Romantic Paris!

So, this day began with a 4am wake up call. We hauled ourselves out of bed and got ready, and went down to meet the car at 5 am. The night before, I had requested a "taxi"...we got outside and it was a sleek, hot Mercedes. We were like.. "uhh...how much does this cost?" 24 pounds to Kings Cross...ok. Acceptable. We found out later that that was amazing, as we took a real, garbage cab on the way back to the hotel and it was 26! Anyway... we started with a Mercedes. Good start.

Caught the train at St. Pancras to Paris, and had 9 hrs to be fabulously French. We started by mastering the Metro (maybe not mastering...) and heading to St. Michel Notre Dame. I've always wanted to see Our Lady, mostly because of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame and was a little disappointed to not see Quasimodo and Esmeralda. Alas. The building is insane and so gorgeous... there isn't much I can say about it. It was just a beautiful place.

We next headed over to the Louvre, walking towards Champs d'Elysees. The Louvre is huge and majestic, and would be impossible to get through in an entire day, let alone a few hours. We decided to give it an hr, and went to see the general tourist sites-- the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo! Both were incredible to see, as was the entrance to the Louvre itself. Chris and I were like... :

Chris: That's the thing from that movie...

Me: Yea, the Tom Hanks one...

Chris: yes, where she is buried...
Me: Exactly, that Dan Brown novel! *silence*
Chris: yea, that one.

We then decided to skip L'Arc de Triomphe, as we were running low on time... we also missed Versailles, which was the dream. So, another trip to Paris will be in order! We had some slight Metro issues here, trying to get on the right line to the Eiffel stop... but then realized we were reading the bus route map and quickly got straightened out. Quickly = 20 mins later. The Eiffel is still majestic and romantic in the day, though it is kind of a giant stick of steel. We couldn't go to the very top level as it was closed for the week for renovations, but the second level was still high and gave us some great views of the city.

After touring Eiffel, we decided to hit Montmarte and the centre of Bohemia (Toulouse!). Montmarte was everything I expected it to be, and we stopped to have a glass of wine and a snack at a cafe, and proceeded to check out some of the sex shops. Wow. These are a little different from the Canadian version. Let's just say more "fetish". We were really curious about the peep shows... but decided we didn't have the time!
Of course...we couldn't miss the famous Moulin Rouge. We didn't have time for supper and a show, but it was still awesome to see!