Paris: Notre Dame.

Tuesday morning, we dropped the kids off at school, delivered their bags to the babysitters (Aunt Lori and Grandma Kay. Bless you.), cleaned, packed, and then Conan and I drove to the Atlanta airport to meet the sisters and husbands.

There was a news report on the radio about finding the black box of the AirFrance flight that crashed into the ocean two years ago. Uh...sure, I'm not scared. Actually, I was super scared. I am terribly afraid of flying over the ocean and was secretly trying to pretend I wasn't. But I was. Am. Luckily we left late at night so I slept through the whole flight. When I woke up I noticed that the little cartoon airplane on the screen in front of me was flying over land, not ocean, so I got up the guts to look out the window. And there was Ireland:

That was my first moment of Oh my goodness.

We landed in France around 2:00 in the afternoon, jumped on the train and headed to Hotel De La Porte Doree in the 12th arrondissement. It was such a fantastic place to stay. I loved it.

We dropped off our luggage, checked out the internet connection, and the bathroom, and headed for Notre Dame. eek! So exciting.

This is what we see coming out of the metro:

Beautiful, Beautiful buildings. with History.

hello little boy.

Every building was beautiful. And these carousels...all over Paris. I couldn't stop taking pictures.

Enter Queen Picture Bomber:

It's Corrie's favorite thing to do. And she's good. She's real good.

(She has a good, quick recap of Paris, here.)

So we're walking down these beautiful streets when I see this sign:

"Uh...wuh? Is this Notre Dame? Like the real Notre Dame? As in Hunchback...of Notre Dame?"

Oh yes, there it was, right in front of me. The real deal. I had to catch my breath and check my reality ticket to Avenue Wonder and Amazement. I was staring at a building built over 600 years ago. (Esmerelda sang in there.)

Notre Dame took 182 years to build, and was finished in 1345. During the French Revolution, rioters beheaded the statues of the biblical Kings of Judah, thinking they were kings of France. A school teacher watching the destruction collected the heads and buried them on his property. They were found in 1977 and are now on display in a Paris museum. There were so many stories like this that just came to life for us. It was fascinating.

Once we were done in the church, we got crepes.

I asked for un jambon et fromage (ham and cheese), but she didn't hear the jambon part. Probably because I was nervous to order in French and mumbled a bit. Luckily, even though I had studied French Recipe Books and French Culinary Dictionaries for months, most everyone (who works around the tourist areas) speaks English, so I didn't have to use it much. But alas, I ended up with a cheese crepe. Which was good at the time, but I didn't realize until later, upon eating delicious crepes, that it wasn't that good. But it was French. Who cares.

We strolled...

And then headed to the Eiffel Tower...

{I only had my iphone for pictures. Not bad, eh? All the photos that include me were taken by my Brother In Law, Seth. I quickly learned to use and abuse his nice picture taking skills and sweet camera. Thanks Seth.}