Paris, Part Two

...continued from Part One

After breakfast, we set out to explore Paris some more. Would you believe that the shops don't open until nine or ten? Those Parisians like their rest. It was a surprise, being such a major city. It really didn't get hopping until ten.

 The city looks vastly different in the daylight. We walked around the entire Louvre.

It's huge, by the way. Did I mention that?

We felt so thankful to have visited the Eiffel Tower last night, because today, it was covered in clouds.

We wandered around, aiming roughly for Notre Dame, but taking our sweet time looking around.

The love locks on the bridge. Since this wasn't a planned trip, we didn't have a lock to put on the bridge. It's okay. We didn't need to. :)

We were just in awe of the old buildings, the river, the crazy drivers, everything. Paris is like no other place we've been to.

Oh, let me tell you something. People say Paris is diry and it smells bad. Well, it's not the cleanest city we've visited, but that is not for lack of effort. We saw street cleaners all over the place. And in the mornings, the workers open some drain things and flood the streets to clean them. There were people sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and picking up trash everywhere we went. It was still dirty. Too many people. There was also a large visible homeless population. As for the smell, it wasn't really anything we noticed except in the subways. In the subways, you got one of two smells: piss, or piss covered in soap. That was stinky.

The palace of justice

Hubs loves, loves, loves old churches. He was thrilled to see Notre Dame. As for me, it was cool to see it, but I think I was expecting something way more grandiose. We went inside, and it looked not much different from any other older Catholic church, except bigger. The incense smelled lovely, though.

It was a fabulous, whirlwind, once-in-a-lifetime weekend we had travelling western Germany, Belgium, and France. It was nice to see the sign bringing us back home to Germany, and even nicer when we saw our town on a directional sign on the Autobahn. Travel is heavenly, but there's no place like home.

Next on our travel radar: A trip to Poland to buy pottery with a friend of mine (girl trip), a trip to Poland to visit Auschwitz/Krakow, and a trip to Rome and Pompei.