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Paris part 1


So we had a wonderful time in Paris. Though I decided I am not sure that I know how to have a relaxing do not much vacation as well...the original plan was to just wander and take lots of tea breaks and just hang out and not do too much. Well that quickly went out the window as we hobbled back to our room every night with my feet hurting so much! It was amazing though and we saw so much and did so many fun things. A few weeks before we left I was looking at free Kindle books and found 100 free things to do in Paris so I downloaded it and it actually had some good ideas. It listed a lot of museums that are interesting and free which was good as most of them I never would have even looked as they seemed like they would be expensive (big fancy ornate buildings - At the one Raymond said this doesn't look free...but it was). I'm glad I downloaded it as it gave us some good ideas, even though we did spend money on museums as well. I took a billion photos so I might just post some I like randomly through the text. Also if you want to see more photos you can click on any of them and it will take you to the album.

Anyways so on the Friday we left we got up at 6am to head down to the airport and head off to Paris! It is only an hour and a half flight is is great and so short. As we got close the pilot came on and told everyone it was really foggy in Paris so they are doing and autopilot landing until the last second and everyone make sure your electronics are off off, not just on airplane mode as the autopilot is sensitive to that apparently. So then everyone got up and turned off their phones. So they say we are starting to land and I look out the window and we are in the clouds so we have a bit yet. I look again a little while later still in the cloud. And still in the clouds. And man we are never going to make it to the ground as we are still in the clo...what was that?!? Oh we are on the ground. It was that foggy I didn't see the ground until we had landed which was a little crazy and I see why they had the autopilot do it. Raymond commented how they should always do it that was as it was so smooth!

View from our window

So once we landed we headed to our hotel, but checkin wasn't until 2 and it was 12:30 so we headed off for some lunch at the place on my list that was around the corner. It was amazing and reminded me a lot of the Asian places we went to in Seattle which I loved, but we don't really have here in Berlin. I wish we would have eaten there more than just that one time, but we didn't make it. In Paris like here they definitely have the dine for hours thing down - I mean after your meal you get dessert and coffee and really you can sit somewhere forever and they just don't care. There is no trying to get you out the door to seat someone else going on which I do enjoy. So we hung out until check in then went to the room. Raymond was sleepy since he hadn't slept the night before so he took a nap and I made a plan for what to do that evening.


So once Raymond got up from his nap we started walking down to the one free museum I had on my list that was close by.


First stop was Hotel Carnavalet. I remembered walking by this the last time we were in the city and just spying in the courtyard, but not going in as it doesn't say the museum is free.


We walked through the courtyard and went in and just looked around a minute and this lady was just like museum? We said yes. It's free - start over here and directed us where to go. This is a history of the city and is set up with different rooms with furniture and paintings and such from the time period. It was really interesting and very ornate and I did enjoy wandering through here a lot. Here are some of the photos I took while wandering:

 

 

 


Also a lot of the windows were colored glass which I really liked.


And the courtyard you have to go through the museum to get to:

 


In the lower levels they had a room of just paintings, most of which I liked. Here are a few:


There was also a ton of clocks in every room. I didn't take a picture of most of them, but this one was almost life size.



The guy above was fit into the corner of the all - like someone took a slice out of his back to make him fit.

After the Hotel Carnavalet we walked over to the free architecture museum which I was really excited about. It was supposed to be a history of the architecture of Paris with examples of the different styles from different time periods. Well we walked in and there was a huge room with not much filling the space. Along the walls were photos of buildings in chronological order, but they were in like 5 rows and the photos were only postcard size and lined the entire room. It was way too much info in a not very accesible format - we just browsed through and didn't really find anything too interesting. I wish they would have at least had like a large photo of an example of whatever style fit in throughout all the small photos, but they didn't. Oh and in the middle of the room was a huge area set up showing google earth and you could zoom in on things and such....it was just odd. I think this is one of the only things we did which I would not recommend to anyone. It had so much potential, but the execution was just horrible.

Looking toward Bastille

After the architecture museum we walked over to see if the dinner place was open yet and it was! It was only 6 and a lot of places don't open until 7 as they eat dinner late there so it was nice. We were the only people in there until most of the way through out meal (people started showing up around 7:30). It was Raymond's birthday dinner and I picked the restaurant since it seemed fancy and like it would be really tasty. It was good, but it wasn't as amazing as we both had hoped it would be.


We were there late and walked back to our hotel in the drizzling rain.


The next morning we woke up and started walking. We came across this military museum. It was free so we spied and it had various uniforms soldiers would wear.


I found it interesting and it was tiny so it didn't take much time.


We kept walking south to get down to the natural history museum which was the one goal for the day.


It was a really grey day.Above to the right is Notre Dame and the taller peak behind the bridge on the left is the Eiffel Tower.


Along the way we found the Arabic Museum. It was this weird shaped building, kind of like the blob but smaller and not colorful.

And also this tall thin building.

All of the windows were divided into squares made of circles. All of the circles could be opened and closed. In the photo above you can see some of them partially closed. It was really and interesting building.

They also had these guys out in front. It was an interesting set up, though we didn't go in and explore.

Our next destination was the Arenes de Lutece. I remember the guy we stayed with last time recommended we stop by here and check it out, but we didn't make it that trip. It is the ruins of a roman amphitheater and we were walking down the street to get to it and I was just like wait it is supposed to be like right here (as we are surrounded by building). Then we noticed a doorway in the one building with a sign and you walk in and there it is.

It wasn't too exciting.


We did use it as a place to stop and rest our feet for a moment.


The water fountains on the streets. So fancy. The water drips down in the middle. I guess that is probably good for today. The next stop was the natural history museum which was amazing so I will save that for the next post.

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