Au Revoir Les Enfants

LE GASP! SHOES! AT VERSAILLES! dream. come. true.

I have given up trying to arrange my travels in chronological order and thus will fast forward through Florida and Alabama to recount my travels across the Atlantic Ocean, granted I was asleep for most of it, but that aside, I spent the most wonderful 2 1/2 days of my life in one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen.

Flectuat nec mergitur
No, the above title isn't in French, it's in Latin if you must know. It suits Paris quite well if you think about it. Paris hasn't changed at any drastic rate since the mid-1800's, architecturally that is; that is one of the main reasons I love it. History, not to mention beauty, seeps through the city like... insert clever metaphor here. Now, to relate our (my mother and sister accompanied me in my travels, and you will understand why it was me they accompanied and not I who accompanied them as soon as I retell our first expedition in this majestic city) itinerary:

Day...1/2: Unlocking the key to my heart! (my Anastasia phase)
My sister and I arrived in Paris sometime in the morning, did I mention it was a 14-hour flight, because needless to say we were exhausted. After deplaning we took a bus to our hotel where our mom and grandmother would be waiting for us (they had been in Amsterdam for a couple of days), except they weren't. Long story short there was a mix up in the email my mom had sent me; I had read she would be waiting for us, but in reality she had said we would have to wait for them since they were on the train back from Amsterdam, and so that led to a emergency phone call to my father, who was fast asleep in California. Anyway, they finally met up with us sometime in the late afternoon. Raquel hit the pillow and that was that. I figured, since it was still the afternoon, that I had to get out and see what I had come to see gosh-darn-it! And so, with my mom, I went to Napoleon's tomb ( I mean what else would I go to Paris to see? Exactly). After exploring all of THAT we made our way back to the hotel and bought some delicious crepes and some sort of cranberry juice that didn't quite taste like cranberry, but BETTER.

Day 2: Call me Liz, your tour guide for today.
Our first full-day in Paris was unforgettable to say the least. It started EXTREMELY early, call it jet-lag, and my sister and I went straight downstairs to update our Facebook statuses, a MUST in today's world. We proceeded to plan the whole day out and this how it played out:

• First stop, the cemetery. Don't remember the name, although I could easily look it up. Anyway, so this is the part where I said my family traveled with me and not the other way around. Apparently I had been to Paris before and new my way around, because I took my family on a very scenic stroll to our first destination. I am sure they would be lesser for it today if they hadn't experienced what I so evidently had planned out for them to experience.
• Followed by the Luxemburg Gardens. Absolutely amazing, I wish I could just sit there all-day long without a care in the world and read a novel or two.
• Made our way to some sort of church/cathedral that was under construction. Some pretty awesome artwork was on display though, and of course I could try to remember who it had been, but I'm sure it is irrelevant.
• Walked back to the hotel and picked up some baguettes to eat for lunch.
• It doesn't end there. Like I said, it was barely lunch time, we had our whole day ahead.
• VERSAILLES!!! Only my most favoritist (I know that's not a word) place on Earth! I kid you not, we walked at least 50 miles that day, or should I say kilometers?!?!? Haha... NOT! that would make it shorter, and it was NOT a short distance to walk around Versailles let me tell you. My feet were swollen and hurt like a mother by the time we got back to the hotel.

This is what my feet looked like on Day 2--cheap shoes
are not the way to go when walking half the
circumference of the Earth in two days--at the Louvre.

Day 3: To hunchback or to not hunchback...

This day consisted of the following sites:

• Eiffel Tower
• Arc de Triomphe
• Cathedral of Notre Dame (a nice ferry ride and slushies included, oh and the soundtrack to Hunchback of Notre Dame playing in our ears)
• The Louvre
• ... and probably something else, but I have forgotten, oh yeah the hotel

Day non-existent: Parting is such sweet sorrow...

Traveled back to Mexico, or was it Los Angeles? I do not recall.