So once again we were in Paris, but this time with my family. My parents, brother and his wife were over for my cousin’s wedding in Germany a week later. But before that, we decided to spend a week travelling around Europe.

To start, we were only in Paris for one whole day so it was a whirlwind tour! In the morning, Liz and I dropped my parents off at the Louvre and since we had seen the Louvre last time, we went to the Musee d’Orsay instead.

Musee d’Orsay is housed in an old railway terminal, and it still has 3 original clocks both inside and out. Neat! No photos of the artwork allowed though – but the Van Gogh artworks were great. Starry Night is very cool!

On the way back we stumbled over a bridge with one or two locks attached to it… It’s nicknamed Lovers bridge, where couples would place lovelocks with their names written.

Once we regrouped we decided to have some lunch, which we found in a local market, NOM.

We then headed to the Arc de Triomphe, going via the Tuilleries Gardens, past the Luxor Obelix and up the along the Champs Elysees. Big walk!

From there, we headed toward the Eiffel tower…

…where we persuaded my parents that we had to do a jumping shot. So we leapt!

From there our trek took us to the golden roof of Les Invalides, which was built as a hospital and retirement home for war veterans in 1676. Napoleon was buried under the dome in 1840.

We got to our final stop, Notre Dame, near the end of the day but it was well worth it. We were too tired to go inside after our huge walk around the city (yes, we walked to all those places in 1 day!)

To finish up Paris we had a feast at a local restaurant which was great! French wine, French beer…

And even French food – snails! (They tasted like garlic and butter, so quite nice!)

A great start to our European tour, the next day we were off to Belgium.

But that’s the next post…