EURO TRIP 2015 | Day 1: Paris

I just got back from an amazing 2 weeks of traveling Europe with my family.  It was full of adventure, culture, beautiful views, lots of laughs, love and quality time with my favorite people in the world, my parents and sisters!  Here is the first of what I'm sure will be many recaps of our wonderful trip!

Our first stop of the journey: Paris, France.

Paris is a city that you always hear mixed emotions about.  People either love it or hate it.  I'd say we had those same mixed emotions in our family.  I really enjoyed Paris, but I don't think my mom and sisters would say the same.  We only spent about two and a half days in Paris so I of course wanted to see it all.  We definitely were running around like crazy, making sure to see everything and I think they weren't ready for the fast pace or hustle and bustle that I forced them into.  They immediately started calling me "Toury" because I acted like their tour guide- bringing them to each sight and navigating us through the city.  That name stuck throughout the entire trip, but I didn't mind it at all.

We landed in Paris around 7am on Sunday (May 17th) and immediately headed to our hotel after going through customs and getting our rental car (yes, we rented a car- more on that later!).  We couldn't check into our hotel yet so we just freshened up and headed to explore. The Arc de Triumph was not far from our hotel, so we started there.  I loved how it was in the middle of a round-about with about 5 streets meeting there.  At first we couldn't figure out how to get to the center and were about to make a run for it, like a human frogger, until we finally found the underpass.  Blame it on the jet-lag.

We then wandered down Champs Élysées, which has lots of high-end shops, kinda like a 5th Avenue in NYC.  It was gorgeous.  The buildings were gorgeous, not too high, mostly a white-ish with adorable windows and rod-iron balconies.  We stopped at stores like Louis Vuitton, Long Champ and of course Ladurée.  Ladurée was one of the cutest little bakery shops I'd ever seen.  It is so elegant in it's decor and style, I felt fancy just being in there.  We each tried a few flavors of the macaroons- each filled with delicious and rich taste.  They definitely lived up to the hype and I couldn't help but feel like Blair Waldorf as I was eating them.

Soon after this, my mom and sisters were hit hard by the jet-lag.  They just couldn't hang.  I let them take a very short nap while I explored the Place de la Concorde and wandered over to the Alexander Bridge.  Seriously, so beautiful.

Next we headed over to explore Notre Dame and ran into a cute bread festival.  It never ceased to amaze me how people would just walk around with a baguette in their hand and take bites as they went.  The bread was delicious, as to be expected.

Notre Dame was beautiful- the architecture, the stain glass windows, the detail of the statues.  It's something you see in pictures but can't really appreciate until you're there and seeing it up close.  Really breathtaking.  The glowing candles throughout really added a little something extra to the atmosphere.  

When we finished up there we grabbed some crepes before calling it an early night to get over the jet-lag.  I know this post about Paris is missing something: The Eiffel Tower.  Don't worry I have tons of that coming and I'll tell you all about our day there! :)  Stay tuned.