Paris!!!!

Finally. Sorry that it's taking me over a month to post about this, but we were still having trouble with our pictures. Maybe today I can post them.

Sunday afternoon. Drove to Munich Airport. Plane was delayed, no problem. At least we get to enjoy our time with no kids. The flight was only 1 1/2 hrs. Pretty good. I've never flown anywhere inside of Europe only overseas. So that short flight was pretty good. We got to Paris around 9:30. Took about 45 min to get our bags. Hopped into the crammed shuttle that took us to our hotel. That took about 30 min. By the time we got to the hotel it was 11 PM. We finally hit the sack about midnight, nothing different about our usual go to bed night routine. Except we were pretty exhausted & were ready for a good nights rest.

This is where the story gets good. 2:30 am, slamming of the doors, yikes, who in the world is slamming the flipping doors at this time of the day. 3:30 am, more slamming of the doors, 4:45 am more slamming of the doors, 5 am people next to out hotel room are arguing. WHAT the WHAT!!! 5:45 oriental dude is waking up a group of people in our floor at the top of his lungs. I wish I had an anvil to throw at that guy, like i the road runner cartoon. It's just a wish @ 5 am. I would never actually throw one. Finally I decided to start my day @ 6 am, since I wasn't going to get any more sleep.

We planned on getting up pretty early since we were staying at a hotel by the airport & didn't know how long it would take to get to the city. By 7:15 we were eating breakfast, got into to the shuttle to take us to the train station @ the airport. If you go to Paris, it is convenient to get the all you can ride metro passes. We got a 2 day pass since we were in the city for 2 days. Got in the train, then switched to the metro somewhere & finally got the city @ 9:30. It took 1 1/2 hrs to get to the city. We stopped by a hotel where a pilot friend of ours was staying, well the crew that came on the private jet. By 10 am we were on on our way to see the Eiffel Tower. Took the metro, 3 stops later we were near the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to go up but the line to go up were soo long abt 3 1/2 hr wait. You couldn't even find where the line ended. BTW, it had been raining & was very overcast & my hair did some atrocious things. It looked awful!!! The thing was that looked even worse on pictures. Pretty scary & disappointed. It would of been nice to have had some descent pictures of me. Oh well.

Next was the Seine river. Huge bridge, lots of tourists. Crossed the bridge & walked up to this humongous building across from the Eiffel tower & the bridge , it was pretty cool looking. The view was awesome!

Funny story. When we were walking toward the Eiffel tower there were a lot Africans selling different size Eiffel towers. We decided to look at them & start negotiating. We were negotiating with this young kids, late teens about a price, when all of a sudden he starts running among 30 other guys. As we were wondering what had just happened, we see 3 cops in bicycles chasing them. Apparently they are not allowed to sell merchandise. It was hilarious!! Then we saw a bunch of tourist video taping them & taking pictures of them running. That was a good laugh. Good thing we didn't give him $$$. We did end up getting an 8 in Eiffel tower for 7 Euros & the other kid threw in 3 key chains. We made sure that he gave us our change 1st before we gave him our money.

Next we went to Champs Elise's. We ate there & walked around many many nice stores. Then we headed to the Louvre. It's a very nice area. The museum starts underground. The building it huge & amazing. It looks like a palace, it might of belonged to a king of France at one point. We didn't look at all the painting & arts because it would take you 1 whole day to look at everything. 2 hours later we were in the room where the Monalisa is. It was funny because the picture is kinda small. We took a picture of the Monalisa & a picture of people taking pictures of the Monalisa. It was funny. Then we found a Starbucks- sooooo happy that we found one.

Ate dinner, headed toward the hotel where the meetings were held. We got to see our friends, then after the meetings we hung out for abt 1hr, then left the city @ 11pm. We got to the hotel @ 1 am. Oh man was I tired. I looked tired on most of the pictures on Monday.

Tuesday: I got some good sleep. Got up early about 7:30, ate breakfast, headed toward the city. Got there @ 10:30. Perfect timing for the morning meeting. Ate lunch with the crew, then we had about 4 hrs to look around in the rainy rainy city. We enjoyed it! We went to the Notredame & saw some other hug church & gardens. Then we stopped for some well deserved Starbucks . We bought a mug, then went to eat dinner, & back to the night meeting. This time we left the city @ 10 pm. Got to the hotel @ 11:30. Packed our bags & left the next morning.

I would suggest, to stay at a hotel in the city & spend at least 1 wk just to be able to look at everything. We had a blast inspite of it being a short trip. I would do it again!!