This was your motive for Paris, was it?

Alright, so I know that everyone's dying to hear about the Royal Wedding and England and London and all that rot, but I can't possibly not have an entry about France and Paris, because that was a pretty major thing.  I'll try to keep this short though, because I'm off to the V&A museum in about twenty minutes.  (Victoria and Albert, for those of you who were wondering).

France was amazing!  It was beautiful and green and warm and the only time it rained was when we were driving around Paris the first night getting a rather long tour of the city.  I most definitely fell asleep halfway through Bruno's tour due to jet lag.  I didn't really sleep that well on the plane, although we ended up with free seat upgrades when the switched our flight, so that was pretty awesome.

Anyway, what did I see and do?  Well on Sunday we went to LDS church in the morning, which was all in French.  I don't speak in French, but I was amazed by how much I understood.  Sunday School and Relief Society I could understand almost every word, but by Sacrament Meeting my sixth sense had worn down.  It's exhausting being surrounded by a language that you don't know and trying to understand it.  That evening we went to Notre Dame.  We walked around the Cathedral and then we sat down and stayed for Easter Mass.  I'd never gone to a Catholic mass before, so that was cool, but mostly it was just awesome to sit there in Notre Dame and hear the choir sing.

This would be me in front of Notre Dame.  Lots of my pictures of the inside turned out blurry, which I was a little upset by.  I guess I'm still learning how to use my camera.

The next day Lorraine and I traveled out to the province of Lorraine and experienced the French countryside.  It was really cool, and I'm really glad that we did it.  I feel like I've experienced France now and the French and not simply Paris itself.  It'd be kind of like thinking that Temple Square in Salt Lake was all there was to Utah, which is absolutely ridiculous because obviously it's not.  

This is me in Nancy at this arch we found over the street near the town center where there was this big fancy hotel and some impressive statues.  I'm kind of small in this picture, but I liked the arch.  

The next day Lorraine and I went to Paris.  We went to the Muse de Rodan, Muse de Orsay, and the Eiffel Tower.  In the Muse de Rodan we saw the Thinker statue, which was probably the most recognizable thing that I saw, which was really cool.  There were also all of these beautiful roses in bloom around it, which I thought was so beautiful, so I took a bunch of pictures of the flowers.  I took pictures of the statues too, so don't worry!  

Muse de Orsay was this museum full of paintings.  We saw Van Gogh, Claude Monet, and my favorite ballet painter Edgar Degas.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside though, which was a major bummer, but it was really cool to see all of the pictures that I had hung on the walls of my apartment and calenders from years past in real life.

And then the Eiffel Tower was of course amazing.  There was an immensely long line to go up though (of course) so we reached the top as the sun was setting.  Unfortunately, there wasn't a super spectacular sunset, or else it would've been perfect.  But in between us being on the top of the tower and going back down to the bottom in an elevator they turned the lights on, so that was really cool.  I think that I took the greatest number of pictures at the Eiffel Tower, because really how can you not?  Here's one of them.

See the tower all lit up?  So cool!

Then the last day we went to Versailles.  We did the Chateau and the gardens, which were absolutely gorgeous.  It was all so beautiful, and I'm glad that we did all that we did.  Unfortunately, we were going to do the Luvre that afternoon, but walking through/back from Versailles took a lot longer than we planned, plus we got to the Chateau about an hour after we'd planned (Bruno dragged out breakfast longer than we'd expected) and then when we got to the train station we had to wait twenty five minutes for our train, so all of our time disappeared.  I really wanted to see the Mona Lisa, but we didn't have enough time to make it through the ticket line, into the museum, finding the painting, and back out again and still beat the traffic to the airport.  But Versailles was amazing, so I'm okay with it.  The pictures on my camera with me in them didn't come out very well, so I'll have to see if I can't get some from Lorraine.  My camera died after the first two rooms we went into, so I haven't got many pictures from it.

Well that was enormously long.  If you read all of this good for you!  If not, I don't really blame you.  

But that was France in a very condensed nutshell.  We hopped on a plane and flew into London, which will be the subject of my next several posts, so keep an eye out for them!

With all swift speed you must away to France

Unfortunately, my speed has been not so swift.

I’m sitting in the Salt Lake airport right now waiting to leave for Europe.  My cousin Lorraine and I were supposed to leave at 11:00 and fly to Chicago and then continue on to London from Chicago.  Once in London we were to fly to Paris.  However, we decided it would be much better to fly to LA (which is indeed in the wrong direction) where it’s much warmer, sunnier, and has significantly less thunder and lightning.  Yup, first real time flying somewhere where I have to worry about catching not one, but two connections, and our flight is delayed by over three hours. 

It’s all straightened out now.  All that really happened was I get to become more acquainted with the Salt Lake airport than I really cared to and I lose about six of my hours in Paris.  Major bummer?  Yes.  Glad to have avoided a completely panicked, stressful switching of flights?  Yes.  I think that it's a pretty fair trade.  I can't control the weather around Chicago after all (I know that some of you thought that I could.)  

Anyway, I'm still really excited to be going, and I'm relieved that my delay in actually getting on a plane was only four hours.  

Here's Lorraine and me at the airport, ready to go!  

Anyway, totally excited for the trip, although the flight to London is going to be longer than originally planned, and I'm going to be exhausted when I get there, but that's half the fun, right?  Well, until later, when I have something more exciting and positive to share.