Didn't even eat a crepe in Paris

Bonjour, we’re back in France! We arrived to Paris on a warm Friday afternoon and Abby had already been planning for weeks where we were going to go to lunch. Our first stop after checking in was Chipotle. A well worth-it 30-minute walk each way cured what little homesickness we had (if any at all). After that we got ready and headed to Abby’s most coveted spot in Paris; The Eiffel Tower.

We headed up the Eiffel Tower and watched the sun set atop it. We spent about an hour up there, and headed down just as the lights were turning on. We could not have had much better timing. From there we walked over to an Italian restaurant per a friends recommendation named Gloria. The recommendation did not disappoint as Abby had “probably the best gnocchi in her life” and my ravioli dish was fantastic as well. Here is also where I first introduced Abby to a Kir Royal (Cocktail).

We took our time enjoying dinner and towards the end it began to rain quite hard. We called it a night due to not really being able to do much more walking with the weather in addition to having a lot of things we were hoping to accomplish Saturday. Saturday we woke up early and head to our first stop, The Norte Dame Cathedral. Both of us have been to Paris before separately, yet neither had seen Quasimodo's home. We spent the morning here exploring the inside and happened to time it as a Priest was headed out to begin mass. The stained glass windows at Norte Dame are breathtaking. Not to sound like an unappreciative and uncultured American, but while traveling Europe you tend to tour a lot of cathedral and churches. At some point they may start to feel redundant. However, Norte Dame is not one of those. It stood out to me amongst many of the other ones we’ve seen. This may be because of the gorges around the outside of the building and me relating it to a movie I used to watch a child. Nonetheless, we thoroughly enjoyed it.

After Norte Dame we stopped for lunch and then headed to The Louvre. Of course we stopped out front for a photo shoot with the unique pyramid fixture entrance. After entering, we headed first to The Louvre most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. After that we walked through the French, Italian, British and American paintings areas. Following that we elected to explore the Greek and Roman artifacts exhibit. After a couple hours at the museum, we headed out to the garden.

We walked through the large garden towards the famous street Champs-Élysées. *Beware additional Abby pre-arranged food stop coming*. We walked down the Champs de Elysee to Laduree. Laduree is one of the most famous macaron shops in Paris. Here we stopped for a little treat for the afternoon and got some extra to bring back to Spain with us.

After our treat we keep walking down the street to the Arc De Triophe. From the Arc De Triophe, we retraced our steps back to the Pont des Arts bridge (also known as lovers bridge). We tossed our trendy lock on just before sunset and had noticed we accomplished all our goals for the day with a little time to spare. We headed back to the Eiffel Tower to pop a bottle of Champagne for “Happy Hour” to watch the lights turn on as dusk turned to nightfall before dinner.

For dinner we headed to the Latin Quartir. Once we finished we realized we had one more thing we wanted to explore. We headed to Tour Montparnasse for a 360-degree rooftop view of the city 59 floors up. We ended the night with the immaculate view of nighttime Paris. The pictures do not quite do the view justice.

Sunday morning we headed back to Barcelona. Our time in Paris was short, but we were able to accomplish a lot due to planning and prioritizing what we wanted to accomplish. Paris gave us a whirlwind of weather. We arrived on a quite warm Friday afternoon that quickly turned to a hard raining Friday night. Saturday all day was quite cold. Luckily we packed properly, but it definitely will serve as a reminder to continue to check weather updates before we head on weekend trips.