Tuesday 4/6 we flew to Luxembourg to visit Patrick and his new wife Jessica and stepson Jackson who's only 4 and an awesome kid! Wednesday Patrick, Travis, and I went to Brussels, Belgium for the day. We walked around seeing the Cathedral, Grand Place, the Royal Palace, and the Justice Hall. Grand Place is the old city square and from every side it looks amazing. We also went on a tour of a lambic beer brewery. The tour was interesting but the beer we got to taste at the end was not very good. It was very different the traditional beer and sort of tastes like if you mixed beer and wine together. Travis was most excited about a store dedicated to a Belgium comic called TinTin. Belguim is divided into three areas because each part speaks a different language. I think the southern part speaks French and another area speaks Flemish. There's a third language I can't remember.
Thursday we spent the day in Luxembourg. Patrick took us to a cemetary/memorial for US troops who died near Luxembourg. General Patton was buried in this cemetary.
Friday very early morning we headed to Paris! Jessica and Jackson also got to come along for this trip. Our first day was spent finding our hotels, seeing the Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame... all the big sights! Notre Dame is definitely my favorite of all the Paris sights. Travis and I did go inside (which is free :). I lit a candle for my Grandpa Buzz in Notre Dame so made the visit there even more special. We wanted to go up the towers but ran out of time. The Eiffel Tower is actually kind of ugly up close but still great from a distance. I bet the main reason it seemed unattractive up close is because there was scaffolding on a bunch of it which has been our bad luck lots of places we've gone. Later that night we had a little adventure checking into our hostel. We had a private room booked and was given a key to a room... we go up 3 floors to find the bedroom door open but the bad part was it actually doesn't close because the frame is broken so we head back downstairs. The next room is only 2 floors up but when we get inside its basically a storage room filled with beds (also a random backpack and tennis shoes?). So back downstairs we go... finally the last key goes to a room that we actually can stay in which is a good thing because this one was 4 floors up! Plenty of excercise for one day. The room was pretty good too.
Saturday I discovered one of my new favorite foods... the crepe!! The sweet kind of course. Our breakfast was a Nutella (chocolaty spread) and banana crepe. I think I ate 2 more crepes that same day. On this day we got on one of the double decker bus tours. Jessica is about 6 or 7 months pregnant and was a champ with walking a lot Friday so we took it easy walking for the rest of the weekend. Riding the bus we stopped at Les Invalides which is where Napoleon is buried. There was a fee to go into the church with his tomb so we just walked around the rest of the complex which included a Army musuem. The building was originally a hospital he built for troops. We then got back on the bus to go to Place de la Concorde which has a Obelisk. Over the years different statues and monuments have been in the place of the Obelisk having to either do with the royalty or republic. This was also an area that had executions. They decided to put the Obelisk there because it was neutral and not representing royalty or republic. We then walked through Jardin Des Tuleries, the garden in front of the Louvre and had lunch there. After lunch we tried to go to Saint Chapelle Church because its supposed to mostly stained glass but it was to close to closing time. We separated after that and Travis and I went to Jardin Du Luxembourg. Paris has very beautiful parks but you're mostly not allowed on the grass. In this park is a pond/fountain where kids can rent boats to sail around. After dinner Travis and I went to see the Eiffel Tower at night, definitely the best way to see it. We then took the subway (Metro is what they call it) to quickly go see La Defense which is outside the city and has a modern looking arch. Unforunately we had about 5 minutes there before we had to turn around and go back on the Metro to get the last subway home.
Our last day in Paris Sunday was spent at the Louvre, we had about 4 or 5 hours there... definitely not enough time. I felt pretty rushed to try and see everything. We did see the major things including the Mona Lisa (its behind thick glass and you have to stay about 20ft away), the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and the Venus de Milo.
Our last couple days in Luxembourg were mostly spent relaxing and spending time with Patrick and his family. I also had to get over being sick because I apparently am allergic to Paris spring time. Tuesday morning before leaving we did go see parts of Luxembourg. Its a city mostly surrounded with very old walls and towers.
