Our Trip to France

So I finally got Kelly to France! She was talking about wanting to go on a neat vacation. I asked where she wanted to go and I was thinking she'd say San Diego or San Francisco, her favorite cities. When she said Paris, I couldn't believe it. We made the reservations that night. So here we are.

I tell everyone that the real Mona Lisa is the one standing in front. Way cuter than the one hanging on the wall.

The night picture is a shot I took of our street where our apartment was in Paris. We stayed just a half block away from Sacre Coeur which is right by Montmarte. It was a great place - Tiny to be sure but way fun.

We originally planned on leaving on a Saturday but because we were flying to Houston the same day hurricane Ike decided to come on shore we left on Friday. We stayed four nights out in the Loire Valley and saw lots of Chateaux out there. Wow, unbelievably beautiful. We stayed in a great little B&B in a place right outside of Amboise, France. That is where Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last few years of his life and he's buried there at the chapel on the grounds of the chateau there. Our stay in the Loire Valley was very relaxing and extremely enjoyable. After our fifth day out there we changed gears and went to Paris. We stayed there six days and saw all the sights!

Here's a night shot I took of the underneath side of the Eiffel Tower. We went to the very top about twenty minutes before sunset so we were able to see the sunset over Paris. We hung out up there for about 40 minutes in all so we could see the lights of Paris.

Everyone asks me if the language came back. I must say I was pretty pleased with it. The first night I was watching TV and I think I understood about 20% of what I heard. Then the next day it was like a switch was turned on. I rented our car and didn't use English at all. I had a 15 minute conversation with the owner of the B&B and he told me he'd never heard an American that spoke French as well as I did. Well, I think he was being a little too kind or he hasn't been around a lot of Americans that speak French but after 25 years, I'll take that compliment.

Paris is pretty much how I remembered it except it seemed way busier and hectic. I guess when you live there, you don't go to all the tourist areas and you pretty much avoid the crowds. The worst part of the trip was when we left in the morning to go to the airport. Kelly's metro ticket didn't work and I told the attendant that we just bought the ticket's the day before. The guy says that they're not going to work since the train going to the airport was on strike and not running. Oh great, I could just see us getting to the airport too late to make our trip. I had no idea how long it would take us to get there in a taxi. Well, it all worked out. Ticks me off that they sold me those tickets when they knew that line was on strike. Other than that, a great and memorable trip.