Paris

We left the school very early, in our big bus which actually the French call a 'Car'.(It is kind of similar to calling a ship a 'boat'. The driver is offended if you call the 'car' a bus, I guess there is a big difference there.) Our first stop was at an old hospital, 'Les Hospice de Beaune'. It was a beautiful building. From there we kept going and stopped for the night in a little town called 'Bois'. I loved this town. We walked all around it just as the sun was setting. We got was up high close to a big chateau and church. We could see the house tops and the outline of the church steeples with a pink sky behind, it was gorgeous. It was dinner time, so the search for some food began. We found a small bar/restaurant opperated by one man. He served really good fool, however it all had mayonnaise in some form, accompanying it. I named this resaurant 'Chez Mayonnaise'.
Our hotel in Bois was very nice, the nicest one we stayed in. Our breakfast in the morning was amazing. We were able squeeze our own orange juice and boil eggs. Trying to be frugal, I also took lunch for the day. (It actually worked great. I pulled that stunt for the rest of the trip and I ended up saving alot of money!)
The next day we saw Le Chateau de Chambord, the chateau built before Versailles, a vacation home for one of the Louis. It had a staircase in it that if a person was coming down, they would never run into someone going up. The way it was constructed allowed for that. It was impressive. We also saw the Cathedral des Chartes that day. The architecture inside was so impressive. People still coming to pray and connect with God. Besides all of the tourism, it was a glorious place.
The next day we actually made it to Paris. The first night there we took the metro into town, right down to Notre Dame. We had gyros and spent the rest of the night in a really neat book store. It was named after Shakespeare, something like The Shakespeare House...I can't quite remember. It was all english literature though, so we stayed there until it closed.
The next day we saw all the majors: The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Les Champ Elysees, l'Arc de Triomphe and many others. We could have spent so much more time there though, there was just so much to see! It is exhausting to be a tourist for weeks at a time, so I could only take so much before I was done with audio guides and maps and signs.
One night we had dinner at Montmartre, it was beautiful up there. We watched the Eiffel Tower light up at dusk. From dinner we went down to see the Moulin Rouge...talk about a scummy neighborhood. Interesting to see but defenitiely not my favorite part of Paris.
I loved Paris. It was everything French. We enjoyed crepes on the grass beneath the Eiffel Tower, took a boat along the Seine. I will defenitely return.