her shepherdess stuff. She also didn't want to live in the palace, so she built her own little area. The entire estate was pretty cool...gardens, fountains, palaces, houses, villages, and everything you can imagine. Huge, elegant, ornate, and very cool. And now I see why France went bankrupt after Louis finished...

After Paris we found some lunch, then walked to Notre Dame, booked our seats for our train to Brussels tomorrow, and set off for the Eiffel Tower. We got there at dark (we spend a lot of the day at Versailles...the place was huge and definitley an all day trip). The tower was lit up, and we were able to go all the way to the top. Me being scared of heights, I was terrified the entire time. But it was very cool at the top. We got a nice view of the city (which is huge!), and I'm pretty sure I felt the tower swaying up at the top...it's so tall that I wouldn't be surprised. Every hour they do something very cool. All along the outside of the tower are light bulbs (besides the ones lighting it up at night). On the hour for about 5 minutes, these light bulbs flash, so it looks like the tower is sparkling...very cool! I'm gonna try to figure out how to load a video of it on here so you can see. But the Eiffel Tower was very cool, and definitely worth going to the top.

This has been a very busy day, and an amazing day thanks to James! We worked our way through Paris, covered most of the things we wanted to cover, and now I'm exhausted and am going to crash in bed after a great day. My feet are killing me, but I hate to think about what it would be like if I didn't have these new hiking shoes. Support and padding were two things I did not have in my old tennis shoes. These are great, and I don't know if I would have survived this trip without them. Tomorrow we are heading to the Louvre in the morning, then jumping on the 2:25pm train to Brussels. I hope we can get through all of the Louvre in time, and I hope the lines aren't too long. Its opening day or something tomorrow, so we can actually get in free (always good news for a college student)! I still can't thank James enough for what he did for us today. We would have never made it without him, and I am so glad we were blessed to have him. Tomorrow hopefully will be a nice relaxing day...walk around the Louvre for a few hours, grab our bags, and jump on a train to Brussels. We're actually getting there earlier than we thought, so hopefully that will translate into extra time to relax and hang out with friends. Check back soon for pictures if they aren't already up! Sorry, I'm just too tired to load them from my camera tonight, then load them onto here, but I'll do it tomorrow. Now off to bed before finishing up Paris then on to Brussels...