Day 5

Since we have been going pretty steady for the past 4 days we decided to take it easy today. We slept in but were still up and out the door by 10:00 to do a walking tour of Paris. We had a nice surprise in front of our hotel- there was a market going on. We grabbed some fresh fruit and away we went.

Our first destination  was the Luxembourg Garden. I remembered that Katie had come here during her exchange. What a lovely big beautiful garden. 

There are chairs everywhere for people to use. A really neat thing about here is that all the trees were cut into squares.

Next we headed down to the Pantheon. They are doing a lot of renovations there so it was all covered in scaffolding, we couldn't see the glass dome at all. Then we headed to Notre Dame. I have one thing to say about Paris- everything here is huge! I have never seen such big buildings anywhere else. 

Right beside the cathedral is the Pont de l' Archeveche otherwise known as the Locks of Love Bridge. Nicole and I knew about this tradition so we brought our own locks from home to add to the thousands and thousands already attached to the bridge.

Our next stop was the Sainte-Chappell cathedral. This place was so amazing! It was constructed in the 13th century. There are 15 panels of stained glass, each one depicting a different story in the bible. They were all painted by hand. There has been an ongoing restoration  project here for the past 6 years. Each panel is cleaned and repaired and placed back together. It is a painstaking process that takes hours and hours for each piece but it is so worth the effort. I was in awe. It was so beautiful in there.

After that we went to the Louvre. It was very neat to see the glass pyramids that I have seen on the big screen in so many movies in real life. By this point we were getting tired and a bit silly. 

We had been seeing and smelling crepes all day and decided it was our time to try some. It was really interesting to watch the lady make them in front of us. I had banana and Nutella and Nicole & Ryan had apple and cinnamon. They were so yummy. We will be getting those again for sure!

We continued our walk up the Champ élysées. So many people, so many shops, so much money! It is a beautiful wide street. We were pretty tired and hungry by this point so we decided to grab a quick bite at Mcdonals and head back to the hotel. It's funny how different something so familiar can be. They had these cool ordering machines, a fast pick up aisle and they sold macaroons! We tried chocolate and vanilla today- delicious again. 

It was another very fun filled, interesting day- can't wait to see what tomorrow brings.