Day 4

Wednesday, December 25th 2013

Christmas morning I woke up SO early because of Danilees alarm clock. She literally can sleep through anything, so she sets herself like 7 alarms and each time I would wake up at the first sound of it and Danilee would be snoozin' away. So, I got up and was ready by about 8. We waited for Lizza to be ready then headed to the Luxumbugh gardens. The garden was huge, and there were many people running, or sitting enjoying the sunny, crisp Christmas morning. It was beautiful, but I bet it is breathtaking in the Spring time.

Lizza had to get in on the action. 

Then, we took the scenic route back to our flat. 

We came across this beautiful old Cathedral, that was being restored. It had this amazing fountain, so we made Christmas wishes. 

On the way back, I  got another nutella crepe because yolo. I need to try a lemon one still, because those are Madisons favorite. Since we had such a bad time on the Metro, and it was Christmas and didn't want to spoil the day, we took taxi's to the Eiffel Tower. We ordered prepaid tickets, so we could beat the loooong line and go on the elevator to the top, but we had an hour till our reservation. So, we took cheesy tourist pictures to pass the time duh.

The eiffel tower is HUGE. Just one of the legs is like 4 of my houses. It was freezing cold, windy with some rain. The higher we went, the colder it got. When we reached the second floor, everyone got off the elevator and had to go wait in another line for the elevator that goes to the top. I got supes nervous at the very very top because i'm afraid of heights, but the view was amazing and definitely worth it. It took about a minute and a half going up from the second floor. I kept thinking it was going to stop, but we just kept going up, up, up. It's ridiculously high.

This is the Eiffel Towers Christmas tree. All the ornaments are mini Eiffel Towers. I. Die. 

For dinner we went to Pauls. It had the first line we had to wait in, so we thought it was going to be really good. Pauls is France's version of a chain restaurant. I think we will be sticking to cute little family owned ones from now one. The food was pretty awful. During our dinner these girls sitting next to us were making fun of us in French, they called my hat silly, and made fun that we are American. Camille understood most of what they were saying. So mean. Also, these three women got in a verbal fight at the table across from us. They never raised there voices, but from what I could understand it had something to do with one of them making a rude remark about the other. The waiter had to break it up.   All of us wished we payed more attention in French class, so we could understand what they were saying. We went back to the flat and gave each other small christmas presents and had this traditional French Christmas treat. It was such a wonderful Christmas. I'm so thankful to have spent it here in this wonderful city, with my favorite people .

Day 3

Tuesday, December 24th 2013

Christmas eve! This lady told us to go to go the Grand Marche to do some Christmas shopping. Of course Camille and Gabby weren't ready yet, so Danielle stayed with them and my Mom, Dad and I went. We got really lost. Like really lost. It was probably only a mile or so away but it took us an hour to get there. Also, it was raining. When we finally found it, it was a very luxury, too luxury, department store. It sold super expensive stuff like Alexander Mcqueen, but I wear clothes from f21 and h&m sooo see ya. thanks but no thanks. My Dad left because he didn't feel well and my sisters were supposed to meet us there in an hour, so we just looked around at the beautiful clothes. My sisters didn't show up so we headed toward our fall back meeting spot, the Monoprix, the market we have been shopping at. When we finally found the Monoprix we were about 30 minutes late, luckily they were still there. As we were checking out, I glanced over and saw the actor from Dawsons Creek, Joshua Jackson and behind him walked in his girlfriend, Diane Kruger.  Camille and Gabby went over to where they were shopping and took a very sketchy video of them. I love a good celebrity sighting. I used to have one daily when I was working at Disneyland.  We went back to flat and Danilee, my Mom, Camille and I wanted to go do some shopping while Gabby and my Dad took a nap. We headed toward Shakespeare and Company, but found cute ally street filled with great street shops. I got my first nutella crepe in france!

My dream store. So many Eiffel Towers.

Palm trees in Paris. 

There's a little nook on the second floor of the store where you can leave any type of note or picture. I wrote this note for my cousin Don. We love you Donald Ronald! #teamdon

Went to dinner at a restaurant on the Medieval street and had the cutest waitress, Gail, that looked like Kristen stewart and spoke hardly any English, it was hard to communicate with my horrible French. My mom told her she had a beautiful smile and Gail looked at her confused, so I had 'Tu as belle dents' meaning you have beautiful teeth. She just laughed at us and probably thought we were really weird But, I guess they must have liked us because when we done with dinner and walking out the door they told us to come back to our table for a surprise. They gave us all little, tiny glasses filled with a pink drink. We asked if it was alcoholic and they said yes yes! We explained to them, much to their disappointment, that we don't drink. It was such a nice gesture! The people, especially the waiters, have been nothing but a joy to be around. So, we didn't have any pink, sparkly alcohol in, but we did eat plenty of haagen-dazs ice cream when we got back to our flat.

xx Jac