Trip Report Abby and Brian's Birthday Paris Trip! July 1st-9th, 2012, UPDATED:3/10/13

[Pumbaa7287]

Hey everyone, and welcome to the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I know not as many people read the trip reports here but I suppose that just makes us all a little more special!

Abby and I took our first overseas trip together (she's been to Germany to see her sister) this past summer, and with a lot of help from the DISboards (I'm looking at you Carrie_Cat) the trip was a great success!

First, as always, our cast:

First, we have the lovely Abigail, pictured here as Mama Odie with Facilier from October's Halloween party, who turned 25 on the last day of our trip. Abby was just finishing her Master's degree at the time of our trip and is now a doctoral student at the University of Florida (she was considering schools elsewhere but I convinced her living two hours from the Mouse in Orlando outweighed any other options ). She is studying spiny lobsters here and in the Keys this summer and is having a blast!

Second, me, myself and I. My name's Brian, and I also turned 25 on our trip. Funny how that happens! I was born on the 2nd, a week before Abby, and as such, got to be a year ahead of her in school. We met in college, where I studied to be a math teacher, which I do now at a Middle School in Gainesville. My students rock!

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Feel free to use this table of contents to navigate the report. Links will be updated when that chapter is posted! Chapter titles are subject to change. More chapters could be added as necessary!

TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 1~Get me to the airport on time! or Iceland's Midnight Sun
Chapter 2~Two tired Americans navigate the Paris Metro and the Louvre
Chapter 3~That big way up high tall tower with the long line.
Chapter 4~An inDisney Proposal!
Chapter 5~The jet lag monster find us.
Chapter 6~The Catacombs and some more museum hopping.
Chapter 7~I'm only happy when it rains, if I'm in Disney!
Chapter 8~The big one. Versailles
Chapter 9~The long, amazingly relaxing, hot springs filled road home.

 

[LunaMini]

I look forward to reading this

 

[Pumbaa7287]

I look forward to reading this

Thank you! Hoping to work on Chapter 1 tonight. The pictures are all uploaded to photobucket, now it's just a matter of finding the time to sit and write it out!

 

[Disneyfanswicklow]

Thank you! Hoping to work on Chapter 1 tonight. The pictures are all uploaded to photobucket, now it's just a matter of finding the time to sit and write it out!

Looking forward to reading all about it and seeing your photos!

 

[Pumbaa7287]

Finally! Sorry for the long delay between posts folks, but now let's get started! Abigail and I drove to my parent's home the night before our big trip. Abby was still working on editing her Master's Thesis at the time and trying to send in her final copy before we left so that her advisors could read it to make sure it was ok while we were gone. She finally finished and sent it, literally about 5 minutes before we got in the car and left for the airport!

As we arrived at the airport, we were greeted by this lovely hologram giving us all the directions on getting through security. Oh Logan Airport, you never cease to amaze me. The line wasn't too long, so we only had to listen to her spiel four or five times before getting through the line!

Our flight was uneventful, thankfully. We left in the afternoon, and with the time change landed in beautiful Iceland around 11:30pm, local time. We hadn't really thought about how far north we were, and so we just assumed we wouldn't be able to see anything.

How wrong we were! This photo is Iceland at midnight(!!!) in July. Pretty cool. We only had about an hour layover, but at the end of our trip we had about a full day's layover, so we knew we'd get to explore some more then. For now, we loaded up on some sweet Icelandic candy bars and were on our way:

Our second flight landed in beautiful Paris at 6am local time. In other words, we'd gotten up at 7am the day before so Abby could finish her paper, been on an overnight flight where we got little sleep because it was literally never dark out during the entire trip (and I don't sleep well on planes anyhow), and were now in a foreign country we'd never been in before and where we spoke very little of the language.

So of course, we went and checked in to our hotel before headed out to the Louvre for the day!

Here's a photo of a beautiful statue outside our hotel that was being restored due to year's of vandalism (We did a great job of accidentally including random Parisians in our photos. Sorry to anyone we offended by taking their picture!):

We stayed at the Crowne Plaza Republique which was right at the metro station Republique. The room itself was just a studio and nothing overly exciting, but it's closeness to a metro station that connected to so many different lines can NOT be under stated. It made getting around such a huge help!

That's it for now. Sorry for the lack of photos in this post, but the airplane was not super exciting, apart from learning some Icelandic words and also that people in Iceland believe in fiendish Elves that will come and ruin their homes while they are away. According to the screen on our plane, many people actually buy insurance to protect themselves from such damage. Fascinating!

In the next chapter: Zombie Walking the Louvre, Oo La La'ing at the Moulin Rouge, The cafe of the two windmills, and our first visit to the Sacre-Coeur!​