Paris!

Tony and I got up before the sun, which is actually very difficult to do at the moment, and made our way to St Pancras station to the Eurostar terminal to take the first train over to Paris.

This trip, we decided to drop the dogs off with a dogsitter so no friends are watching our place this weekend. We plan to meet up with our friend Matthew and have a grand old time visiting this magnificent city.




It was an easy train ride from London to Gard du Nord in Paris, and from there an easy metro ride to our hotel.

We couldn't check in, so we dropped off our luggage and headed across the street to the grocery store to grab a quick Almond Croissant and Cafe Grande Creme before heading out for a day of walking sightseeing in Paris.

We'd been to Paris before, and had hit most of the major sights, so this trip was going to be a bit more relaxed.

We decided to do the Latin Quarter Walking Tour from Rick Steve's book. It is a very old section of Paris, and it is quite picturesque.

We visited St. Germain des Pres, a largest church in Paris. It is magnificent and very, very old. I believe it is older than Notre Dame, and just as impressive on the inside. They had a magnificent organ that someone was playing. Soo cool.


For Lunch, we stopped at a cute sidewalk cafe that Rick recommended and had a Croque Monsieur (a grilled cheese sandwich with ham) and a glass of wine. It felt so French.

We ultimately made our way to Saint Sulpice Cathedral.

If you saw "The DaVinci Code", this is the church that features at the beginning of the film where the fictional Priory of Scion met and hid a clue regarding the location of the Holy Grail.

It turns out that the book takes a lot of liberties with reality, and there is a plaque inside the church explaining how much Dan Brown distorted the truth.

There were a lot of other people who must have been visiting this site for the same reason, as they were all taking pictures of the Obelisk and the Calendar line that Dan Brown turns into the mysterious "Rose Line" in the book. It is an amazingly beautiful chuch with a massive organ that would be wonderful to hear sometime.

We met up with Matthew and his 89 year young mother at Sainte Chappelle Church.

From there, we headed off to dinner at Tony's favorite Parisian restaurant, Au Petit Tonneau. They may have just opened for dinner as we were the first customers in the restaurant.



We also met up with, Lisa, an expat blog buddy of Tony and a friend of hers who was visiting from Las Vegas. The restaurant is a classic small Paris restaurant, that has absolutely wonderful food - the potatos gratin is amazing. Marie the owner/chef is a wonderful gracious woman, and a fantastic chef.




Tony and I decided to treat ourselves to the Chateaubriand. DELICIOUS!

It was a wonderful dinner with lots of french wine and talk and food.






After dinner, we made our way over to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. It made for a wonderful evening. A perfect end to our first day in Paris.