Window to Paris

Account of the first days of our shared vacation in Europe: Paris!! While we were there...we did a whirlwind tour of the Louvre the first day, with just Katy and David and me, and then crashed.

The next day, Dec. 31, was the Catacombs, this place under Paris with all these extremely old bones. It was a little creepy...and then George proceeded to walk around Paris with 'dead guy dust' on his pants for the next week...ick! Then we walked around in Montmartre, the section of Paris where the artists used to live and where Amelie (the movie) was filmed. We managed to miss the red-light district mostly (the boys have dirty-enough minds WITHOUT it) and had an enjoyable evening. Then, despite icky rain, we took a boat tour on the Seine, then went to hang out under the Eiffel Tower at about 11 o'clock. It was really cool with lots of people there...and at midnight, the tour lit up and there were champagne corks everywhere! It was fun...despite the extremely packed metro home.


We crashed, maybe a little too hard, and didn't wake up until around 12 or so the next day...slow start for the new year I guess. Pretty much everything touristy was closed for the holiday, so we walked around, saw the Hotel de Ville, the Sorbonne, Notre Dame and generally bummed around. Had dinner at this little cafe near the palais de luxembourg...it was interesting.

On Jan 2, we decided to be extremely touristy and go to

Versailles. Trouble is, it was blue clear sky when we left and horrific rain when we got there...and there was a 1.5 hour line to get tickets! So we huddled under 2 umbrellas for the 4 of us...and mine decided to give up the ghost. 4 brackets are now broken, and George, having chosen the wrong umbrella-holding girl, managed to get pretty wet...we took tu rns holding up the droopy side, but our arms got tired! When we finally got in, it was cool, but I have a slightly soggy memory of the castle, needless to say. Then we got a train to Grenoble, which I will tell about later.