Day 1

Let me just start by saying thank you to my Dad for financing this trip and thank you to my sister, Erin, for babysitting my girls while I am gone - I couldn't have left them if it weren't for you.

For those of you who don't know, my mom is on a mission for our church over in Frankfurt. Well, she's based in Frankfurt but her actual assignment is to provide training for all the couple missionaries in the Europe area who are in charge of the Centers for Young Adults. The centers provide a gathering place for young, single LDS people to meet together and learn and have fun. So mom travels all over Europe to do this. When she first left, my dad said he would like us kids to go over and pick her up at the end of her mission (18 months) and have her show us around Europe. Part way into her mission, mom said she did not think traveling more after her mission sounded like fun. So we are all taking our turns going to visit her and traveling around Europe ourselves:) My sister went back in March, we're here now, and my brother and his wife will go in October. So without further ado, here is a travel blog of our trip - I promise it's interesting:)

First, it took us about 24 hours from the time we left our house in Phoenix until we checked into the hotel in Paris. When I booked the flights, I didn't think a seven hour flight was a big deal, seeing that we have driven from Phoenix to Dallas (17 hours with four kids in the car) several times. But it was still hard. Especially when you walked past First Class and saw the three year old sitting there. Jealous! We had a layover in London that lasted WAY too long because of weather but it was seriously like being stuck in the fanciest mall ever! Tiffany's, Prada, Gucci, Louis Vitton, Harrod's, and what airport would be complete without Starbuck's. Didn't buy anything, just looked.

We finally made it to Paris - on Bastille Day! There was a giant party going on right by our hotel, it went on till all hours of the night. But we were so tired we slept right through most of it. Early the next morning, we were awoken by some nasty sounds in the street outside our room. We looked out to find some party goer yacking his guts up right by this little fountain. Gross!
But now we are awake and going so we take a cool picture of the other stuff we see outside our hotel room and get going to the Super Marche to buy breakfast. Three interesting things: 1) People bring their dogs everywhere here, even into the grocery store. 2) You can't buy toothpaste in the grocery store, you have to walk over to le Pharmacie. 3) You CAN buy Lay's, Kellog's, Dannon, Old El Paso, and Bertolli pasta. We could have had Cocoa Krispies for breakfast! Instead we had baguette, yogurt and fruit - how French.

We took the train out to Versailles - the palace King Louis the XIV built in the late 1600's. At first I was a little jaded, having grown up in Vegas and seen so much of this in my life time. But when I really thought about what an accomplishment this was from 300 years ago and how much money this would have cost, I was just blown away. I couldn't even get the whole thing in a camera shot, no matter how far away I stood!

This is the front of the castle, the courtyard below is massive. Look at all the gold leaf!

This is the famous hall of mirrors - on the right are windows looking out on the gardens and on the left are exact replicas of the windows only they are mirrors. This is the room the balls were held in. The level of detail on all the plaster work is incredible, especially knowing that someone produced it all by hand. No wonder all of Europe was intimidated by the French, Louis knew how to party!

This is the gate to the palace, the whole fence out front is gold, just couldn't get a good picture.

Everywhere you looked, there was Louis! On every door, in every painting, fresoed on the ceiling, just everywhere! Seriously vane.

This is his bed, with a fence in front of it. Every morning and every night the important people came to tuck him in and wake him up - but they had to stand behind the fence. Geez, next time I complain about my kids coming to wake me up, I'll remember Louis.

Amd this picture is for every mom who has ever showed up at a public place only to have the day care kids in their matching shirts show up. This is a day care group on a field trip to VERSAILLES!!! Only they wear matching orange hats. Awesome.

On the way back to the train station, we stop at the local patiserrie to get a chocolate croissant (au pain chocolat) and a napoleon (mille fois or thousand papers). DIVINE! No comparison to La Madeleine.

Next is the Arche de Triomphe - this is me across the street from it. Look carefully and you can see people on top of it - that's how massive this is. The traffic around the bottom of this is crazy, no lanes even painted on the streets, no stop lights. People just go where they want. Luckily they really do all drive tiny cars so it's a little easier. You have to go underground to get over to the Arche. When you get there, you can see the tomb of France's Unknown Soldier from WWII, it has an eternal flame burning on it just like JFK's tomb at Arlington National Cemetary. Guess JFK liked that idea and that's okay because the French really liked him - enough to name a street after him. But they also like FDR, Benjamin Franklin, Lincoln, and couple others I can't remember right now.

Up on top the view is spectacular! You just have no idea what the skyline of Paris looks like until you've been up there. First, you can see much of the older architecture right close to you, including the palace, the Eiffel Tower, the Opera House, Notre Dame, etc. But what you don't realize is that on one end of the Champs Elysse is the palace and on the other end is downtown with modern buildings and all. Also, there seem to be several downtown's - apparantly each quarter sort of has one. Anyway, at this particular tourist site, there were a lot of American's, so we had a couple on thier honeymoon take this picture of us. After today, I would not recommend a honeymoon in Paris - no matter how romantic you think it is:)

We had tickets to go to the top of the Eifeel Tower but when we got there, the police were clearing everyone out and standing guard with machine guns! No one would tell us why so I'll keep you posted if I find out what went on. After that we went to dinner - all the little cafe's everywhere were serving duck, salmon, and cheeseburgers (for 14 euros!). That says a lot about the tourists from America. They were EVERYWHERE! And the ads for our movies are on every billboard at every train station. Most of their TV is just American shows dubbed in French. And seriously, no wonder the French don't have a good opinion of us. For those of you who have seen the Unsinkable Molly Brown, most of the American's here are like her before she gets some culture.

The sites were amazing but this is People Watching at it's BEST! We think we are so different from everyone else in the world, but we are so much alike. Same problems, same successes, just in a different language. There are a few glaring differences, more French smoke than Americans. More French know English than American's know French. Also, not nearly as many tattoes. Maybe that's an American craze - they haven't got L.A. Ink on their TV yet.

Stay tuned for more tomorrow (hopefully it won't be so long).