Paris: Day 3: Part 2: Eiffel Tower & River Tour

You could see the Eiffel Tower from many different areas around Paris.  I thought it would be excluded from the city, but it is right in the middle of everything.
The bus dropped us off right at the Eiffel Tower.  We had to stand in a security line to get into the grounds of the Eiffel Tower but after that you can walk all around under the tower.
You have to pay to go up into the tower and it was so hot in the middle of the day that my mom, Connie, and I decided to not go up the tower.  Teagan said she wanted to go up so we let her go up while we walked around the grounds and used the toilets.  After that we decided we could use a snack and found us some cold frozen drinks and some yummy crepes.
I am not going to lie, eating crepes across the street from the Eiffel Tower is pretty darn awesome, even if it was a million degrees and super humid.
After our snack we walked over to the park that is next to the tower to find a shady spot to sit and wait for Teagan.  We started out on the grass but then a bench opened up and we scored us a sweet shady resting bench.
It was nice to sit looking up at the Eiffel Tower and watching people in the park. A vendor came by and hooked us up with some silly Eiffel Tower souvenirs.
Teagan got done with her tour and we got a nice rest. We decided that we then wanted to go do a river tour of the city. It came with our Paris Pass and figured it was a good way to see things we hadn't seen.
The river tour was okay. Not my favorite way to see the city. I bet it is cooler at night with all the city lights and when it's cooler.
After the river tour we decided to make our way back to our hotel.  We walked a ways to a subway stop but then got right on the subway we needed and it took us right to our stop.
Teagan was super hungry (she missed the crepes) so her and I stopped at a little cafe for her to have some food and I had some ice cream. Everything there was super yummy. I'm glad we stopped. We had fun. After eating we got on the tram and went back to our hotel.  We needed to get our things packed and ready to leave for Italy the next day.  It was a busy but awesome day in Paris.

Paris - Day 3: Part 1 - Churches & Museums

We got up and got ready to head into Paris.  We ate breakfast at the bakery next door again.  Super good.
We got tickets for the Metro to take us to the subway.  We realized later that we didn't need to buy the tickets because the Metro was part of our Paris Pass.  But we didn't know at the time and wanted to be safe.

From the Metro we got on the subway for about a half an hour and that took us right into Paris.  We were already so hot because of the heat wave that was following us so once we got off the subway we decided to stop at a cafe and have a drink.  While we drank our Coke Lights, we figured out where we were and where we wanted to go.  We were really close to our first stop, Sainte-Chapelle, that all we had to do was cross the bridge and then cross a street.

I guess so many of the churches and museums are on a island and you have to cross bridges to get to them.  There is a large river that goes through the city.
We walked over the bridge and then headed to the Sainte-Chapelle.  It is a beautiful monument that has over 1000 stained glass windows.  You go into the bottom and it looks like an old church but then you walk up the stairs and you are amazed by all the stained glass.  My mom got up the stairs and started very loudly gasping with how pretty it was.  So embarrassing and funny.  Many people did the same thing as they walked up the stairs, so it was entertaining.  It really was pretty and amazing that people so long ago took the time to make these amazing windows all in dedication to their God.
After that church we decided to see another.  Notre Dame Cathedral.  It was just a short walk to the cathedral and it was different then I thought it was going to be.  I guess I didn't really know how it was going to be, but it was different.  It wasn't as big as I thought it might be.  It did have some amazing statues with the gargoyles on the top of the building.
We waited in line to get into the cathedral.  It is a fully operating church still to this day so they had it all set up for people to light their candles and do whatever they do in a Catholic church.  We did go and look around for a little bit and then sat down and just enjoyed the building.  So pretty and yet totally different from the Sainte-Chapelle.
While we were waiting in line they checked everyone's bags and would not let anyone in if they were wearing spaghetti straps tank tops or if their shorts were too short.  I thought that was a good thing for going into a church.  I did feel a little bad for those that didn't realize the rules and then couldn't go in.
We wanted to see about going up into the bell tower but found that the line was outside and quite long.  We were way too hot to stand in that line.
So off to our next stop, a Museum.  I don't remember what it was called but it was a neat museum.  We got on the Hop on Hop off bus and that allowed us to see some sites of the city before getting us to our museum.
We were all pretty hungry and had heard that they had a restaurant in the museum so that is where we went first.
They were pretty busy and not wanting to wait too long we decided to split up so we could get a table sooner.  Connie and I ate together and both had the quiche.  It was actually very good.  The servers were all very snoody and not very nice.  Connie had seen this dessert that she thought looked so good.  She really wanted it so she ordered it.  She read that it was rum cake but still thought it would be good.  It was not.  She said it was terrible.  I did not taste it.  She couldn't even eat it.  It was super sad (and kind of funny) because she had wanted it so badly.
After eating we enjoyed walking around the museum.  We walked around for a few hours before calling it quits and heading back to the Hop on Hop off bus to got to the Eiffel Tower.

Paris: Day 2: Versailles

It was oh so hot outside.  After we went through the outside gates to enter the ground where the main building is located we found some hoses that were cooling people off.  All four of us enjoyed a quick cool off.
We walked around and enjoyed the sites before getting tickets to go into the main building.  It was quite the site to see.  It was very much a museum and shrine to the king.  It was no wonder why the people were not happy with him.
It was beautiful inside.  They also have quite an extensive garden area that you could pay to go and walk through.  My mom and Teagan figured it would be cooler inside the buildings instead of walking outside in the gardens.  Connie was a little disappointed because she really wanted to see the gardens.  We were able to see some of the gardens from the upstairs windows and they were very pretty.  They had lots of statues and water features.  The gardens are huge.  I was glad that we were not out in the sun looking at them all.
After we went through a lot of the main building Connie really needed to use the restroom.  I told her I would go with her so we made haste to find the "toilet".  It was kind of far, but we finally found it and we were very glad.
We waited outside of the bathroom thinking my mom and Teagan would meet us there.  After they didn't come we decided to go out and see if we could see them.  We did not see them there either.
I texted Teagan and they were still inside the gates waiting for us and we were outside gate.  So they said they'd meet us at the exit.
Poor Connie was not feeling good at all and went and sat down on the ground.  A worker came and asked us if she was okay and if she needed a medic.  She just needed to sit down and then she felt better.

Once my mom and Teagan joined us we headed back down the hill to find a cafe to get a drink.  A few blocks down the hill we found a nice cafe where we got cool drinks.  While we were there we had Teagan order us an Uber to take us home.  Once again it was money well spent (by me) and they picked us right up and took us right back to our hotel.   This driver did not speak much English, just French.  But he was very nice and he was a good driver.
Once back at our hotel I decided I really wanted a water from the little store.  So I, being so brave, went to the store all by myself.  I was so proud of my self for going to the store in France all by myself.  So fun.
After that I went back to our room to cool down.  After a while Teagan and I decided we were hungry and we went to the little bakery next door.  We got us some pastries and a baguette.  Then we headed to the little market to see about some butter.  We tried to ask the worker what he would eat with a baguette but he had a hard time understanding what we meant.  Got to love the language barrier.  He showed us a good butter and then off we went to the hotel lobby to eat our bread and butter.  It was so good.  Teagan and I would just pull off some break and then dip it in the butter.  It was so good (did I already say that?).
After we finished our yummy dinner we went back up to our room to get ready for bed and hangout. We had a busy day ahead of us for the next day in Paris!

Paris - Day 2: Breakfast, Temple, & Lunch

We started off our day with a delish chocolate croissant from our next door bakery.  The hotel we were staying at did offer a breakfast but it was like 7 euros and my mom thought we'd like prefer a more french breakfast.
After we ate it was time for our Uber driver to come pick us up for the temple.  We looked into how to get to the Paris temple and it would have taken us like 5 different transfers on buses, the metro, and maybe even the subway.  So I said that I would pay for an Uber driver to take us to the temple.
Since we needed to be to the temple before a certain time to get into the session we wanted, I did not want to risk getting lost and/or being late to the temple.  It also made me feel like I was contributing towards the group.
We got a really nice Uber driver who didn't speak much English, but actually spoke some Spanish.  So I was able to chat with him a little bit while we drove to the temple which was located in Versailles.
The temple did not stand out at all, it was so small.  It amazed me that the temple was located right in between some large apartment buildings.  No Moroni on top, just simple and beautiful.  It blended in nicely to the the surroundings.
I was so happy to be at the newly dedicated temple  It was just a mini temple, but the spirit was strong and it was beautiful.
We tried to go in the outside door but it was locked, so we went around.  They had a little visitors center and then they had another door to go through.  They told us that for security reasons they leave that other door locked.  Their were a few of the temple workers who spoke English (thankfully).
We were told that they would not have clothes for us so we all packed our own temple clothes for the trip.  Once we were there a newly wed couple came in behind us and they did not have clothes and the temple did have some clothes for them, but they were very thankful that we brought our own.
The session was wonderful.  Their were many people there who had headsets on to hear the session in their own language.  Some were Spanish, German, and then English.  It was such a neat experience to see people from all around the world there in the temple doing the same thing.  Serving our Heavenly Father and his children.  Super awesome.  It totally made me wish we went to the temple in London too.  I guess another time.
After we changed our clothes we walked around the temple a little bit before going around the visitors center.  They also had beautiful grounds with a large statue of Christ.  I really loved it there!
We asked a few people how we could get to the Versailles Castle and where they suggest to eat lunch.  They told us that their was a little restaurant up the street that we could walk to.  So off we went.  It was a few blocks up the street and our waiter was really nice and spoke pretty good English.
My mom and I shared a cheese burger.  We figured if we shared our meal we would have room for some yummy dessert.  And we did.  The burger was pretty good and then we had a really good dessert.  It was kind of like a chocolate lava cake with some sort of cream on top.  It was pretty dang good!  France was not disappointing us on the food.
Our server told us that Versailles was just up the street and we could walk there.  So after eating we headed on our way to the castle up on the hill.  I would say it was about 4-5 blocks away.  It wasn't too bad of a walk while we were in the shade.  Connie and my mom had a hard time with some of it, so we took a couple breaks for them to rest.  But then we made it to Versailles!!!

Paris - Day 1: Through the Chunnel

Monday morning we had to wake up pretty early to take the tube to the train station.  I got all packed and ready to go the night before so I was the first one ready to leave.  It was so hot in our room I just couldn't take it anymore so I went down stairs to wait.  While I waited I chatted with "Fizzy."  Him and his Uncle (who owns the hotel) were so nice to us the whole time and we really appreciated it.  The other's came down a short time later and we all made our way to the train station to get on our train that would take us under the water from London to Paris.
On our train ride through the Chunnel we had one stop where we had to get off our train and get on a new one.  We had about an hour wait in this town where we just hung out in the train station.  We did find a food cart where we bought some lunch from a very snooty woman who did not speak English and was annoyed that we even asked.  But this gave my mom her first opportunity to use her French.
My mom was so excited that we were in France and was totally geeking out.  It was pretty funny but neat too that she was so excited to do something that she had always wanted to do.  Ever since she took French in high school she wanted to visit France and now she was.  Pretty neat.
We got on our new train and continued on our journey toward Paris.  This train wasn't quite as nice as the first train we were on, but it wasn't bad.  We only had about an hour or so on this train.  We sat by a nice family from France that we chatted with for a while.

After we got to our station we found where the taxi's were located and then walked right out to a bunch of taxi's waiting to take people where they needed to go.  We got all our luggage packed into his trunk and then we all climbed in.  Turned out that we were kind of far from our hotel so it took us about 45 minutes or so to get there.  We were staying close to the Orly airport outside of Paris.
The taxi took us right to the hotel and we were able to check into our room.  We were all very grateful for that.  We were all really hot and tired.
Our room was small but nice.  Connie and my mom shared a large bed in the main area while Teagan and I stayed in smaller then twin beds up in a loft type area.  We had our own bathroom in our room and cool air, which we were all so happy about.
We were really hungry so Teagan looked up a place where we could go to dinner.  So we walked about 6 blocks away from our hotel just to find out it was closed and so were all other food places around us.  Turns out that restaurants don't open until 6:00 or 7:00 pm in France.  We did find a pastry shop open on our way back to our hotel so we stopped and bought four different types of pastry's and we all shared them.  My favorite was the strawberry tart - yummo!
After our treat we went back to our hotel to rest and hangout until the restaurant closest to our hotel opened.  The guy at the front desk told us that it opened at 6:00, but he was wrong.  We walked over there but it was still closed until 7:00.  So we went decided to walk around our hotel a little bit.  We found another pastry shop right next to our hotel and a cute little grocery store around the corner from our hotel.  It was so little and the people were so nice.
Then it was finally time to eat.  We were the first one's in the restaurant and we were so happy to be eating.  We were lucky to get a server who spoke a little English.  I got pizza (I wanted to compare with the pizza from Italy).  It was a good pizza and I enjoyed it.  After eating we were happy to be back in our hotel getting ready for bed.  We had a busy day ahead of us in Versailles the next day.

London - Day 3: Church, High Tea, & Site Seeing

Sunday morning we got ready and walked to church.  It wasn't too far away but we probably should have taken the bus with how much walking we did the rest of the day.  I was fine but my mom and Connie were pretty wiped out later in the day.
Church was really neat, and hot.  Their were lots of people there who were visiting from all around the world.
The man who blessed the sacrament had the neatest accent.  He sounded like Sean Connery.  How cool to have Sean Connery (sounding person) bless your sacrament.  Super cool.  Teagan said that he used to be an actor and came and talked to their class.  I thought that was cool.
Outside the chapel they had a little visitors center.  We only went to sacrament meeting and then checked out the visitors center and chatted with the missionaries.

After that we headed to High Tea.  Which turns out is usually done later in the afternoon, not before noon.  The waiter of the restaurant thought we were really weird for ordering it so early.
It came with sandwiches, scones with jam and a butter-type thing (I forgot what it is called), and little cakes.  Oh and two things of tea.
It was both herbal tea.  I don't like tea.  It was so hot outside that hot tea just did not sit well, and I just don't like tea.  But it was a fun experience to have a little tea party in London with my ladies.

After tea we took the bus back to our hotel so that we could change out of our church clothes and get changed to go site seeing.

We took the tube to the heart of London's tourist area.  We saw Big Ben and Parliament.  That was a really big building.  I was surprised.  So Ben Ben (the big clock tower from Peter Pan) is at one end of the parliament building and a matching tower (without the clock) is at the other end. 
Across the street from Parliament is Westminster Abbey.  That was really large and beautiful.  We really wanted to go inside of the building but it was closed for tours.  They did have and organ recital later that day that we wanted to come back and go to.  Mainly Connie wanted to go to it, but we all thought it would be cool to see inside the building.

We decided to walk to Buckingham Palace.  It wasn't too far from Westminster Abbey but it did take us a little while to walk there.  There was a really nice park that we walked by to get to the Palace.  You just follow the sidewalk and it led us right to the palace. 
There is this really big statue with water around it right in front of the palace.  It is in the center of a large round-about.  Not many cars were driving on that road, I think we saw like two.  Probably cabs dropping tourist off at the palace.
The palace is big and beautiful.  They did have a few guards in red guarding two of the doors in from of the palace.  They would march funny with their straight legs back and forth.  We even got to see them change the guard.  I don't think it was the actually "changing of the guard" because on line it seemed like that was a bigger deal then this.  But a main guard came out with another guard and switched out the guards that were there before with new guards.  It looked like the main guard told them some things and then the guard switch with the new guard.  It was interesting.
The best part was that they had two of these red coated guards and then to the side at another door were two real guards with bullet proof vests and big machine guns.  It was like the guards for show and then the real guards to actually protect people.
After watching the guards and seeing all that we wanted to at the palace, we decided to walk around some more.  We thought maybe we'd find a pup to get a drink and have a break from the heat but instead we ran into the "Inspecting of the Guard."  We walked through a large arch way and a group of people were encircling some guards and two horses with guards on them, in a line.  So we stuck around to see what was going to happen.

After a few minutes a leader guard came out and went around to every  guard and looked them over from top to bottom.  He was right in these guys face staring them down, it was intense.  He even checked out the horses and the men on top of them.  After he was all done checking them all, they all turned around and went inside the building.  It was very interesting.
After that we looked around some more before heading back to Westminster to attend the organ recital.  We cut it way too close and were lucky to make it in, but we got in and it was really neat.  Connie loved the organ music (made her think of the hubby) and the rest of us enjoyed the cool sit down and possible a short nap.
After the recital we got on a bus to find someplace to eat.  I really wanted to go to a nice restaurant that was cool and have a nice meal on our last in London.  But that is not what happened.  Teagan took us to a weird part of town and then my mom needed to use the bathroom so she went into a Mexican Restaurant to use their toilet.  Well heaven forbid we not eat where my mom had to use the toilet so we got stuck eating not very good Mexican food from a cafe-style place.  So no nice cool restaurant like I asked for.  I was disappointed.
After our food we got back on the bus to go to our hotel.  We needed to pack and get ready to go early the next day.  It was a really long, but fun day of seeing the sites and having fun.  But it was time to say our good-byes to London the next morning.