Karli and Kelly's European Adventure: Belle Paris!

Wow, what a day! It started out with another delicious breakfast including chocolate croissants, my new favorite. Then we headed to Notre-Dame for international mass. This was an amazing experience and included one reading and one prayer in English. I love how the consistency of mass services helped us to understand what was going on even though we weren't understanding all the words. The image of hundreds of people all worshiping together in such a remarkable cathedral will be forever in my memory.

West doors

Stained glass rosette

The nave

From Notre-Dame we took the metro to the Place de la Concorde. In the center stands the oldest monument in Paris, an over 3,000 year old Egyptian obelisk given to France in 1829, arriving in 1833. The obelisk now stands on the location of the guillotine during the French revolution where thousands of people were executed including King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette.

This once marked the entrance to the Luxor Temple in Egypt

From the Place de la Concorde, we began to stroll down the famous Champs-Elysees toward l'Arc de Triomphe. The Champs-Elysees is like Rodeo Dr., Michigan Ave, or 5th Ave, complete with designer stores and cafes. We stopped at a cafe for a delicious lunch, sorry for not taking pictures, it was too yummy to wait. At the end of the street stands l'Arc de Triomphe which honors fallen soldiers.

l'Arc de Triomphe et les Champs-Elysees

To end the day we decided to finally see le Tour Eiffel! Wow! My mom and I took over 40 photos of the Eiffel Tower, but picked only a few for you to see here. We got delicious ice cream cones and sat in the grass along with a multitude of other people to watch as the tower lit up. Every hour on the hour, the Eiffel Tower not only glows, but sparkles with a flurry of random lights. Apparently, all the lights cost over 4.5 million Euro! Here's a progression from day to night: