The lowdown on Paris, The city of lights....

I don't know why they call it that, they should call it the city of gypsies.  They are everywhere.  That and the lingering smell of urine.  Other than that it is a pretty cool town.  Will I ever come back, don't know if I like it that much.

The people seem nice enough though, which is refreshing after hearing all of the horror stories about how they treat Americans.  Everyone we have talked to have spoken English.  Now to catch you up on whats been going on.

After our flight was pushed back twice, we finally arrived in Paris.  When we ascended from the metro we were standing in the awesome presence of Notre Dame. We found our hotel, which is in a very old part of town.  Check-in and took a nap.  Barcelona wore us out.  We woke up around 10 and I got dressed and walked around a bit. I grabbed some cheese, a baguette and a bottle of red wine and came back to the room.  I talked Jina into getting up and we went down stairs and grabbed a crepes, one with mozzarella and one with nutella and coconut.  We went back to the hotel and chilled out the rest of the night and listened to the rain.

We woke up at about 9:30 on Monday morning took our time getting ready, ate some cheese, and bread and went for a walk.  Notre Dame is steps from our hotel so we decided to go there.  It was amazing!!!  How they used to build stuff like that by hand amazes me.  After seeing the inside we stood in line for an hour to walk the steps to the top.  It was cold as hell outside, so I dipped into a cafe and grabbed a few hot chocolates to keep us warm.  We finally make it to the front of the line and walk up a whole lotta steps to the top and boy was it worth it.  You could see everything from up there.   When we got to ground level we decided to walk along the river toward the Eiffel Tower.  We made a detour at the Louvre.  Holy shit!!!   There is so much to see inside that it is almost sensory overload.  We did get to see the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory, among many many other pieces of art.  It was nice to have Jina there as she was an art history major.  We left the Louvre and headed toward the Eiffel Tower.  We stopped at a brasserie along the way and had the worst onion soup and some pretty good steak frites.  We finally made it to the Eiffel Tower and the line was so long and not moving at all we decided to come back early in the morning.  We pushed our way through all of the guys hustling eiffel tower key chains and other petty shit and made it to the metro and back to our side of town. Honestly who the hell could keep an Eiffel Tower in their pocket???  Grabbed some more wine and went back to the hotel.  The sun was down at this point, I decided to take a quick nap and get up so we could go out.  We both passed out and when we woke up it was Tues morning.  Our bed in the hotel is the devil, it is so comfortable.

OK Tues. morning we wake up early and head downstairs.  We ask the lady at the desk if she had a recommendation for a restaurant, she said yes and made us reservations for a place around the corner. More on that in a minute.  We hopped on the metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. We jumped in the line which was growing by the second, but at least it was moving today.  It didn't take long for us to get to the elevator to take us to the second floor.  We waited in line for 30 mins or so and took the elevator to the top.  WOW are you up there.  The good thing is that I think that skydiving cured me of my fear of heights.  Anyway the view is amazing and it was cold up there.  We took in the view for a while and hopped on the elevator to the second floor and took the stairs to the ground level.  It is neat to think that the Eiffel Tower was supposed to be a temporary exhibit at the worlds fair.  Glad they didn't take it down.  From there we went to the Sacre Ceour, the church of the Sacred Heat.  Amazing.  The architecture in that place makes you speechless.  I wish I had some pics of the inside to show you but you can't take pics inside the church.  We went back to the hotel, I wanted to do some shopping before dinner.  Went to this mens clothing store called Celio and was hated on by the security guard,  This sack followed me everywhere in the store, like I was going to steal something.  I tried a jacket on and put it down, walked around the corner and looked at a few shirts and decided to try the jacket on again cause I was more than likely going to make the purchase and it was gone.  Less than 2 mins. later it was gone.  Me and the security guard were the only ones upstairs and he and the jacket were gone when I went back to try it on.  What a douche!!!  Oh well!!

We had dinner at a nice little place called Le Lutin dans le Jardin, it had 11 tables in it.  One guy in the kitchen and one waited on the floor.  It was good.  Started with an amuse bouche of cream of white asparagus follow by our starters.  Jina had ravioli in a foie gras sauce, and I had a chunk of house made foie gras, both were tasty.  The next course, Jina had a salmon pie and I had roasted pork, they were good, not great, but good.  For dessert Jina had an apple tart and I had a selection of cheeses, we washed everything down with a nice bottle of white wine.

Today we are taking a train to Versailles to see the palace of King Louis and Marie Antoinette.  Tomorrow we head to Amsterdam, home away from home.  I am getting excited about just chilling.  I am tired of being a tourist.  We have done all the touristy things to do in the Dam so we are going to rent bikes and just chill.

Sorry for the long post.  See ya soon....