Paris: Ready, Set, Go!

For our long weekend, a group of us went to Paris! It was so exciting, fast-paced, and exhausting at the same time. Since we only had two days there, we got down to business.

On Thursday we saw Versailles! The palace is so beautiful! Everything is so beautifully decorated and impressive. And there is so much history there. We walked through the gardens around the palace, but since it is so cold, the statues have all been covered, the fountains are turned off, and there is nothing blooming. I bet is is really pretty when it is warm though. I would like to go back and see it someday.

After Versailles we headed to the Eiffel Tower. That is one tall monument! We had to walk a long ways away to be able to fit the entire thing in the picture with us. The Eiffel Tower is very impressive. And there are soldiers walking around it with guns. I didn't realize it would be so heavily guarded. Though this is one of the things you should definitely see when you go to Paris, we did not go up. We stayed on the ground and just took pictures of it. But we did come back later that night when it was all lit up for more pictures.

After being outside at the Eiffel Tower, we headed inside at the Musee d'Orsay. This museum had beautiful paintings from different time periods. The one I enjoyed the most was Impressionism. Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Renoir, Pissaro, and others were included in this exhibit. I love the colors and brush strokes. I aslo liked watching the paintings progress through time.

Back outside we went after the museum. We walked through the Tulleries Garden, but it was too dark to see anything. Then we walked down Champs-Elysees. This street was super busy with all the stalls out for the Christmas market. But it was so cool to see what everyone had to sell. After walking a ways the shops were repeats, but we kept going because we were going to walk all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. We made it, but it took us over an hour to get there. By the time we did, we were freezing! So we took our pictures and left. We went back to the Eiffel Tower for night time pictures, then headed home. This was a very busy, cram packed day. We had seen so much of Paris, and were exhausted!