Catch the first 3 vacation recap posts here, here, and here.

Well, I’m running a little behind on these updates, but I have a good excuse. It is really tough to recap a trip that was as full and rich as this one was! And the tiny happenings and stories that I love, don’t always make for good blogging, so I’ve gotten a little off. Anyway, I’ve got 2 posts left, after this post, just 1 left, then it is back to regularly scheduled blogging! If I feel particularly enthused, I might finish them both tonight!

So, we’re off to PARIS!

Why do little girls dream of Paris? Why do we buy into the idea that it is as romantic as it seems in all the movies? Because we’re hopeless saps. That’s why.

Getting to Paris took a little work… my lola isn’t too fond of flying, so we talked about all the things that went wrong in the Half-Blood Prince movie to keep calm.

When we arrived, we took the Metro line called the RER into the city and walked from our stop to our hotel. Ahhhhh, the Hotel.

Hotel Delavigne has an ADORABLE website, and claims to have quaint parisian rooms, and that might be so, but we didn’t really notice, because we were so overwhelmed by the completely intrusive and extensive construction!! This was the view from my “romantic” parisian hotel:

And I do mean this was DIRECTLY outside the window. Edu actually did climb out the window and onto the scaffolding. He is so funny, but really, this sucked.

We headed out for a walk at the nearby Jardin du Luxembourg which was really pretty! It was full of iron chairs for anyone to sit in, while watching the people, or the bees, or the fountains. It was actually a really nice garden, and I enjoyed walking around it very much.

Edu… that boy. Well, he (being the day’s navigator) took the helm and the map, and proceeded to begin and guide our rag-tag booties towards the eiffel tower. What we failed to notice was that what looked like a hop, skip, and a jump away… a maybe 40 minute walk, ended up taking well over 2 HOURS. WOA. Edu didn’t seem to mind, but the rest of us were DYING! Ha.

I will say that on this walk, I saw two things that made me the experience quite authentic.

1. A real, live wino:

2. My first view of the Eiffel Tower!!! (Still well over an hour away! haha, lol, lmao, omgmyfeetaregoingtofalloffanddie)

When we finally arrived, I did demand that we get a photograph for the powder bathroom of us kissing at the tower. Yes, it is adorable.

After that episode of girliness, we decided to let our poor feet rest, and just eat some random crap food by the river while we waited for the riverboat tour to begin. It really wasn’t that it was that bad, it was just overpriced tourist food NEXT to the tower, and beside the docks for all the tourists river boats.  I will say that the riverboat tour was a great surprise. I wish the audio had been synched up properly. They introduced each monument, a good 2 minutes before the boat was near it, so, that kinda sucked. hehe. The views, and the ambiance were, however, excellent. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the tour:

After that awesome tour, more excitement ensued. We got in a cab. Edu spoke in perfect and fluent (Both Lola and Edu speak fluent French) French that we needed to go to blah, blah street and our cabbie who clearly didn’t understand or ask for clarification. He proceeded to drive us to the wrong side of the river, and quite far from our hotel. He begin to stammer something about a four passenger fee, and Edu started seeing red. He started politely asking him what was happening, and then it got heated. He’d taken us far away, no idea where we wanted to go, and if we didn’t get out of the cab, he might have tried to get cash from us and so when Edu said “OUT”, we all spilled out, as the cabbie sped off. At this point, we’re REALLY far from the hotel, not totally sure where we are, and needing to find another cab. When we did, the driver didn’t show a great deal of sympathy, but did drive the entire route with his mapsco in his lap (and neither hand on the wheel). We arrived home unscathed. Of course, this called for a sweet treat… (you know, to calm the nerves) so we walked to this great little crepe stand not far from our hotel. It was easily passed twelve, but the street was kicking. I ordered my nutella crepe all by myself, and in French, which was very fun, and we proceeded to NOM the hell out of some delicious street food.

In the morning, we packed up and went to a nearby cafe for some brekkie. I love this picture…

After that, Edu headed off to sort out some University business (he’s studying in Paris for the next year) and the three amigos headed to the Arc du Triumph and the Champs Elysees (after the failsplosm that was “RUE CLER” bah!) which was actually a very pleasant surprise.

While we were there, we found an awesome patisserie and had some more sweetness. YUM!

At this point, we began to head towards Notre Dame which was our last stop before going to the Louvre.

Whew, I know this is getting long, but I cannot justify breaking the paris section of this trip into 2 posts, bear with me, I’m almost done!

The Louvre

The Louvre is amazing, and huge, and beautiful. It really does deserve a trip all on its own. We had 3-4 hours. So we didn’t even see a FRACTION of what we wanted to see… but I would like to share a few pictures with you. Some of the building, and some of my favorite pieces of artwork. The information card will be posted directly to the right of the artwork photograph.

After the Louvre, we had time to grab lunch, so we found an open restaurant. The waiters apparently live to serve tourists, so we were drowned in “Ohhhohohohhhhh”s and “ooohhhlala!”s After that we had to head back to the airport, so, we jumped on the line (after one more nutella crepe for me) and headed back to the airport, where we ended up waiting for our delayed flight (a second time) back to Madrid.

I would like to say that I feel that my experience in Paris was fun, and I’m glad I went, but I don’t feel like I had an authentic Parisian experience. Yes, I went to touristy places, but easily 90 percent of the human beings I saw while I was there was a tourist. The workers wouldn’t speak french to us (even those in our party who speak fluent french) and they just seemed to water down the whole experience by being prepared to cater to stupid and pigheaded american tourists. I would have been pleased to meet snotty french people who won’t help you find the bathroom. At least that would have been more authentic. In all, it was a good place to visit, but tough to squeeze into 36 hours. Oh, and the Paris metro is poopy. Especially compared to the glory which is the Madrid metro.  I loved the tower, and the crepes, but it was intensely crowded, and seemed disengenuous at this peak of tourist season. Live and Learn.

Up next, my last installment!! “Home Sweet Naveda” where I’ll discuss how a sleepy village of no more than 30 people became my favorite place on earth, how my family grew by 4 people overnight, and how I learned that I’m a mountain girl at heart.