Day Four: I woke up to find myself husbandless, so I decided to shower and get ready for the day. The hubs returned and surprised me with a GORGEOUS bouquet of tulips he had picked up from one of the cute shops by our hotel as an early Christmas present.
I'm one lucky girl!
Seriously though, how beautiful are these!?!
Here is where most of you readers (which mainly consist of our families...) are going to want to slap us in the face when you read what we did today. As hard as we tried to avoid a messed up sleep schedule, we stayed up way too late the night before and slept in super late. Then we pretty much farted around the hotel for a good portion of the day being lazy bums. It was awesome! Eventually, we got really hungry and went back to the Christmas village in front of
Eiffel tower to get crepes and Panini’s from some of the yummy stands we'd seen the night before.
The hubs and his sugar crepe
I LOVED Nutella crepes! These things were the bomb!
And THEN!!!...We walked back to the hotel and read Lord of the Rings. Don't hate ;)
On our walk back
Day Five: We woke up Christmas morning and were so excited to open our Christmas package mom and pops Kesler. How lucky were we?... not only were we in Paris for Christmas, but we still had presents to open! It was pretty great.
Yes, I am aware this is an incredibly unflattering photo, but this is the only picture I have of all our Christmas goodies!
After getting ready, we headed off on our long trek to find closest Paris branch so that we could attend church. This was a lot more difficult than we thought it would be. We forgot our map, but figured we would remember the street names just find. WRONG! We walked around for quite a while looking for a familiar street name, and after going the completely wrong direction for a while, we got on the right track. However, it still took us quite a while to find the building because it was just the first floor of a bigger apartment complex, so we walked right past it! Needless to say, we were a bit late.
Going to a French ward was a really cool experience- Daniel could obviously understand everything that was said, but I had absolutely no idea. Lucky for me, I LOVE the sound of people speaking French, so it was still great to just sit and listen. The Branch was really small- maybe about 15 people or so, and we just loved seeing the faith of these wonderful people embracing the gospel in their little Branch. I know this is kind of a cliche LDS thing to say, but it really was amazing to see how the gospel is true in all parts of the world. We got to listen to a lady bear her testimony (according to Dan, she only made fun of Americans once!), and while I had absolutely no clue what she said, I could feel her faith and love for her Savior. Awesome.
By the time Church was over, we were starving, and decided to look for somewhere to eat by Notre Dame, our next adventure. We decided that since it was Christmas, we would splurge and eat at an actual restaurant. What a horrific decision! Our food wasn't necessarily awful, but it definitely wasn't good. The hubs, being the adventurous person that he is, ordered some weird French sausage which ended up being pretty interesting. I got a steak...or at least that's what they called it. I'm not sure French steak is the same as American steak. And of course, this meal was disgustingly overpriced. You don't have to say it, we should have known.
You can imagine our severe disappointment when we left, turned the corner, and saw a bunch of people at this panini cafe eating the most AMAZING looking paninis for about 1/8th of what we paid. Yep, that was a little rough.
Luckily for us, we had Notre Dame to comfort our weary souls. Daniel had just taken a French architecture class, so I had a personal tour guide for most of our visits :) This place was absolutely to die for, SO BEAUTIFUL! The outside is obviously gorgeous, the the amazing details in the actual cathedral are really what make it so spectacular. Everything was just so grandeur and beautiful. I could go on and on about its beauty, but I figure I'll let the pictures do the talking.
The street leading up to Notre Dame- I bet it's beautiful in the Spring!
Crappy picture, but it proves we went inside ;)
These arched ceilings were amazing!
The back was of course, beautiful as well
I have a picture from this very bridge when my family and I went to Paris when I was younger
The bridge that we were on in the above picture is called 'Lovers Bridge.' Couples bring locks and lock them to the bridge and throw the key in the river, symbolizing their eternal love. I read about this before our honeymoon and made a mental note to remember to bring a lock. Of course, I didn't remember that little mental note until we actually got to the bridge. I was whining about it when my sweet hubs reminded me that we got married in one of the only places on earth where our marriage will be eternal. He is so good at bringing me back down to earth. Love that guy. ...Still though, I wish I would have remembered to bring a lock ;)
Lovers bridge! I totally thought about scratching out someone's initials and putting ours on their lock ;)
These guys were obviously SERIOUS about their love (big love, maybe?)
We hit up the fountain of Michael on our way to the metro, which is really famous for some reason I can't remember. Definitely a beautiful site, but you would never know from the picture we got...
Poor guy, at least he didn't cut off our heads!
Love these guys!
To end the night, I got to present the hubs with my Christmas present for him. Dinner in the Eiffel Tower! Woot! I was kind of thinking the whole thing would be more for the experience and that the food would be too fancy for my liking, but it was actually fantastic! Especially dessert :) The meal came with two lovely glasses of champagne, and we figured that it was our honeymoon, so what the heck!...Just kidding. They were kind enough to swap out the champagne for juice.
Daniel and his salmon appetizer
My super yummy tiger prawn appetizer (yes dad, I did actually eat AND like this!)
We both got mushroom chicken for our main dish. So good!
The cool restaurant!
Yes, Daniel got CHEESE for dessert. He just LOVED all the cheese in Paris. Stinky. Stinky. Cheese.
I opted for chocolate cake. Really rich but FANTASTIC!
We had a pretty dang good view. Paris all lit up from the Eiffel Tower- it will probably be a while before we beat this dinner.
I will go out on a limb and say this was definitely one of my favorite Christmases, especially since it was my first Christmas as a Kesler! Looking forward to many, many more (maybe even another in Paris, who knows!)!
I am loving reading your blog Kait!! I didn't realize you and Dan went to Paris for your honeymoon!! How fun! It looks like you guys had an amazing time! Notre Dam was one of my favorite places in Paris as well. There was a man playing the organ when we went, and I stayed for probably an hour listening to him (I don't remember where my family ran off to while I stayed =] ). So much fun!!
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