December Part 1 (Dec. 16-17)

Happy 2010! I haven't posted in almost a month, but that's because I've been very busy. On December 16th, my family (mom, dad, brother and sister) flew into Paris, and Jenny and I took the train down to meet them. We stayed in an apartment they'd rented in Paris for five nights, before coming back to Lille on the 21st. We then spent the next few days, including Christmas, in Lille. We rented a mini-van for three days after Christmas, and made various day trips, and then my family left Lille to fly out of Paris on the 29th. And I've been sick since the day they left, so I've mostly been in bed, sleeping, reading, and watching movies, which is why I haven't gotten around to posting until now.

We did so much, and I have so many pictures, that I'll probably have to divide this into multiple entries to make it bearable. I'll start here with our first day in Paris, and see how far I get.

View of the Arc de Triomphe down Avenue Charles de Gaulle, near our apartment

Jenny and I took a train in the afternoon, then made our way from the station to the apartment via the metro and met up with my family. It was great to see them all, since I hadn't seen any of them since leaving Tennessee at the beginning of September. That first day we took it pretty easy, taking a walk down to the Seine, cooking dinner at the apartment, planning for the rest of our time in Paris, and getting to bed early.

Snow-covered statues seen out of the window at the Louvre

When we woke up the next day, it was snowing, and there were already several inches on the ground! We went to the Louvre, which was the thing that my sister most wanted to do in Paris. It was pretty amazing, seeing in person so many works of art that I'd seen in pictures. I had expected it to be extremely crowded, but it turned out to be not bad at all. I didn't end up taking any pictures in there, I guess the tourist in me hadn't really kicked in yet. We spent several hours in the Louvre, and saw a good chunk of its collections, though I'm sure we didn't see everything. It is so huge! And by the time we left, I was certainly burnt out on looking at art and ready to go.

The Louvre Pyramid - we came out through here, but we came in through a kind of back entrance from the Metro, because we're sneaky tourists

After the Louvre, we ate at a delicious pizza place nearby, before making our way through the Jardins Tuileries, the gardens which are spread in front of the Louvre. There wasn't a whole lot to see, since it was cold and snowy, but there were some cool statues, and the snow looked nice on all the trees and hedges. After that, we went to see the special Christmas window displays at the Printemps and the Galleries Lafayette. They were kind of weird, but cool to see nonetheless. We then took the metro over to the Arc de Triomphe, which was quite a sight at night.

The Arc de Triomphe

Sadly, we couldn't go up to the top, because of ice/snow/cold weather. So we took pictures from across the street, before going down and through the passageway which leads under the roundabout surrounding it, and up under the Arc de Triomphe itself. It was very big up close, and we looked around until we were told we had to move off of the main area in front of it, because a military memorial service was about to be held. We watched that from the side for a while, but they didn't have microphones or anything, so we couldn't really tell what they were saying or what was going on, so we headed back to the apartment.

Well, that's our first full day in Paris, and it took up more space than I expected! I'm going to go ahead and end this entry here, and continue with Day 2 another time.