Where did I leave off? Oh right, it's now Sunday morning. We decided we might as well make the most of the time we had in Paris since we were stuck there and didn't really get to do much on Saturday except look for my passport.
First we headed to Notre Dame. Since it was Sunday morning, they were holding mass inside. I think it's weird that all the visitors can walk around and look at stuff while they are holding a church ceremony in the middle of it all. Nevertheless, Notre Dame is beautiful:
While we were at Notre Dame, Mom realized that she didn't have any of her daily medication with her, mainly her blood pressure medication. Now I know most of you reading this live in small towns without any underground transportation, but let me tell you, there are a TON of stairs. She made sure to take them slow so she didn't get her heart working too much. But, between that and her back from the oh so comfortable bed at the hotel, it wasn't much fun for her to walk around that day. The following is a real conversation that took place between Mom and I after she almost fell down at Notre Dame due to the uneven floors:
Mom: Making funny/strange noises.
Katie: Are you ok? Is it your heart or your back?
Mom: My Back.
Katie: Good!
Now obviously it wasn't a good thing that she was having shooting pains going through her back, but I would much rather it have been that than her heart. We were pretty slow moving the rest of the day, but we trekked on. Next stop was the Eiffel Tower. I honestly cannot believe the lines of people waiting to get tickets to go up inside. I've been up to the top and while it's a great view, you can get better views from other places in town and have pictures that show the Tower in the skyline. We made our way through the people (and beggars) and took some pictures of us in front of it. We practically had to lay on the ground to get the whole thing in the pictures, that Tower is TALL!
The Arc de Triomphe was next on the agenda for the day. Once we finally figured out how to get out there (UNDER the street, duh! :) we somehow stumbled on some kind of ceremony. There was a band and a group of people surrounding the eternal flame. Still not sure what it was all about, but something to do with the military I think.
One of Edda's requests for me while I was in Paris was to eat an eclair. I figured there was no better place to fulfill this request than on the Champs Elysees. I'm not a big chocolate fan, but it was pretty good!
I'd been given the address and the metro stop for the US Embassy, but we wanted to make sure we knew exactly where it was for Monday morning. I'd never been so happy to see the stars and stripes of our flag!
Now that we knew where the Embassy was, we were off to The Louvre. We mainly were in search of The Mona Lisa, but there is so much to see in there. We didn't even make a dent. We stopped off for pictures with the Venus de Milo then headed for Mona's room. When I was here before there was security all over the place (Debbie can vouch for this because we had a lookout person and a picture taker) yelling at anyone who tried to take a picture. This time there was nobody. So we got right up there to the front of the line and had our pictures with Mona too. Why not?
Sorry these pictures are out of order. I'd fix them, but it takes forever and I'm tired. :)
After we were done inside, we headed out to the pyramids in front to take pictures. We sat down by the water to rest for a couple minutes and make a quick phone call to the tour company in London for the Liverpool tour we were going to be missing Monday. Mom was taking pictures on her camera while I was trying to make my phone work (I will never again complain about having to dial 541!). I finally got it to ring and handed her the phone. I thought she put her camera back in her bag, but apparently she set it down on the bench and we walked off without it. By the time she realized it, we were eating dinner at the Hard Rock and knew there was no getting it back at that point.
The last stop of the day was back at the Eiffel Tower to see it all lit up. We made it a fast trip because it's not in a very nice area. I'm really impressed with the quality of the pictures from my camera!
Monday morning -
This was the day we'd been waiting for. We set the alarm for 7 even though we weren't that far away and it didn't open until 9... I wanted to make sure I was first in line. And I was. Our Embassy is surrounded by security. I'm sure it's like that in every country, but we found it amusing that the guards outside spoke very little English. Once we finally were directed to the correct entrance, the first checkpoint was to get the forms and have a quick bag check. From there, we had to go through another security checkpoint with metal detectors and everything and they took away all of our electronics. Basically all we were allowed to take inside were our wallets. Now we were finally inside and the nice guy sent me to take my new pictures (this really is a blessing in disguise, my passport photo was AWFUL) and gave me the first ticket of the day. It was only about 840am at this point so we went and sat right in front of the windows that were for emergency passports. Finally at 9am they called my number. I went up to the window and had to explain my whole story to the guy and he explained that they would issue me an 'emergency' passport that would only be good for 90 days. Finally, $100 and a little over an hour later we left the Embassy with my emergency passport in hand. Apparently you're not supposed to take pictures of the Embassy... oops!
We rushed back to the train station as fast as we could to trade in our tickets and get on a train back to London. We made the 1215pm with about 15 minutes to spare! Since I was sleeping on the way over, I missed us going into the Chunnel. My phone only had about 3% battery remaining, but I hit record just in time to catch us going in.
Whew! That's all for now.
The night time pics are fantastic!
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