Christmas Vacation! Paris, Madrid and Barcelona

Hey readers hey!

FINALLY I got a chance to post about my Christmas Vacation! I'm going to split it up into 3 separate posts but I'll include links to each post so you can read all 3 with ease.  Each post will be broken down by date to make things easier to read. (PS I did take all the pictures...except the maps obviously :) )

If you've already read my posts:

Click here to read about Madrid (Part 2 of our vacation)

Click here to read about Barcelona (Part 3 of our vacation)

We began our trip in Paris.

 December 17

Carly and I had to wake up at 5:45 am to make it to our 9am flight on time.  For the first time in my life, I flew on a budget airline and I have to say I was very impressed. It wasn't nearly as sketchy as it may sound.  Budget airlines are more widely available in Europe than the US.  And considering the US budget airline, Spirit, scares the crap out of me, this was a big step.

Click Read More to see what's next!

We flew with easyJet.  The only thing I couldn't get used to was not having seat assignments. You basically just go on the plane and wherever there are empty seats  is where you can sit. Our flight was only 1 hour 20 minutes and before we knew it we had landed.

We had made the decision to take the metro as much as possible on the trip to save money and only use cabs in emergency situations.  So from Charles de Gaulle Airport, we got on the Parisian metro. It took us a cool 3 hours to make it to our hotel (2 hours on the metro and one hour because we got lost looking for the hotel and had to stop in a police station to ask for directions).  We finally got into our room at about 4:30pm.  

We didn't realize how long it would take to get from the airport to the hotel and we had unfortunately missed the Paris Free Tour that we had booked for the afternoon. But we weren't to bothered, because it was free. So, we decided to take a nap and wake up later to get some dinner. 

I finally woke up and it was already dark outside. I checked my phone, AND IT WAS 10:15pm.  We had napped for 6 hours. Impressive.  Even though we somehow weren't starving, we scrambled to get ready and tried to look for any restaurants which might be open late. We couldn't find any and decided to just go back to the hotel to sleep and wake up for the free breakfast at 8am. Amazingly, we slept soundly for another 9 hours.

December 18

We had a busy day planned today so we made sure to make the most of the free breakfast we had the next morning.  Our first stop was the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to get there before noon to beat the rush.

We bought tickets and we took the elevator up to the 2nd Floor. In pictures of the Eiffel Tower, the 2nd floor is the top horizontal band that you see.

Story Time: Last time I was in Paris I was with my Mom for my birthday trip in July 2005.  Wanting to create a great memory for us, I suggested we take the stairs instead of the elevator.  My Mom's ankle wasn't doing too well during this time so she protested but I fired back with "Well, you can tell everyone you did the stairs and did it with a hurt ankle.  So you're automatically cooler and tougher than any of your friends who would be sissies and take the elevator." Much to her chagrin, we took the stairs. It was terrible but a nice memory. When we got back to the states about a week later, it turns out Mom had an aggravated sprain. Aggravated, I'm sure, by the nearly 700 steps of the Eiffel Tower.  It wasn't funny at the time but we laugh about it now.

Back to the trip. It wasn't too much colder on the 2nd floor so we managed to still have fun! Here are some pictures from the 2nd Floor of the surrounding neighborhoods:

Next, we got in another elevator and went up to the Summit.  

Inside the lower level of the Summit, there are directions toward capital cities posted on the walls and I found the one for Washington DC and New York City! (Picture quality is a little dark I know).

Then we went to the outside section of the Summit.  It could have honestly been the Arctic tundra up there I swear. I was FREEZING and the wind was whipping around like crazy! Everything basically looked the same as on the 2nd floor, except higher up, so I didn't take any pictures. Also, I didn't want to take my hands out of my gloves for fear that they would freeze and fall off.

After walking around the Summit, we went back to ground level and ate baguettes and french fries on benches under the Tower for lunch.  Then, we set off for Notre Dame Cathedral.  

While we were walking up to the Cathedral, we stumbled upon a peace demonstration offering "Free Hugs" to all passersby. I immediately initiated evasive maneuvers to avoid these hippies because you can never be too careful while travelling, and you never know who will rob you. I escaped. Unfortunately, Carly wasn't as lucky and was embraced by a small woman from the demonstration.  I tried to get a picture of the one-sided hug (you can guess which side was doing the most hugging) but all I could get with my ancient camera was this:

Carly is on the right and the stranger is on the left. Thoroughly confused, we hurried to Notre Dame.  Carly checked her pockets and was relieved that the hippie hadn't robbed her blind.

UPDATE: Carly says that the woman asked if Carly wanted a free hug and she was not, in fact, randomly hugged.  Carly is much nicer to strangers than I am so she said okay to the free hug.

After that creepy incident, we scurried to the cathedral so as to not attract more huggers.

We were allowed to take pictures, without flash, inside too which is always a good thing. Here are some of the pictures although they may be pretty blurry.  I captioned some of them too:

 Statue of Joan of Arc

 Bone of a saint

 Papal gifts

 Cool shadow I found

 Restoration of The Crown of Light chandelier

 Nativity scene before Christmas

We exited the Cathedral and waited outside to walk up to the famous Bell Towers.  If you were wondering, we didn't recognize anyone who lives up there. 

 Gargoyles

Looks like somebody got in my way.

 Better.

 Elephant gargoyle.

 A light snack.

 A stork gargoyle (to the right of the angel's foot).

 The Bell!

The only thing that really sucked about Notre Dame were the spiral staircases. They really make you dizzy and it was NOT fun walking down them.

We went to dinner at a tiny pizza restaurant nearby.  I had to use the restroom at one point so I made my way to the stall and locked the door. After about 10 seconds of being in there, the lights turned off and I was sitting in the dark.
Panic set in as I prepared to fight someone who had turned the light off as a joke, or worse (I've seen Taken!), but once I opened the stall door I realized the lights were motion sensitive, as they turned back on immediately.  Agitated, I got the hell out of there in case the lights decided to get cute with me again.

We made a quick stop in front of the famous Moulin Rouge:

Then we went back to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures of it lit up for the night:

To end our night, we wanted to get pictures at the Arc du Triomphe.  Since this monument is located on a traffic circle, there is an underground pedestrian walkway that tourists can use to cross the street or to get to the Arc.  Carly and I mosey our way down the walkway toward the Arc when we see a doorway and a ticket window. I remembered that last time I visited the Arc, I had gone inside it and up to the roof. Having no interest in doing it again this time, we decided to not buy tickets or investigate the ticket window in any way.  We continued walking and as we were on the stairs on the opposite side, we verbally congratulated ourselves with a loud "WE FIGURED IT OUT!" for managing to find this monument so easily and for making no mistakes while getting there.  We got to the top of the steps and found ourselves on the Champs Elysee, a famous shopping street, with the Arc nowhere to be found. 

We turned around and saw the Arc behind us. 

The ticket window was the ONLY way to access the Arc.

We realized we were the biggest morons in Paris. Carly literally said "Man, I felt so cocky walking up those steps. I really thought we figured this one out." Mortified at the thought of having to go back through the walkway, we decided to just take pictures from across the street.

To finish our night, we walked along the Champs Elysee and took the metro back to our hotel.

 Street decorations for Christmas.

Standing on the median.

December 19

Today was our last day in Paris.  We went to the Louvre to absorb some culture.  

We were able to cut the line because we bought our tickets online ahead of time.  We bee-lined to the Mona Lisa because we knew that's where everyone else was going too.

Then we were able to escape the stifling tourist crowd in that room and see other works of art. Below are a collection of my faves:

 Aliens?

We left the Louvre and headed back to our hotel to pack.

One recurring theme on our trip seemed to be our difficulty with the Paris metro system. It was easy to figure out so that wasn't the problem. Every time we would buy tickets, they would work fine for entering the subway. But, some stations require you to put the ticket back through a machine to exit.  My tickets worked fine except for once but Carly's never did so a few times she had to crawl under the turnstile. Normally we don't engage in illegal behavior but since we were trying to get out, what could the metro police have done, throw us in? And surprisingly, the Parisians who take the metro regularly were more than willing to help stuck tourists such as ourselves escape the metro.

Battling the metro one last time, we finally got to the train station to board our overnight train to Madrid.

 Our seats

 Carly sitting on her bed when they brought them down for us (They came out of the wall behind our seats).

My stairs to get onto the top bunk.

This overnight train ride was absolutely terrible. Carly felt sick the whole time and I didn't sleep a wink. I don't know if it was because we went over mountains or maybe the conductor was drunk but it was like sleeping inside a bag of popcorn that's being popped; jostling and uncomfortable and warm.

We arrived in Madrid at 9am and began the second part of our vacation!

For more:

Click here to read about Madrid (Part 2 of our vacation)

Click here to read about Barcelona (Part 3 of our vacation)