Paris, France

Wednesday, June 25

We woke up early in Strasbourg, ready to make our way to Paris. We went to the train station, but quickly learned that we had accidentally booked an earlier train than we thought we had. Jeffrey used an app that kept an organized itinerary of our trains, and we had accidentally added a later option. Jeff was quite frustrated, but luckily, we were able to book a train using one of the kiosks for only 30 minutes later. Astoundingly, this was our only missed train of the entire trip! Props to Jeffrey for being so tech savvy when it came to organizing our transportation on this trip. 

While we waited, we had breakfast in a couple uncomfortable lounge chairs (vanilla cafe latte, powdered cinnamon sugar donut thing, chocolate croissant). When we finally got on the train, we planned what our itinerary would be in Paris. 

Once we got to Paris, we found a storage place for our bags since our AirBnb wasn’t ready for us yet. We then went to a small, hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop. I got an eggplant veggie panini and Jeffrey got a ham and cheese panini. They were sooo delicious. 

After a filling lunch, we went to the Louvre for our scheduled entry. Even arriving almost an hour early, there was still a very long, hot line. After burning in the sun for a bit, we entered the super chaotic museum. They had been on strike a few weeks earlier for poor working conditions, and I could totally see why. Wayyyy too many people scheduled for entry. Way too hot. Not enough structure. Not enough workers actually utilized for efficient tasks. Most were sitting in chairs “guarding” the artwork, aka just sitting and observing people as they walked by. 

It took us a few minutes to figure out where we were on the map and the order that we wanted to go through the museum. This place was massive. We did get the audio tour, and we also had access to the Rick Steves audio tour, however after the first few rooms, we ditched all audio tours and just started speed walking through each room. We’d never get through the whole palace if we didn’t start moving faster.

We saw many paintings of war, babies, topless women lounging, and portraits of strangers. Repeatedly. The artwork wasn’t necessarily original in content. We did see the Mona Lisa though! The room to see her was WILD. I have never stood so close to strangers in my entire life. I could feel the man’s arm air that was standing next to me. It was so hot, and everyone was just shuffling toward this one painting. Once you got to the front, you had about 3 seconds to take a picture, and once you moved through, you couldn’t pause again for another picture. 

After multiple sculptures and portraits, we finally made it to decor (including a blue velvet bedroom set where Jeffrey told me “someone for sure died in that bed”). From there we saw the Egyptian exhibit, dishware, pottery, and even clothing. Close to the end of our time there, my feet hurt so bad, and Jeffrey had to rally me to keep going to see it all (since that’s what I had claimed I wanted at the beginning). Total, we ended up walking 8 miles just inside the museum!

After looking at more art than I ever have before, we couldn’t fathom making a decision on a Parisian restaurant and we ended up at a McDonalds for burgers, fries, and ice cream. We got m&m flurries, and they automatically topped them with crushed peanuts! 

After enjoying the air conditioning and using their restrooms so we didn’t have to pay elsewhere, we picked up our bags and found our (very hot) AirBnb.

We pretty much dropped everything, laid on the floor with our feet up, and turned the fan on high while we doomscrolled for a bit. It was so hot, and we deeply regretted not double checking that we had booked an AirBnb with air conditioning.

After a couple hours, we begrudgingly walked the half a mile to a little convenience store to get a couple things for dinner. I noticed that the sky was getting dark and grabbed our rain jackets last minute in case it started raining. 

Once there, we landed on chicken nuggets, basmati rice, and green beans along with some bottled water. As we were shopping, we could hear the rain starting. Soon after, there were large wind gusts. We checked out and looked outside. There was a RIVER in the street, the rain was coming down hard, and there were many tree limbs in the road. We waited a few minutes to see if it would pass, and eventually, we put everything under our rain jackets and bolted for our AirBnb. It was still raining super hard, and we noticed that motorcycles had been blown over and car tires were partially underwater. It was crazy!

We got back to the apartment and starting dinner in our underwear since it was so hot and we were now dripping with water. We later learned that this was a random microburst and that wind gusts were 90 miles per hour! Crazy!

While our things hung to dry, we ate dinner, wanted Kara and Nate in front of the fan with the windows open, and relaxed on the floor. We doomscrolled a bit longer on our phones, and finally went to bed. At this point, our fast-paced trip was catching up to us, and we were exhausted and ready to relax a bit.

Thursday, June 26

We slept in the next morning before enjoying breakfast (yogurt and coffee) on the small porch. We left our AirBnb in looks for crepes. I really wanted a strawberry cream cheese crepe, and it was shockingly hard to find a place that was open for breakfast and had the kind of crepe I wanted. We ended up at a cute little restaurant called Merci Jerome where I got a quiche and a very milky latte. Jeffrey got a pastry, and we enjoyed sitting outside, people watching.

After breakfast, we made our way to the Eiffel Tower. We hiked to the second floor and enjoyed the views. It was quite pretty! We took a few laps around looking at the views before returning to ground level. While there were bathrooms, the situation was not great. The lines were quite long, and the men’s bathroom was closed twice, both times Jeffrey tried to use it! The third time he tried to use the bathroom, a class was on a field trip and inconveniently lined up for the bathroom right before Jeffrey. 

After the Eiffel Tower, we stood in line for Notre Dame. In line, I people watched (again). People in Europe dressed so well, and it was fun to look at their outfits. There was one woman a few people ahead of us that we would pass when the lines weaved, and her outfit was so cute. I wish I could effortlessly dress that chic-ly! 

Inside Notre Dame, we took one big lap around the church, looking at artifacts. It didn’t even appear that there was ever a fire inside this church- they did a wonderful job of restoring it.

After Notre Dame, we quickly saw the Arch de Triumph. It was surrounded by police and members of some sort of group that seemed to be honoring someone or something. I’m not entirely sure what it was all about. We walked around the streets for a little before making our way to Montmartre. We saw another church, took in more views, watched a dog park, explored little vendors, and bought a painting of the Eiffel Tower.

We then went back to our apartment and relaxed. I spent some time on the porch and had another yogurt for a snack.

We went back out for dinner a little after 8:00. Jeffrey had pasta bolognese again and I had pesto ravioli. We sat in sight of the Eiffel Tower, which was so surreal. While beautiful, I struggled to appreciate it because my stomach was so upset. All of the eating out and constantly moving from point A to point B had finally caught up with me, and I did not feel well. 

After dinner, we decided we’d stop at a grocery store to get things for breakfast and some more water as we were running out. I was in pain. There was a porta potty with a long line. Ditch that. No other public restrooms. Ugh. The only option was to go back through the Eiffel Tower security and use the facilities inside their gates. We BOOKED it to the tower and through security. I ran to the bathroom. I had a mere 5 minutes until the twinkly lights came on the Eiffel Tower. I made it with two minutes to spare! We saw the lights up close as they shone and twinkled. We stopped at the bathroom once more before relocating, and there was a long line as the bathrooms were being cleaned…again. There was a woman near the front of the line who kept warning the attendant that she was going to throw up and be sick in the line. The attendant wouldn’t let her go. While this was happening, I befriended a daughter and mother behind me from Michigan who travel often together. We talked a little bit about their travels and then the mother started calling out the attendant also. It was a fun time. I finally made it to the bathroom and felt much better for the rest of our evening.

We decided to go to the grass for the next hourly showing of the twinkly lights. The pathways to the fields were quite nice, lined with trees, and made for a romantic walk in the park…that is until we saw the first rat scamper across our pathway from one bush to another. And when I say rat, I mean rat. I always thought the movie Ratatouille was exaggerating the size of the rats in Paris…um…no. These rats were the size of squirrels. Large squirrels. And there were dozens of them. 

Once we made it to the fields, we realized that many people brought blankets with picnics, pretty much bribing the rats to stay close for leftovers. We sat down in the grass for a little, but then a rainstorm rolled in and everyone darted to shelter. We tried standing under a tree for a little, but eventually crossed the street to a building with a covered entrance. We could see the Eiffel Tower while it rained, and we’d have a quick exit to the sidewalk to start making our way back to the apartment.

On our train ride home, the cars were packed once again. We didn’t have one train in Paris that wasn’t packed. We took quick showers from sweating through the day, scrolled in bed a bit, and drifted off to sleep easily.