Paris in 31 hours, 17.5 miles, and 2,471 stair steps

Those numbers are accurate and completely honestly true. If you really want to explore Paris, 31 hours is obviously not enough, but with the 17 miles of walking I feel that I explored Paris just enough, thank you. With 31 hours, we saw most (if not all) the major tourist attractions/ traps in Paris. We basically had enough time to see and explore the attraction, take a few pictures, and then walk to the next place. Paris' motto: Walk walk walk, stand in line. Walk up a few hundred steps. See something historic. Take a picture. Move on. For this trip I made a timeline:

Arrived at the Paris Eurostar metro at 2pm: Heads up- Paris military with their guns are EVERYWHERE. In the metro. At the Eiffel tower. At the Notre Dame. Again, everywhere. At first you can feel pretty weirded out, but then once you think about it, with their hands right on the trigger they sure are scaring anyone out of any kind of rebellious thinking.

14:00 hour: Take metro to hotel. Favorite moment- so pay attention: in metro waiting for our hotel stop and can't quite see the Paris sights yet. Suddenly a man hops on our metro and starts playing classical French music on his accordion. Of course, like a movie, I can start seeing the old, French buildings and really felt that it was the best way to see Paris.

14:30 Hour: Dumped stuff off at hotel and walk to see Eiffel Tower. Stayed at the Hotel Segur (I highly recommend it to anyone only 30 euros a night and in a safe, nice location. Totally clean and really great staff). See Eiffel Tower, take many pictures (I really have no idea how many in total we have- a lot is the answer the exact amount will never be known), try to have someone take our picture together (its amazing how you can ask someone to take your picture in front of a great historical landmark, but they will always chose put their priority in getting a close up of your own face).

16:00: Walk over to the Arc Du Triumph. Patisseries everywhere you go. I. Love. It. Huge fan of the French's priorities in desserts. Word of advice: at the Arc Du Triumph you can cross underground. After about the second time you almost get run over , go to the underground passing. Climbed to the top and back down- 284 steps one way.

My favorite french word

17:00: Walked the Champs Elysee. It is amazing who will stand in line for what and how long. Now I realize I am being hypocritical because I will stand in line an hour for Space Mountain, but these people just look ridiculous:

What would you think this is in the heart of Paris? A hidden castle, monument, or mansion? Well I would have guessed all of that before coming to this realization:

 Oh my thats embarrassing.

Moving On! Next stop: The Louve! A LONG walk to the Louve. You may start to comment on the lovely hotels that are conveniently right by the Louve. Nope thats still the Louve even though the entrance looks about a mile away. Thats how big the Louve is. The same cannot be said about the Mona Lisa. Tiny... but seriously I would make the word "tiny" smaller to exaggerate, but I'm not that good on blogger yet.

19:00- 1:00 Went home, watched some Olympics (in French rooting for France) with our baguette, cheese, and meat sandwiches. THEN a midnight (or 9pm) excursion to the Eiffel Tower. We waited FOREVER in line, but finally went up the tower. The Eiffel Tower is beautiful by day, but go at night because on the hour for ten minutes it sparkles! I'm not a pinky, glitter, princess kind of girl, but this view of the tower really is beautiful- just do it! Got home at 1am.... so so tired, but saw so much of Paris

Day Two

9:00 (hour #19)- Went to the Eiffel Tower, too long of a line so caught a hop on hop off bus around Paris. Totally and completely recommend it! Too much walking, and you are on a river boat in Paris- its beautiful and wonderfully relaxing. Went to my personal favorite- the Notre Dame! I'm not much on churches- but this place was amazing inside and out. The walk inside was free and I could have spent all day. I wish I could have sketched it, but I draw a dog and it looks like a giraffe so we will leave it at that. It was beautiful to look around and we climbed to the very top! A great view of the top and the Eiffel Tower.

12:00 Traveled by metro to the Sacre Coeur- VERY different church. Had to cover our shoulders- as you can see my outfit is very scandalous.  I really loved going from one church to the other because they differ in religion, but also in years of making. I could try to describe this, but my history and architecture knowledge is very disappointing- so google it!

  

After this we got our bags, saw the Moulin Rouge, and a final glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. The one thing I really really truly suggest about Paris is when you are done with the walking, running to the next Metro, waiting in line, etc. get a boat tour (the hop on hop off one that we had didn't provide commentary) for an hour around Paris. A GREAT way to end our exhausting journey. We saw our favorite places once more, understood the funny/ great looking buildings we walked by but had no idea what they were, and those fun facts that you can seem to forever remember but not the time of your dentist appointment.

By this time we left for Disneyland Paris at 9pm, so indeed our Paris trip was 31 hours, we climbed up and down 2,471 steps (Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triumph, Sacre Coeur, and the Notre Dame), and the 17.5 is a strong underestimate of walked miles (I swear the number is at least in the hundreds).