Bonjour again from Paris!

We designed our route around Europe to be a loop originating in Paris. This allowed us to get a leased car in France (see Tips & Tricks for more details on this). It also allowed us to fly out of Paris for our next trip leg to Asia which was helpful as Paris has several direct flights to Tokyo as compared to some other European cities we considered.

Since we had only had one day in Paris when we were here 5 weeks ago, we were also looking forward to having a bit more time in this beautiful city!

Before heading back into the city, we stopped at Versailles and enjoyed looking through the palace. It is absolutely huge! It also gave us a chance to try to recall our knowledge of French history from our primary education days!

After leaving Versailles it was time to part with our car. We drove it 9600 km which is almost 6000 miles! We have absolutely loved having the freedom of a car in Europe so it was sad to give it up! The car gave us the chance to visit out of the way towns, mountains, beaches, etc without tons of train and bus connections (and lots of expensive train reservations since it is holiday time in Europe). It also gave us complete flexibility on timing which was relaxing for us. We’re also happy to report no scratches or dents in the car despite some of the smallest parking garages and tight driving we’ve seen. Wohoo!

I am sure the car company is going to be excited about scraping off all of our emission stickers, interstate driving permits, vignettes, and toll transponder brackets. 😉

Our first night back in Paris, we were reminded it was the end of holiday season in France (typical to have multiple weeks off in August). While we normally have restaurant reservations, we didn’t make one our first night back since we weren’t sure on timing due to returning our car. We had a list of 3 creperies to try, and all 3 were closed! Many, many local restaurants close up completely for 2-3 weeks and simply leave a sign on the window that they are closed. That’s quite different than the US!

Our first full day back in Paris was a rainy one, but we were fortunate to be spending most of the day in museums. I found a great museum pass that worked out very well. It allowed us to enter the museums multiple times and go through a reserved admission line that avoided long, long lines. We saved so much time versus waiting in line! We were in every museum in < 5 minutes!

We spent much of our time in the Orsay museum visiting the Impressionist floor, which is one of the largest Impressionist collections in the world. It lays out of the evolution of the movement from the beginning by showing early paintings all the way through the movement so it was very interesting!

We also had a couple of really fun meals. For lunch we met up with a friend from Kellogg who works in Paris and had a wonderful time!! She took us to a great restaurant, and we had a wonderful time visiting! 🙂 Thank you, Annabelle, for a wonderful lunch and taking time from your vacation to connect!

For dinner, we headed to the casual cafe from the chef of the Michelin starred restaurant we ate the last time we were in Paris. We enjoyed our first dinner so much from this chef that we were excited to go back. For those in Chicago, we would equate this chef to Rick Bayless of Paris. 🙂 This casual cafe offers great french food in an informal setting at very reasonable prices but doesn't take reservations so you have to arrive early. Thankfully, we just made the first seating of the night which avoided a long, long wait!

We finished off our time in the city with several Paris classics – the Louvre, Musee de l’Orangerie, Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysses, and the Eiffel Tower.

The Louvre is the largest art museum in the world and has an average of 10,000 people visiting at all times. One of my co-workers (thanks Kevin C!!) recommended a tour since the museum can be overwhelming on your own. We were definitely glad for this recommendation and had a great time being guided through the museum! Emily also loved Musee de l’Orangerie because it has the painting Water Lillies by Monet in it. Sorry, no pictures were allowed in the room so you'll just get to see Louvre photos.

For my aunt, a piano teacher 🙂

When we first started researching the Louvre, we were very surprised to see that there have been big pick pocket issues even within the museum. In fact, the museum had to be shut down for a few hours recently due to so many issues. We noticed that there were signs all throughout the museums alerting tourists of the issue. While we were in Paris, we actually saw this article on the front page of CNN – http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/07/travel/chinese-tourists-paris-pickpockets

The good news is that you can just look for the guy in red to know who the pick pockets are! 😉

Anyway, our first stop was the Mona Lisa. One would think taking this picture would be a calm, reflective moment….

Well…..

Maybe not!

Emily wanted to get in a long run before leaving Paris so I charted out a course down the Champs Elysses, past the Arc de Triomphe, and under the Eiffel Tower. She thought it was beautiful and so much more exciting than the hotel treadmill!! (PS from Emily: George P – Add this run to your recommended run list! :)). I stayed back and worked on this crazy blog post 🙂 Between this 8 mile run and all of our walking, we realized that Emily had run/walked 16 miles!

We enjoyed meeting my co-worker Marie-Odile one last time before leaving Europe (wow – totally awesome she came downtown again!). We capped off the night with a trip up the Eiffel Tower at sunset. Luckily, we had reservations to skip to the front of the line to get to the 2nd floor. Once on the 2nd floor we quickly found the ticket booth to see if tickets to the top were still available – and they were! Seeing Paris from the very top was beautiful!

After 5 weeks in Europe, we're now off for Japan!