Our amazing honeymoon, part 1

It was beautiful. It was relaxing. It was amazing. And it was a dream come true.


Our honeymoon in France was exactly what we needed after the wonderful, yet stress-filled months leading up to the wedding of my dreams.


Here are some of the highlights from the first part of our trip:



PARIS, FRANCE



The first four days of our honeymoon were spent in the city of lights: Paris!


Unfortunately, my brand-new husband was still on crutches from surgery, so we had to make sure that whatever we did, there wasn't a whole lot of walking, and if there was, that there was plenty of time for rest breaks.


The other difficult part about visiting another country is the language barrier was extremely difficult at times. Yes, I did study French for four years, but that was in HIGH SCHOOL and some in college. So I was rather rusty. And Brent didn't even know how to say "bonjour."

Though I will give him credit for trying. For example, a Frenchwoman dropped her phone and he said to her, "Oh! You dropped-o your phone-o!" (Yep - Brent studied Spanish in high school.)

So the first day was spent walking down the Champs Elysees toward the Arc de Triomph, which honors those who fought for France. Underneath the beautiful monument is the tomb of the unknown soldier from World War I.


The next day - after we got our bearings a bit - we decided to hop on one of those tourist buses that travel around the city and stop at all the touristy places because those were the places that I wanted to see. Brent was less than enthusiastic about the crowds at those locations, but we both appreciated being able to see the city while traveling from spot to spot.

The first of the two days we rode the bus, we got off at Napoleon's tomb and the Hotel des Invalides, which houses the tombs of military leaders and is home to several museums and a modern hospital.

Afterwards, we hopped back on the bus and took it to the gorgeous Notre Dame Cathedral. Brent waited outside while I went inside and toured this amazing church - while mass was being held - but it was nice and quiet so I could appreciate its beauty both inside and out.


Our third stop was the one I was most excited about because it was something I was greatly anticipating - the Eiffel Tower. Those of you who attended my wedding know that Brent proposed to me at the top of the faux Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas and promised that he'd take me to the real one on our honeymoon.

But after I waited in line for about 45 minutes for tickets, I met a very upset Brent at the entrance.


Apparently, being on crutches was getting painful and the street vendors had hassled him to buy their trinkets one too many times. (You'd think that living in New York would make it so that you were relatively immune to people asking for change, etc., but it does quite the opposite. It ups the annoyance level tenfold. I am lucky if I only get asked for money once on my two-block commute to work.)

So though he was not in the best of moods while we were heading up the tower, I made the most of it, clicking photos of Paris from above, much like I clicked photos of Las Vegas from the faux tower.

A few days later, I was able to see it all lit up and sparkling from a spot near our hotel room, which I only have one word for: magical!

We spent the first part of our last day in Paris at the only museum that I could get Brent to go to: The Louvre.

Though we were only there for a little over two hours, we got to appreciate the sheer beauty of the building itself as well as the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.

There were also a lot of local artists there replicating the famous works of art. Now I'm not a professional artist, but it was nearly impossible for me to tell the difference between the originals and the local artists' creations.

Though Brent wasn't too impressed with Paris, I learned a lot about it during my years of studying the culture, so I was able to truly appreciate its history, and absolutely loved our time there.

Stay tuned to my next posting on the second part of our honeymoon in Nice, France!