Bonjour!!!

My eyes are totally opened! I have been working for the airlines for going on 5 years now and I'm sad to say that I've never gone anywhere exciting....I mean we've taken family trips to Cali, and Vegas, and Cancun, and Hawaii....but HELLO I get to fly for FREE anywhere in the entire world and I haven't taken the opportunity....I never realized how exciting it was until I finally got up the nerve to go. I guess my reasoning was because I ALWAYS fly with my kids...and I'm a little scared of the unknown of a new country. Well, a few of my work friends were planning a trip and they kept asking me to go along with them...I totally turned them down because I couldn't take my kids, or my husband because he was sick. I came home and talked to Ova about it and he kept telling me that I should go... I told him I didn't want to go without him, but he kept insisting that I would regret it if I passed up this opportunity. I thought about it, and he was right....a once in a lifetime opportunity for very little out of pocket. I told my co-workers that I was in and it was all history from there. Sad to say I didn't know anything about Paris...except for the Eiffel Tower, but going there and experiencing Paris first-hand was undescribable. We left on Monday night and arrived there Tuesday morning. Since we were only going to be there for 3 days, we had a lot to fit in. We found a room on hotels.com for a steal...it was only $200 for the whole time for all 4 of us. We all paid about $55 each for the whole time. We were smart and took our own suitcase of water and snacks and that was such a good idea and a HUGE money saver! We really only spent money on the crepes with Nutella from the street vendors or the bread from the bakery. We fit in everything we could while we were there and had the time of our lives. I took about 400 pictures while I was there....and I tried to pick my favorites to post on here....
The first day we went to Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomph, and the Eiffel Tower at night. We totally got lost that night because we were so excited to get out of the hotel that we didn't really plan on how to get back to the hotel at night. Well, we didn't realize that the metro didn't run 24-7 and we were taking our sweet time. The Eiffel Tower lights came on at 11pm and we just sat there enjoying it and taking it all in. We finally decided to go back home because it was past midnight and so we jumped on a metro....after going a long way, we realized we were on the train going the WRONG WAY!! We got off and realized that that was the last metro train of the night...we were LOST in a FOREIGN COUNTRY and none of us spoke the language....we didn't really know what we were doing. One of the girls we were with pushed the emergency button and all these police came out....we were trying to explain to them (with a HUGE language barrier) that we were lost. They pointed us in the direction of this night bus that ran. We got on the bus and it was FULL of drunk men, not 1 woman on the bus....just DRUNK MEN. They were acting like kids, one would make a comment and the whole bus would laugh, and of course, we didn't understand a word they were saying. Well, they dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we just started walking. By this time it was like 2am. We walked to this hotel that was closed, but the lobby part was opened. I swear someone was looking out for us that night because it was a nice, warm place with a clean bathroom and we could lock ourselves inside. We all laid on the floor and were going to sleep....that is until the security guard came pounding on the door. He didn't understand us that we were lost, I think he thought we were homeless or something...and he was trying to kick us out. We finally turned on one of our phones and called our hotel room and LUCKILY we got a hold of someone that spoke English. We explained our situation and where we were at and he told us he could send a private taxi, but it would cost us like 40 Euro which was more like $60. We said YES!!! The taxi came and picked us up and took us to our hotel which was like 45 minutes away and we finally got home at about 6am. That was quite an adventure! We wanted to sleep for just a few hours so we could head out and come back early, but we didn't wake up until 3pm. We went to Haiti Town, and Mulan Rouge, then home. The last day there we did so much stuff...we went to the Catacones which is basically an underground graveyard. A long time ago, Paris was hit with the plague and something like 7million people died. All the graveyards in Paris were full and there was no room for anyone else, so the government decided to dig up all those that died from the plague and move them to this underground tomb. It's like 10 miles long and full of bones from ceiling to floor. It was SOOOO interesting, and I thought I would be scared, but I wasn't.... we also went to the Louvre, and saw the original Mona Lisa painting. We saw Neopolitan's tomb, went to the highest point in Paris - Sacrecur, and back to the Eiffel tower in the day light. It was a busy busy trip with a LOT of walking, but SO WORTH IT! I'm so glad I went and now it put the travel bug in me....my next stop.... ROME ITALY!!

The hardest part of the trip was being without my husband and boys. That was the first time I'd ever traveled without them and there was no way for me to talk to them (it was like 30 Euro for a 5 minute Sim card) so we kept stopping at internet cafe's to email home. It was so hard not being able to talk to them for a whole week, and even though I had SO MUCH FUN.... by the end of the 3 days I was ready to come home!