Paris!

My job comes with terrible pay, long hours, WAY too much time away from home and family, etc etc etc....but there are some incredible perks! Say, ummm, First Class round trip to Paris costing me not a penny more than my normal daily expenses at home! Yes I believe sometimes it all feels worth it! We left Seattle on the 2nd, direct Delta to Paris, then back home on the 5th. It was INCREDIBLE! I loved Paris!

At first I was concerned about the rumors that people were rude there, but we found that people were only like that in the major downtown areas. I started thinking about it, I would be annoyed if I had to live in uniform in an airport being asked questions 24/7....similar to downtown Paris and the millions of tourists that pass through there yearly. We stayed in a hostel/hotel in a suburb of Paris and it was awesome! People were very kind and incredibly fun to be around! We spent minimal time doing the tourist-y type of attractions and then most of our time we just would start wandering the city streets and get lost in neighborhoods. This is officially my favorite way to see a new place, you don't feel like livestock being herded some place. Do it as the locals do! It was also endearing to little shop owners as I butched my little bit of French that I tried to use. They were so kind and would help me learn the words I couldn't find. I also learned French people have a general intolerance for small children, so word to the wise, not a great holiday place if you have kids under the age of about 14 years. Well since a picture is worth a thousand words, here come a few :)

Disclaimer: Can't for the life of me figure out why some of my captions are underlined...please just ignore, I'm a bit to jet-lagged to mess with formatting any longer today.

My First Class ticket on our way out of Seattle

Croque Madame: thin piece of french bread with ham and cheese and an egg. Could have eaten this for every meal!

In France, the cafes all close for a few hours in the afternoons, rendering you little to do for a few hours. I decided to introduce my travel-buddy to Kinder Eggs! I remember my cousins and aunts and uncles coming back from Germany and bringing these to us....come to find out they are equally amusing to two adults in the middle of the afternoon as they were to children haha
Carousel at the Eiffel Tower, I just thought it was beautiful
There is this bridge over the water near Notre Dame that you can buy a lock, you then write your lover and your own name on the lock, lock it on the bridge and throw the key away into the river. I've decided someday when I grow up, I'll meet a boy and we'll go do this

I have more pictures, but they will have to come in a later post as my travel-buddy has the camera they exist on. I will get them up eventually. Au revoir!