Paris

I rang in the new year with an awesome trip to Paris!  It was so much fun!  My sisters and brother-in-law came too!  My favorite part of the trip was seeing the Eiffel Tower!  It was huge!  We climbed all the way to the top!  The view was amazing!  You could see for miles and miles in all directions!  The Eiffel Tower was originally built as the entrance to the 1889 world fair and had a 20 year contract after which it was due to be knocked down.  Fortunately this did not happen because it was being used as a telecommunication tower.  When I was researching the Eiffel Tower I found some very interesting facts.   My favorite one though was that a con artist tried to sell the Eiffel Tower as scrap metal, twice!  I don't know how the con artist thought that was going to work!

My sisters and brother-in-law with me in front of the Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower at night.

The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Some of the other things we saw in Paris were:

The Arch de Triomphe

If you look closely you can see my dad standing in front of the arch.  The arch is so big that my dad looks like a speck!

The Arc de Triomphe was ordered to be built by Napoleon in 1806.  It has seen many important events in history because it used to be one of the entrances to Paris.  One of those events was when the Germans came in to take over Paris during World War II. The Nazi soldiers walked right through the arch when taking over Paris in 1940.  About four years later Charles de Gaulle and the allied forces walked through it to take Paris back.

My second favorite thing we did in Paris was going to the Louvre museum of art!  We made very good use of our time in the Louvre and only went to see the things that we knew about or were famous because almost everyone who went there said that if you don't pick out the things you want to go see in the Louvre then it will get very overwhelming because it is so big.

  One of the things we decided to see (of course) was the Mona Lisa!  For some reason I was expecting the Mona Lisa to be big and magnificent but it was normal size and looked pretty normal to me.  I was really glad that be got to see it though, especially when I found out you could take pictures of it!

Some of the other things we saw in the Louver that I liked were:

 The Great Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Tanis is one of the largest sphinx sculptures in existence outside of Egypt.

Venus de Milo

Some call this statue the Aphrodite of Milo.  It was originally carved between 130B.C. and 100 B.C. in ancient Greece.  

The one thing I did NOT like about Paris though was the outside bathrooms for many reasons:

1. They smelled really bad!
2. It took forever to use, line or no line, because it had to wash itself after every use!
3. Because it had to clean itself off, if you went in right after the other person came out you would get washed along with the rest of the bathroom because there is no way to stop the doors from closing or to stop it from washing itself!

At least the bathrooms were free (because most bathrooms in Europe you have to pay to use) and they were relatively clean.

 This is the long line we had to wait in.  It took about 7 minutes for every person to use.

As you can see from our faces it smelled REALLY bad!