are we on vacation again?

So I didn't really go through our itinerary for yesterday. We ended up going to Versailles. It was beautiful, and actually very easy to get find. We took the RER train from Notre Dame, and it went straight there in less time than an hour. It was hot. The sun was out and it's very open with little shade. We walked through the chateau, then the gardens and finally to Marie Antoinette's "cottage". It was a good day but long. We had Italian food closer to the hotel again. Today we picked up Samantha at the airport and went on a whirlwind tour. We started at Notre Dame Cathedral where we took a free tour, it was interesting. We saw them lay the crown of thorns on the altar. There were so many religious people, it was pretty amazing. Then we walked around the back of the Cathedral and saw an hop on, hop off boat. We bought two day tickets for €19 each and took the boat to the Louvre. That place is extremely overwhelming, it's huge and somewhat confusing...

So we're spending the next couple of days with our niece. She's doing a semester in Greece, and we thought it would be fun to meet her in Paris. We're about an hour from the airport, and her flight lands in about an hour and 15 minutes, so we need to get a move on. The plan is to go to Notre Dame and the Louvre today then the Eiffel Tower and whatever else we can think of tomorrow. Ok, I think we're ready to run.... I'll be back

We made it! It's been years since we've been in the city of lights, but we are back. We flew into CDG Wednesday morning, business class was very nice, as usual, but it was my normal "awake" time so I didn't sleep at all. I did watch some good movies though. After an extended time at the airport, they had to clear the area near the train station due to a suspicious bag, we were finally ready to find our way to the city. We bought the all inclusive passes for the metro and the girl actually saved us a lot of money by suggesting a pass we hadn't seen on line. We thought we'd be spending €64 each and instead it was €81 for three! We had to get photos at a photo booth to activate them, but we didn't have much planned anyway. It took about an hour and a half to get to our hotel, Hotel St Merry. It's very close to Notre Dame, and tons of restaurants, but there's no elevator and we are on the fourth floor, yikes! So, we thought we'd be a...