Paris, part one

Last night I returned (against my will) from an amazing weekend in Paris, and now I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the things that I have to do for my classes and organizing various trips, but as they say in Spain "no pasa nada" (pretty much the equivalent to "don't worry about it" but they take this philosophy very seriously!).  However it has been tons of fun looking through my pictures and reliving the weekend as I edit them.  So, since I have a tons of pictures and since we only had four days to pack in everything a city as big a Paris has to offer, I'll just go ahead and pick some of my favorite things we did and favorite pictures that I took to post.  

I thought I'd start with the Eiffel Tower, since we did go there on our first night and it is one of the main attractions after all.  We arrived in Paris after a long day of traveling at around two or two thirty in the afternoon on Friday and some friends and I had plans on going to the Eiffel Tower that night, so to pass the time during the day (and conserve some energy) we walked around close to the hotel and then later got some decadent crepes and tea.  So after some food and some rest we hopped on the metro and got to the Eiffel Tower at around nine.  The weather was reasonably cold all weekend, but when your up the height of a 81 story building, cold takes on a new meaning.

Luckily though we all bundled up pretty well and once we got to the top the view of the city all lit up was incredible and simply breathtaking to see.  It was also extremely windy at the top, which took me back to my Hight Desert roots where wind seems like an everyday thing, however it made it all the more exciting and exhilarating.  Also, every hour the whole tower lit up with sparkly white lights that glittered off and on all over the tower.  And then after those lights, the tower would light up with blue, green and red lights while music played.  It was such an exciting and wonderful experience to go there on my first night in Paris.  It was a little surreal though to see the tower, something so iconic, right there in front of me.

The pictures of the tower during the day are from Saturday, when we had a panoramic bus tour with API.  It was another cloudy cold day, but still an amazing view of the tower.