Nanni and the Louvre!

Today was amazing because I got to meet up with my grandmother!!! She is the first family member I've seen in 4 months!! (Yes I call my grandmother Nanni; long story just bear with me!) She and her husband Jack are currently taking a river boat cruise along the Seine from Paris to Normandy. We met them for lunch on their boat today and it was fantastic! The lunch buffet was so tastey, but I was just so happy to see them! Their ship was docked right next to this beautiful park so we went for a walk to enjoy the gorgeous weather!

"Playing" chess on the top deck! If you look really close to the right (almost directly above my head) you can see the top of the Eiffel Tower!

One of the reasons I was so excited to see Nanni (besides obviously just missing her!) was because I felt her influence a lot during our trip. She had given me a necklace of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, and I haven't taken it off in over 4 months. She also gave Connor a prayer rock that he's kept with him this whole time too. We also randomly ran into one of her friends in a bar in Amsterdam during a Patriots game a few months ago! She has kept in touch with a pen pal she's had since 7th grade from London that Connor and I met up with for tea last week! Who keeps penpals for 50 years? She's amazing and I'm so lucky for her love and support!

After we left the Seine, we made our way over the Louvre. We only had 2 hours there and I don't think we could've seen everything if we had had 2 months! We still really enjoyed it, even though we were a little short on time! Maybe it's because we've visited so many art museums, but I was especially impressed with building itself. Sorry in advance if all of my pictures are just of the ceiling!

La Joconde! Supposedly her eyes follow you no matter where you are so Connor and I wanted to check this and went to both sides of the gallery (spoiler: it was true!!)

The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called the Nike of Samothrace, which is a 2nd-century BC sculpture of the Greek goddess Nike.

Venus de Milo, which was created sometime between 130 and 100 BC and is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty (Venus to the Romans). And if you're a Disney fan you know that Hercules knocked the arms off!

I'm channeling my inner Athena/ Minerva

The Louvre wasn't always a museum; up until Louis XIV moved to Versaille, it was the royal palace. I was really excited to see Napoleon's apartments because they were so beautiful!

We're hoping to visit a few more places, but tomorrow night we'll be heading back to Amsterdam to collect our belongings and then finally heading back to the US. We're spending one night in Reykjavik to try and see the Northern Lights, but then will be back in Boston Thursday night. Since we've pretty much become the masters of European museums, it's really weird to think that this will probably be our last one... for now at least!

Paris Walking Tour and Eiffel Tour!

Connor and I have finally arrived in Paris!! We took a 9 hours bus at midnight on Friday night and it was terrible! We thought we'd be able to sleep and be well rested enough to go site seeing Saturday morning, but we were beyond exhausted and unfortunately wasted the day. But we made up for it the next day by walking all over the city and seeing a ton of stuff! We found this great tour company that offers free walking tours all over the city that run everyday! We decided to go on the "Paris Landmarks Tour" Sunday morning.

Side note: I don't know how to make accents on letters, so please ignore grammar/spelling mistakes!

The tour started at the Opera House, which was the inspiration for the Phantom of the Opera. I thought this was so cool because we had to read it French in middle school. I always liked the scene when they're in the underground lake and I had no idea this was real! There actually is a lake underneath the Opera House! 

The whole building is covered in gold! It's so beautiful, especially the day we went because of how bright and sunny it was!

Napoleon III build his own private entrance so that his carriage could pull up literally right outside the door!  Except he died before construction was completed :( This is the driveway he had built.

brb just gonna casually drop $100,000 shopping 

Texas had an embassy here for a year!

There are carousels everywhere! We've seen at least 4 of them! 

If you squint really hard or hold a magnifying glass up to the screen, you can see Sacre Coeur at Montmartre just between the buildings in the distance. We're hoping to visit there tomorrow!

Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine was set up during the French Revolution and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were beheaded. It's also the beginning of the Champs Elysees

Egyptian obelisk given as a gift to the French as a thank you for helping translate some hieroglyphics 

The tour ended here, but Connor and I continued on along the Champs Elysees. Okay stop reading and click on this youtube link and listen to this catchy song while you look through our pictures. And if you're from Milton French Immersion, you'll have some flashbacks to Mme Roulleau's class!

Nutella Crepe!

Palais Royale

We got so lucky because it was in the 70s and just beautiful out!

L'Arc de Triomphe

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Our walking tour got a little disrupted because it was along the path of the Paris Marathon, which just happened to be going on while we were exploring! It was great! We got to the finish line shortly after the marathon ended and it was like a giant block party!

After doing the walking tour, we decided we really wanted our feet to hurt and made our way over to the Eiffel Tour! We also decided to walked up the first two levels, which is 669 steps! I'm embarrassed to say my thighs were burning by the time we reached it! From there, we had to wait in line for almost 2 hours to take the elevator to the top, but it was totally worth it; the view was unbelievable!!

view from directly underneath 

step number 669

By the time we got back to our Airbnb we were exhausted, but we had so much fun!!