Paris

Many months ago, maybe even a year ago, Chelsea and I started talking about taking a trip to Europe.  She had never been and I had mostly been for work.  My work trips didn't leave much time for exploring and being a tourist so I was itching to do those things.  And relax on a trip.  Work trips always involved so much work.

Our first stop was Paris.  We stayed with my friend Benjamin, his wife Maria, and their son Victor.  It was awesome staying with friends because we got a real glimpse into Parisian life.  Delicious meals with delicious wine followed by amazing cheese and great conversation.  Victor was so excited to have guests that he woke us up early each morning.  That made our jet lag just a little more difficult to overcome.  But a long list of things to do and plenty of coffee got us through it.

We had a great time exploring the city.  A few more days would've been great as we were just starting to feel at home there when it was time to travel on to Berlin.

Here are my favorite shots from this part of the trip.


 

The Catacombs were amazing and humbling.  It was interesting to hear the history of how they came to be.  And staggering the amount of people buried there.  The section known as the Catacombs is just a small amount of the old quarry tunnels that stretch across Paris.

Of course we went to the Eiffel Tour.  It's a mandatory stop and rightly so.

I really enjoyed walking around the streets and just taking in another city.  This is from our walk around Le Marais.

 The Batobus was a great way to see the city from the river and to sit and rest from walking around most of the day.  It gave us some great views of landmarks like this one of Notre Dame.

On our last full day, we took the train to Montmatre to have brunch and hiked up to Sacre Couer.  The view from the top of the church was awesome.