"The Amazing Race"

SATURDAY JULY 29TH, 2006


So we woke up pretty early this morning knowing that we had a crazy day ahead of us. This was probably the only time on the trip I wished we had more time in a cit. Paris has SO much to offer from culture to shopping to just losing yourself on some side streets, we knew it would be hard to do it all in one day. We were determined though.


Our first stop was the louvre. We stayed there for only about 45 minutes because, while we appreciated what we saw, we didn't love art enough to stay any longer. We saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus De Milo and then we were good to go. The Mona Lisa was a lot smaller than I imagined. We spent the rest of the time there making fun of the statues and just being goof balls.

We exited onto the Rue De Rouville. We found a really cute cafe (Les Aigles) there and ate some crepes and had coffee and OJ. It was so peaceful and just so quaint. The people there were just so nice.

Next we needed to take the metro to the Notre dame because we wouldn't have time to walk. Well, that was the hardest system to figure out because no one spoke English. We waited for about 15 minutes until someone finally spoke English and helped us buy the tickets we needed.

We arrived at the Notre Dame and it was absolutely breathtaking. It felt good to be in there and just walk around. Katlyn and I said some prayers and lit a candle and then we left. We wanted to go up but the wait was about 30-60 min and we just didn't have the time.

Back on the metro to arrive at the Arc de Triumph. This was a HUGE monument in the center of downtown paris. It was so cool because it was such an awesome feeling of hustle and bustle. To get up, we had to take the stairs and there was like 500 hundred of them. (I hate stairs) The view was truly breathtaking and you could see all of paris from any side. We got really lucky and had clear skies.

Our final thing for the daytime was to go shopping on the Champs Elysees. This was a real swank part of paris with some of the best shopping. A majority of the stores only had girls clothing and all the stores were really expensive. I found one really cute ribbed sweater on sale so I had to buy it. We were there so long, we had to race home to get changed for the evening activities. Again, the metro is so confusing, it took us 3 different trains to get home. lol

We left for dinner and went to a real nice restaurant about the Chave le vie. I had escargot and duck a la orange. ( I can't spell these dishes lol) and drank endless wine. It was a great dinner. The wine hit me pretty hard though because I was so tired and hadn't eaten much that day.

When we got to the moulin rouge, I was in heaven. This show was everything I thought it would be and more. We had 1/2 a bottle of champagne for each person at the table and our seats were AMAZING!! I felt like such a rock star! I was so drunk that when I went shopping I completely lost track of time and missed the coach back. Thankfully my amazing tour manager Pete and another guy on our trip, Mark waited for me and we took a taxi home. I wish I could show you pics of the show but cameras had to be checked at the door since the girls were topless.

I got back to the hotel and just slept off my alcohol because we had an early day tomorrow as we began travel to Switzerland. This was only the end of day 4 and I was having the best time of my life. This Contiki was turning out to be a great decision!