La Nourriture

We ate some amazing food in Paris. We started most of our days with coffee and pastries, how much better can it get? Especially when you walk everything off! We lived off of baguette sandwiches, although we failed to document them. Must have been too good to wait for a photo ;) Most of our dinners consisted of either baguette and cheese or going out. Here's a selection of some of the best!

Almond Pastry

Croque Monsieur 

Gelato!

Mini cake pastries from a fancy patisserie.

mmm chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding and actual french vanilla ice cream

Vienoisse baguettes-the softest you'll find

le metro

The Metro in Paris is all underground so when you're walking around Paris and ready to go home you look for Metro signs. They come in all varieties. These are a few of my favorites!!

Cannes :: French Riviera

In Antibes (a beach town south of Cannes)

Italian dinner with the girls where we watched the World Cup

Beach time in Cannes

At the Picasso museum, this painting was titled le Joi de Vivre

Parasailing over the Mediterranean! They let you out 300 ft! So high!

All three of us in Antibes 

Where to even begin? We flew down to Cannes, part of the French riviera last week to gorgeous beaches. This is also where Heather studied for three months during college. We had so much fun. Here we met up with a friend of mine from high school who is currently studying on Florence, Italy. We did a number of things like visiting cute neighboring beach towns like Antibes, where we saw the Picasso museum, and met the cutest elderly French lady who chatted to me (in French) about her belle famille.

A few highlights include:

Parisailing Over the Mediterranean. The three of us girls got to go together. They take you out on a speed boat, strap you in and let out the line and up up and away you go. It's the coolest experience seeing the town from the air. It feels like flying, they even do a touch and go deep out in the water. Basically they slow the boat and let you float to the water and dip your feet then send you back into the air. Very neat experience.

Another highlight was watching the World Cup: US vs England in a French restauarant with all British people. We were quite outnumbered and they are definitely loud and hilarious!

Overall I had a great time in Cannes. We flew back to Paris today and are crossing our fingers that our flight will leave on time tomorrow (the French often go on strike and today the air traffic controllers were on strike). ...how lovely.

Other than that both Kristen and I are sad to leave this adventure but very excited to come home and start summer!!!

Pictures to be coming soon :)

Versailles

In the Hall of Mirrors (more photos to come from Kristen's camera)

Yesterday we traveled to Versailles-France's most beautiful and important chateau that housed King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette. It's about 30 minutes by train from Paris, so very easy to get to. We arrived and first explored the beautiful gardens, where we had chicken paninis. There were even cats which I was surprised about, made me miss Mylee. Then we ventured down to Marie Antoinettes house, stopping along the way to see the swans in the river/pond. I guess I didn't expect anything less than swans, it is versailles. After touring Marie Antoinettes estate we walked the like mile back up hill to the main chateau where we saw King Louis the XIV's bedroom as well as the hall of mirrors. Everything was so ornate and pretty and garnished with gold.

We ended our night with nutella crepes at a restaurant close to our apartment. I learned that chantilly means whipped cream. The restaurant owner had to ask his son for some translation

Well today's our last full day in Paris, tomorrow we fly out for Cannes!!

Le Tour Eiffel

Eiffel Tower view at night

Having fun in front of the Eiffel Tower!!

view from the top (we went to all 3 floors)

Sacre Coeur (yes, we walked up all those stairs in the hot sun)

Today we went up the Eiffel Tower, all three levels. We took an elevator to the second floor which is outside. It was quite high and was a little scary. We then took the next elevator to the tippy top which was a little freaky! It was all enclosed though so that made me feel better. On part of the way down we took the stairs which was pretty cool. Overall thoguh it's fun to say we've been up the Eiffel tower!

Yesterday we explored Montmartre, the artsy part of town and where le Sacre Coeur is. You have to climb a very steep set of stairs to get to the top where the church is. We've walked more in Paris then anything in our life. But i guess it helps to burn off all that cheese and those pastries. Anyways Montmartre is where Madeleine is from as well as where Amelie (a popular french film) was filmed. It's also home to many artists such as van gogh which was cool.

In the evening we walked half a mile down from our apartment to Notre Dame. While we were waiting for the sun to set we strolled across the river to the Latin district which is the new "hip" spot of Paris. On a Sunday at ten all the restaurants and bars were still going full stream. I'm not really sure when they actually work around here, it just seems like one big social event all the time.

Anywho we've been having gorgeous weather and eating yummy food. The metro has proved to be very simple. The only thing I have to complain about is allergies. They are going crazy here for both Kristen and I. Hopefully this will die down in Cannes.

Au revoir...

Le cafe creme

Monet's painting at L'Orangerie

Notre Dame

Raspberry filled croissant with almonds...one of my favorite of the many croissants. 

Luxembourg Gardens pond

We wake up every morning and go to the corner cafe for cafe creme. It's like a latte but tastes a million times better sitting in a Parisian cafe. It's so fun to sit and people watch because no European is the same, they all dress to their own drummer which is cool. Most of what they wear would never pass in America. I must say I enjoy their fashion better, we went shopping today and found some cute dresses. We went to Bon Marche with the intent of shopping only to realize that the Paris Bon Marche is very fancy--pretty much only sells designer clothing.

We haven't just been shopping though. One day we spent time at Notre Dame then relaxed at the Luxembourg gGardens(which are beautiful). We've also walked le Champs Elysées in 85 degree weather to the Arc de Triomphe. That was slightly exhausting! And have perused through l'Orangerie museum, le Louvre and le Musee d'Orsay. The musee d'Orsay was by far my favorite with the french impressionists! How cool to see Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet, Cezanne and more!
:)

Were still having a blast and loving Paris. Hope back home everyone is having good
weather too :)

Nous sommes arrive!

On our way to the Aiport! Accidentally wore matching shirts haha.

First cafe creme experience in Paris!

Seine Boat Tour

We arrived yesterday in Paris by Icelandair which is a fabulous airline if you're traveling internationally. We lucked out with seats right behind first class--soooo much extra leg room plus our personal tvs (yes personal touch tvs) came from under our seats. We were impressed. So 7.5 hours to iceland then 3 hours to Paris. It wasn't as bad as expected. I watched Avatar and attempted to sleep. Not sure airplanes are meant to be sleepable. Arriving in Paris we caught the train to the metro and found our cute little apartment. Our windows look onto this grassy like courtyard. And the neighborhood is fairly traditional parisian, we think were the like only tourists here.We've been eating amazing food and its all fresh and looks beautigul, even ordered cafe cremes which is like a late and yiu sit down and people watch. Today we went on a river boat cruise in the Seine river and saw Paris from the river. This italian woman sat next to us like screaming at me asking if I spoke "italiano". It was quite humorous, the boat director was tryibg to talk to her in hand motions. Kristen and I decided we weren't so bad off, at least we don't need hand motions haha! Speaking of which its so cool to be able to use my french its very fub although I don't understand a lot of what they say back wheb they talk really fast. After the tour we walked under the Eiffel Tower (to be explored later) and sat down at a cafe for pizza. The waiter didn't bring us our check so finally I told him in french that we were finished and he replid "and so what?" - guess you have to ask for your check...cuz the french sit for hours to eat. A little girl sat next to us with her family, staribg the wholke time in fascination, maybe because we were speaking english?

Overall we've been having lots of fun! And getting around is so easy, the metro is very user friendly. It definitely helps having been to chicago to visit heather becausethe trabsportation is similar. Well its a little past eleven here which is late for us so more later.

-holly

P.s this is done from a blackberry, excuse the typos!

P.p.s jetlag was not as bad as I thought, since we didn't really sleep on the plane we just pretended we pulled an all nighter then went to bed paris time! It was great :)