Laura and Floyd's Trip to Europe

Paris

We stayed 5 days in Paris. We arrived in Paris late on July 13th. We had a hard time getting to our hotel because it was late and we couldn't figure out how to buy a ticket on the subway. The machines wouldn't take our credit card and all the ticket windows were closed. Finally we found an open ticket window and the guy working was very helpful. We stayed in a hotel about a 10 min walk away from the Eiffel Tower. It was a decent park for running. It was about 1.25 miles around so that is where we did our running. My favorite part of Paris was the Latin Quarter. It has narrow medieval streets with lots of stores and resturaunts, well everywhere in Paris had a lot of resturaunts.

Eiffel Tower

We were in Paris for Bastille Day (French National Holiday) and so we picnicked out in the park waiting for the firework show. There were thousands of people and the fireworks were the best we had ever seen.

This was during the firework show, but every night on the hour the Eiffel Tower lights up and glitters. Its really cool.

Notre Dame

We climbed up the hundreds of stairs, which spiraled upward making you dizzy, to the top which gave you a great view of Paris as well as the Hunchback of Notre Dame's bell and all the gargoyles.

Notre Dame is on an island in the Seine River so this is me on the bridge with Notre Dame in the background.

Stained Glass Window inside

Lovure

We went on the Da Vinci code tour which included the Lovure as well the church St Chappelle.

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. We had to fight a huge pile of people to get close enough.

Catacombs

Underneath Paris there are miles of tunnels where about 6 million people are buried. They were running out of room in the city so they dug up all the cemetaries that were next to the churches and put all the remains in some tunnels dug below the city. There are stone signs throughout the catacombs that label which church the remains came from.

It was really odd because you climbed way down underneath the city, walked for about a mile and saw lots of bones. Then you climbed up a spiral staircase and came out of a door onto the street. There was no way if you were walking from the outside that you would be able to tell that the door led to a graveyard below.