Melodies so sweet through all the trees

My arrival in Paris was a whirlwind.

Had I slept? I must have, because here I was at CDG airport 10 hours later. Customs was a breeze at 9:45a, and I swear some gentleman thought I was French (or at least spoke it) based on my pronunciation of 'bonjour,' because he proceeded to talk to me in French (to which I pretended not to hear).

I had no idea how to find Haley, but there she was waiting for me past baggage claim. It was shortly thereafter I realized my 'train to hotel' instructions were on my laptop at home. Awesome. We maneuvered and talked to people and bought our 2-day, 5-zone Visite passes. Figuring out the metro became quite an adventure, and by the grace of God, a beautiful Parisian woman asked us (in English) if we needed help. We did more than we realized.

It was about 12p when we reached Hotel Rochester de Champs Elysses. We checked into our upgraded room (yay!) and reworked our itinerary to begin at Montemarte and visit the Arc de Triomphe later that evening.

Our train let us off and as we were exiting, we saw a line for the elevator. "How silly," we thought, and headed for the stairs. Little did we know, but soon learned, that there were about 1000 flights of stairs to the 'sortie' (exit). We did arrive at the same time as the elevator patrons so 2 pats on the back for that. We then walked to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur. Both ramps up to it were blocked by men who harassed us and grabbed our arms to get us to buy their bracelet things. We survived! And saw this:



A couple asked if we would like them to take our picture, and we in turn took theirs. Yay for identifying other Americans.


Dreading the walk down, Haley and I plotted ways to get buy the hustlers. I thought maybe we could run. Haley was going to angrily shout one of the few Czech phrases she knows: Merry Christmas. Ha! Some guys tried to approach us but guys from the other side said, "Leave them alone. Leave those babies alone." Ooookay.

We roamed Montemarte a bit and went in search of food. We settled on crepes from a vendor relatively near a metro we came upon. AMAZING!!


We then took the metro to the Louvre!


What is this?!



Here we are in the dungeon. Haley's picture came out way scarier than mine, but I think I conveyed my fear well enough.



There are many more pictures of the Louvre I will spare you, but it was lovely and I will definitely need more time next time (ehem..Julie...)
On to Angelina!

We didn't have enough room in our tummies to order the croque monsieur as directed, however we did order their famous hot chocolate and pomme frites.

Haley managed to insult every French person in the restaurant (including the ladies beside us who thought it necessary to let us know how "very American" it was to dip our fries in our hot chocolate). Some people just don't appreciate the salty + sweet combination! Our server brought us our check way fast (insultingly so), and when he found out we were from Texas, he associated us with Cowboys (the team? the profession?) and Walker, Texas Ranger. Lovely.

We then walked down Champs Elysees and browsed the Christmas market. The plan at this point was to pop into our hotel and grab our Tour Eiffel tickets, and go to the Arc de Triomphe beforehand. Wellllll we ordered up our complimentary bottle of wine, and before we even finished a glass, we completely crashed. Oops.
Thankfully, we awakened in time to (just barely) make our 10pm tickets.

It's really quite lovely at night, and on the hour, it sparkles. *le sigh*


As we were walking back to our metro, another souvenir guy tried to get our attention by saying "Shakira! Lady Gaga!" Hmm. I'm going to pretend I was Shakira. Back to the hotel to sleep. Early morn Friday!