Got a lot of updating to do! So I'll start with Paris.

I'm going back in time to publish some details about the Euro trip Mike and I took in February of this year. In preparation for this trip, I colored my hair like a European so I would fit right in!

When we arrived in Paris it was about 8am Paris time. After we cleared customs, we navigated the metro train system to get from the airport to our hotel. That alone was thoroughly exhausting, but since we knew this would be the one day we would get to use for sightseeing, we hit the ground running after that. Our first stop was the Eiffel Tower. That blew about 4 hours with all the waiting in line; wait to buy tickets, wait to ride up, wait to ride the rest of the way up, queue around up at the top waiting to ride back down. That was ridiculous, but now it's done and I'll never have to do it again. I am truly glad I didn't waste my day-trip to Paris in 1996 on a tower tour!

After that, we went to locate the Louvre. That was a drawn-out process as well involving a long walk IN THE RAIN and by the time we got there, it was going to be closing within 1.5 hours. We had enough time to locate the Mona Lisa, but could only get as close as the photo below indicates (not very close at all!). It's unfortunate that I got such a good shot of that guy's hair because wow, that's bad hair! That was nearly all the sightseeing we could accomplish that first day and by the end of it my dogs were BARKING!

One day I went shopping with the two other wives who had accompanied their husbands on this trip. We went to a really pricey mall called the Opera. The interior of the place was built to look like an actual opera which I thought was clever and aesthetically pleasing. Of course, with the exchange rate, our dollar was worth a lot less, so actually buying things there just didn't make sense. I bought a few souvenirs and called it a day there.


One evening, the entire group of us went on a river dinner cruise on the Seine. That was a lot of fun with free-flowing wine, music, and an abundance of tasty food ranging from soup to cheese with everything in between. After the boat docked, we walked a long way in the cold to get back up to where we could get a taxi back to the hotel and that's when I snapped a blurry picture of the tower all lit up for nighttime. I wish I had snapped a shot of the tower on the hour when it is twinkling.

Late on our last day in Paris, Mike and I took off to visit Notre Dame Cathedral and the Arc de Triomphe before we had to head to the train station to catch our train to London. What a whirlwind!