Paris Day 1

We found our way to the part of town where we would be staying and we met our host, Ana. We changed, freshened up a bit since we had been traveling for nearly a day, and then took off to get our adventure started.
First on the docket: a walking audio tour (for my parents) from Rick Steves. This started at a metro very close to...
Notre Dame!  Great thing to start with. The tour takes you walking all around the cathedral and the area around it. While my dad was listening to the tour, I was just loving the sights and picture opportunities.  Though I had never been to Paris before, the feeling of being in France again was heavenly.

The very first thing we did was see the roman foundations under Notre Dame. They were very cool to see. I also enjoyed a touch screen zoom and pan presentation of the process of building the cathedral. That was very cool.
The lines were really long for going up the towers so we decided to try to come back for that at the end of the day if we had time. I know that you might say you HAVE to go up, but with the number of things my mom wants to see in Paris we had to also think of time. So we moved on.
  We found the lock bridge- which my parents had never heard of.
We visited a holocaust museum very close to Notre Dame and we found a gelato to share as we walked along the river Seine and the Ile St.
Louis. It was a beautiful day. I wanted to sit down in the sun and read.
We wandered through the Latin quarter south of the river. This includes St. Michel, like in Les Miserables where the university students had political rallies. It is still a place for rallies today.  In this area, along the river there are a lot of street book vendors. I looked at the antiques but couldn't find anything I was willing to spend money on.  The area used to be the part of town where many scholars lived.
We visited the St. Michel church with huge stained glass windows. It was very beautiful.
We circled back with the audio tour to the Ile with Notre Dame and discovered that the tower climbing line had just closed. Dang! So instead we went inside the cathedral. Our timing was great. There is always a lot of people but it isn't necessarily crowded. I mean, it's huge. But our timing was perfect because they were in the middle of mass. A young woman was singing so beautifully. Instead of walking around and looking at their historic displays I just sat down and listened. I closed my eyes and got lost in the music. I definitely drifted in and out of sleep, but it was VERY worthwhile to be there at that time.
During the evening we visited the opera house in the north of the city. This is not the original opera house but it is built in the same location.  All in one day we visited locations of 3 of the most renowned french classic novels, hunchback of Notre dame, Les Miserables and the Phantom of the Opera.

For dinner we wandered around a popular shopping area and found a kebab place. This is not a KABAB like you think of with sticks on the BBQ. This is a Turkish gift to the world much like gyros and chawarma (watch the end of the avengers). Kebabs can come in bread or in a tortilla which is how I like them and they usually have delicious sauce selections.  I used to eat these a lot on my mission and I can't wait to go back to the kebab shops I know in my own cities.
While we were eating we saw elders walk by. I ran to go day hi but one of them didn't hear me at all and he kept walking so I only got to say hi to the other and tell him that I was a missionary in Geneva before he needed to go catch up with his disappearing companion.  I knew I would see SOME missionaries while I was here.
After dinner, around 6 we found some famous covered passages which are really just hallways between buildings and an old hotel that have been made into little shops so it is like a mall, but without a mall feel. Everything was closed, so it was empty, but we weren't there to buy stuff, jus to see it so it was perfect.
Then we made our way down by bus (so we could see more of the city- unlike when we take the metro) back to the river Seine and Pont Neuf (New Bridge- which is actually the oldest bridge in Paris). We bought tickets for the river boat tour at 9:30.  It takes you in a circle around the Seine river islands under all the bridges which are each unique and have various histories.
The tour's possibly most exciting moment is passing by the Eiffel Tower at night when it sparkles on every hour. Though we had seen the tower from a distance during the day, this the the first time we were so close.
The tour ends after sailing through the area around Notre Dame, which is completely alive with night life. Couples and groups of young people fill the edges and pathways of the river channels.  At one park there were dances and parties right on the edge of the river and I SO badly wanted to be dancing with them.
We returned home late after our river tour very tired but happy.  Our first day of Paris was very full and the next day looked to be even busier.

There are obviously a lot more pictures.  I don't even know how many really.  But it would take forever to post them on a blog- especially with the slow internet I've been working with.  In fact it took me over an hour just to add these photos.  I already have the next 6 days written out, so I am going to post those without pictures (Sorry!) and then someday I'll get back to them.