This post is going to be a doozy…we crammed a few days of adventure into this day. Yesterday, we stopped by Orleans to see how much it would be to take the train up to Paris and back…it wasn’t cheap. But after considering driving time and parking issues, we decided the train was the way to go…especially since we were going to do Paris-in-a-day!
We got up bright and early and drove to Orleans to catch the train. We got into the train and found a compartment with one gentleman in there…room for the rest of us!! We invited ourselves right in and began a lovely conversation with Simplice, a computer programmer that lives in Orleans and commutes to Paris for work. He was delightful! He asked about how we knew French and we told him we had learned it as missionaries. As we continued our conversation, he kept coming back to the missionary thing, “Why did you come? What was your goal as a missionary? Who was your target audience?” Well, if you’re gonna ask…
We talked about the church. We talked about modern-day prophets. We talked about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. We basically taught him a first discussion and he was totally into it. The Spirit in our train compartment was palpable, it was a pretty special experience. He gave us his email address so we could continue to communicate, and we told him to look up the missionaries in Orleans. I hope this sweet man finds what he is looking for in the Gospel, our conversation with him was a highlight of the week.
When we disembarked, Koko said, “Mom, even though I didn’t understand what you guys were saying in French, I felt the Spirit really strongly and I knew what you were saying was true!” 
We took the Metro straight from the train station to the Eiffel Tower. Picture this: Coming up the escalator from the underground Metro right in front of the Eiffel Tower, and watching our girls see it for the first time as we rose up out of the ground…it gave me chills! They were so happy!!
We have a full agenda, so let’s get crackin’! First things first, lets find a bathroom. Good luck. Most public bathrooms are only open during certain times and the ones we found weren’t open until 9:00, so we had a 1/2 hour wait. Bummer, should’ve gone at the train station! We walked around trying to find a bathroom, we didn’t, but we found some interesting graffiti!!
While we were waiting for the bathroom to open (which we had to pay for, by the way) some cute Asian ladies stopped when they saw Emma. I don’t know if it was her blond hair and her cute little self, but they asked with their hands if they could take a picture with her. We had no language in common, but we understood each other, it was pretty funny.
We got tickets to take the elevator to the second tier…ahhh, beautiful Paris! For school credit, Koko told her choir teacher she’d sing on the Eiffel Tower since she missed her concert while we were gone. The girls sang, the crowd looked on, it was magical…and they sounded gorgeous!!
While we up there, we saw the actor who played “Newman” on Seinfeld. I approached him, hoping to take a quick picture. I said, “Hello, Newman” and his wife gave me the look of death and said, “Please don’t!” I apologized for interrupting, but started laughing when I walked away. He should’ve been thrilled that someone recognized him!
We had to keep going to stay on schedule so we skipped over to the Arc De Triomphe…so pretty! It was starting to drizzle and continued to rain on and off throughout the day. We saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with the eternal flame, it looked so cool.
Since we were on the Champs-Elysees, Mark wanted to go get some world-renowned French onion soup at Le Fouquet, it was pricey and very, very, very delicious. When I say pricey, I mean over $400 American money…wowza. We had soup, salad, salmon (for Emma) and a cheese plate.
With our full bellies, we headed to our next destination…the Louvre! Are we going in? You betcha!!! It was very crowded and about 1000 degrees inside, but totally worth it. We saw the main attractions in the fast-forward version. We could literally could have spent every day of our trip here and not seen everything, so we had the abbreviated version for sure.
We walked through the courtyard to the river and the Bridge of Love Locks so the girls could add their locks and profess their love. It was pretty cool looking!
Next stop, Notre Dame. We took Metros all day, so the walking wasn’t horrible, but we still walked a bunch!!
Notre Dame is a cool structure and very famous, but certainly not the best cathedral I’ve seen here. In fact, it was more of a tourist attraction inside than a church. People were selling trinkets and gadgets and confessions…kind of reminded me of when Jesus got angry at those selling their wares on temple grounds…it just doesn’t match the purpose of the building. Oh well. It was a necessary stop and I’m glad we went!
By now, we were getting tired and still damp from the rain, but we had one more stop…Sacre Coeur…at the top of the hill!
We powered up the hill and saw the beautiful church. Mark found an artist who had drawn Jake’s girls when they came last time and had him draw our girls. He did a good job, but was a bit of a scoundrel when he told Joe he’d draw him for free, then charged him $20.
We took the train back to Orleans and the girls kept singing the train song (dun, dun, da-dun) over and over. We had a compartment to ourselves this time and rested on our way back. It was an amazing day in Paris! We saw everything we wanted to see (and more, the girls were surprised at the level of nudity at the Louvre). Paris is wonderful, but I love the countryside in France even more. I’m glad we got to see the sites with our girls, though, it was a day that we’ll never forget!!
