Ah, Paris!

We returned to Sweden Sunday afternoon after a few days in Paris and 10 days in the US.  We had a great time being "home" with family and friends for the holidays!  France made us both appreciate the more laid-back atmosphere of Sweden, as well as ease of communication here, since almost everyone speaks English. 

We arrived in Paris Thursday afternoon after two bumpy flights.  It was incredibly windy in both Dublin and Paris, but fortunately it died down after that.  We took the RER to our hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris.  We're definitely going to travel lighter in the future after carting around our abundant luggage.  We dined early at a restaurant close to our hotel the first night because we were exhausted with the flights and the 6 hour time change from Illinois.  And after 12 hours of sleep, we set off the next day and walked 15 miles all over Paris to take in the sights.

Our day began with breakfast in a little cafe with croissants, a triple shot espresso, and a hot chocolate.  We then set off to visit the catacombs, which were definitely worth the walk.  It's a fascinating tunnel filled with the remains of 6 million Parisians.  Here's the link to the Museum's website if you'd like to learn more: http://www.catacombes-de-paris.fr/english.htm  A quick warning, our pictures of this segment of the trip do contain pictures of the bones, so it could be troubling for children.  After a delicious lunch at a cafe, we headed back toward our hotel.  We toured Notre-Dame Cathedral, which is a magnificent structure.  We were, however, a bit underwhelmed once inside, only because we've spent quite a bit of time in Uppsala's Cathedral.  Notre Dame is taller than the Uppsala Cathedral but only 10 meters longer.

We walked along the Ile de la Cite to Pont Neuf bridge, and then headed over toward the Eiffel Tower.  The lights came on as we were there, but we headed off to see the Arc de Triomphe and the av. de Champs-Elysees before going back to the Eiffel area for dinner.  After dinner, we walked back to the Eiffel to see the lights show, which is in the video below.  We took the metro back to our hotel because by evening, we had walked over 15 miles.  It was crazy and yes, we had blisters, but we got to see so much that we could not have from the subway.

Saturday morning we set off for the Louvre, after stopping for croissants and espresso again.  The Louvre is huge and we only covered a small part of it in a couple of hours, but we of course saw Mona.  There's a large room with just the Mona Lisa on the far wall, and it's a pretty small painting.  On the wall opposite Mona is a huge painting that covers the entire wall.  A huge crowd surrounds Mona and almost no one pays any attention to the other painting.  It's quite amusing, especially since she doesn't have the prettiest face in the world.

We left Paris Saturday afternoon and took the train to Beauvais, where our flight back to Sweden departed the next morning.  We enjoyed seeing France outside of Paris on the train, and would love to go back to explore the French countryside sometime.   When we arrived back in Sweden, we took a bus to Stockholm where we caught the train to Uppsala.  The bus ride was gorgeous and we really enjoyed seeing a part of Sweden where we hadn't been before.  The Nykoping area is definitely an area we'd like to return.

Enjoy the pictures!   https://picasaweb.google.com/101852905683847445633/Paris2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCLOWhvXkjaCAbg