My Birthday Weekend in Paris - Saturday

Alyssa and I had a wonderful weekend in Paris! Everything seemed to go right. The weather was pretty cooperative, I was in a good mood from my birthday, and most importantly, we weren't stressed or rushing at all. Alyssa is returning to Paris in April with her family, and I am returning to Paris with Josephine and Rachel, so there was nothing that we had to do on this trip. For this reason, we only spent about an hour in the Louvre, we skipped the Musée d'Orsay and we did not go up the Eiffel Tower. Since these tend to be the most crowded and stressful attractions, we were able to spend a whole weekend avoiding lines and crowds, while still seeing a lot of Paris attractions.

We started out at Notre Dame, which is always impressive. I'm running out of things to say about it, except that it takes my breath away every time. It's like I forget how big it is until I'm standing in front of it. Alyssa pointed out that there's a crowd which hangs out halfway across the square. Once you get through the crowd, there's a lot of open space. The reason every one crowds halfway across the square is that once you're closer than that, you can't even get the whole church in your photo.

After Notre Dame we walked around the Ile Saint Louis in search of a chocolate shop which sells wine-soaked chocolate covered raisins. Delicious! Then we headed to the Rue Mouffetard for lunch. Rue Mouffetard is a small pedestrian-only road with lots of food stalls. It's hard to capture on camera, but it's a great place to pick up a panini. We ate our lunch in the Arenes de Lutece, a Roman arena discovered in Paris in the 80's and partially reconstructed. Of course it reminded me of Hunger Games, which I spent most of last week reading. It's really an amazing trilogy, but I'll say more about it when the movie comes out! I can't wait!

After lunch we headed for the Pantheon, which somehow manages to be about ten degrees colder than the outside temperature. The temperature outside was chilly, but ok. Inside the Pantheon, it was freezing, but at least it made the outside seem so much warmer when we left and took a stroll through the Jardins de Luxembourg.

After the Jardins, we took the metro to Montmartre, where we picked up some macarons and headed up the funicular to Sacre Coeur. We had been hoping to see the sunset from the top of the hill, but it was so foggy we couldn't even see the sun. Still, we happened to be there just at 6pm, and we got to hear vespers sung by a group of nuns. It was very magical to hear vespers sung in a basilica at sunset!

We walked down the hill in search of dinner, and then headed to the Moulin Rouge to take a photo.

After the Moulin Rouge, we were going to head to the Eiffel Tower when I realized that we were changing trains at Charles de Gualle Etoile. I suggested that we stop and take a photo of the Arc de Triomphe on our way to the Eiffel Tower. When we reached the Arc de Triomphe, we decided to go up and watch the lights from there. The Eiffel Tower lights up on the hour every hour during the evening, so we got to see the 10pm light show from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. I thought the night couldn't get any more magical, but when we descended from the Arc de Triomphe and neither of us were tired, we decided to head for the Eiffel Tower. We got there just in time for the 11pm light show! It was a wonderful night!