The Louvre and The Land of the Dead

We spent Boxing Day visiting other famous Paris sites. The first stop was the Louvre. It was again a lovely sunny day, but not as cold as Christmas Day. It was really nice walking round in the sun.

We didn't go inside the Louvre as we felt we needed to dedicate a full day to it, and we only had a few hours. Plus once again the lines were insane! I think Christmas must be one of the busiest times for Paris.

It was amazing to walk around the outside, and see all the old architecture and the massive surrounding buildings.

After the Louvre, we went for a tour of the Catacombs. These are massive underground tunnels under Paris. This is where a lot of Paris citizens have their bones buried as they ran out of rooms in the cemeteries. There are big piles of bones all artfully stacked, it's creepy and amazing. The whole tour takes about 45 minutes, and I'm glad I was wearing gumboots because it was really wet and muddy down there.

Do we look scared?

After the Catacombs, we went to Notre Dame. It's such an amazing old church, and they do regular church services. It's huge inside, and has amazing big stained glass windows. It lights up at night time, and is very gothic looking. It's hard to get that feeling in photos.

On the third day in Paris, Bradley and I were going to do a free walking tour of the city. It was the coldest day yet, about -6 degrees. It started out quite well, but they spent a lot of time on things we had already seen. Also the Seine was flooded, and that was a route they take on the tour, so they seemed a bit lost and walking round in circles as they sorted out what to do instead. It was WAY too cold to be wandering around aimlessly, so we snuck off and did our own tour!

We went to Printemps and Galeries Lafayette, which are amazing huge department stores. Each one is about 8 stories tall, and is spread across 2 massive buildings. Was nice to wander round out of the cold.

Galeries Lafayette has a massive Christmas tree that spans the whole 8 stories, and big presents hanging from the ceiling.

Afterwards we walked along the Seine while the sun was setting. The Eiffel Tower was so pretty with the sun going down behind it.

Christmas in Paris

We've just returned from 4 days in Paris for Christmas. We arrived on Christmas Eve, after not being sure we'd arrive at all! They had been cancelling flights to France all week from Heathrow, and they'd cancelled all the flights in the morning too! Our flight was an hour late in the end, but at least we got there. So it was really exciting to finally arrive in Paris after so much uncertainty.

We arrived about 10 p.m. Christmas Eve, so we went straight to our apartment in Montmartre and met up with Bradley's sister and uncle. Didn't even time for dinner, we were so exhausted. Just had some Kinder chocolate and went to bed.

I was supposed to Skype with my family in NZ for Christmas morning, but I didn't wake up until 10.30 a.m. Woke up to lots of 'Are we skyping???' messages. Was good to still be able to open my presents with my family. Was a bit hard with our first Christmas away from home :(

After opening our presents, we walked to Sacre Coeur. It was about a 15 minute walk all uphill from our apartment. It was a lovely sunny day, and the views were amazing.

We were also surprised that there were SO many people out and about on Christmas Day. I think most of them were tourists, but there also seemed to be a lot of Parisians out too.

After visiting Sacre Coeur we walked down towards the Moulin Rouge. We were a bit underwhelmed, was very small and unassuming from outside!

We caught the Metro to the Champs Elysees and the Arc du Triomphe. It look deceptive because it is so sunny, but it was freezing. I think it was about -3 degrees or lower. Was hard to walk around, so we caught the Metro a lot over the last few days!

The Arc du Triomphe was amazing. It was so humungous, and just in the middle of a huge roundabout. It reminded me of Stonehenge, in the middle of a busy road.

It looks like we're posing in front of this sign. We didn't actually notice it was there until we looked at the photos later...

We had lunch in a sports bar before heading off to the Eiffel Tower, this was the last stop of the day before we headed home because it was absolutely freezing and it was getting pretty late by this time. There were souvenir sellers EVERYWHERE. Selling 6 Eiffel Tower keychains for 1 euro etc.. made the experience slightly tacky, and people trying to sell roses and various other random things.

We didn't actually go up the tower because the top was closed due to ice, and the lines were super long. Just means we'll have to go back when it's warmer!