Ryan and I arrived in Paris a few days before our 1st wedding anniversary. What better place, am I right? Obviously, there's a lot to love and a lot OF love in Paris. We started our week here off right by visiting the Eiffel Tower on day 1. While it's not as pretty in person as the romanticized version of the tower we see on TV, it is rather neat. It was designed to be an entryway for the 1889 World's Fair. It was meant to be torn down 20 years later as a lot of the Parisians at the time did not like the structure, but as we all know, it has now become the very symbol of the city.
In true Parisian style, we stayed in a tiny, tiny 2nd floor apartment. It was styled how I'd imagine a French grandmother's place would be: antique furniture, quirky paintings, and for some reason an excessive amount of chairs. It was in the neighborhood of Montmartre, just down the street from the Moulin Rouge and the CimitiĂšre du Nord, which is home to beautiful, intricate mausoleums for famous residents such as Jacques Offenbach (composer) and Alexandre Dumas (novelist, playwright).
For our anniversary, we embarked on a mission to find a park nearby where we could have a romantic picnic, for which we were well-equipped. Unfortunately, while there are a plethora of parks in the area, we didn't end up finding one that would allow us to enjoy our bottle of wine with the bread, meats and cheeses we'd packed. After a few attempts, we decided to return to our cute apartment and escape the wicked summer heat. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to go to elegant, beautiful dinners all the time; this whole year, every night feels like date night. We decided to have this night in, just two best friends celebrating their union. In true Ryan and Jessa fashion, we also held a competition that involved our favorite card games â a few we brought from home and some others we have learned along the way. I'm not going to gloat, but I did win by a landslide - like a true champion. It was more romantic in that teeny apartment, sipping on fancy champagne with raspberries and visiting/laughing with my love than anything else I could have hoped for.
One of my other favorite parts of our week in Paris was, of course, the Louvre Museum. For a reasonable price, you can enter one of the most incredible art museums in the world. AND if you pick the right time, there's no line! How crazy is that? For some reason,we were truly not expecting it to be as epic as it was. We decided to go late to avoid the crowd, leaving ourselves 2-3 hours to explore before it closed for the day (we have NEVER spent more than that at a museum). However, before we knew it, they were announcing the museum was closing in 15 minutes and we had barely scratched the surface. There was still so much to explore, so Ryan agreed to take me again. We left ourselves a bit more time on our next visit, but still ended up closing it down. Some of the art was a bit graphic for my taste, but seeing the Mona Lisa in person was pretty cool (I guess?). My favorite part of the museum was the collection of larger-than-life Greek statues â walking among the hundreds of them at 9:30 pm when no one else was around is a memory I'll treasure forever.
While ordering could be daunting due to the language difference, the food was amazing! Course meals are seriously the way to do it. You eat the same (or more) than American portions, but you feel healthier and much fancier while doing it â they also regularly include wine in the deal, which for me really seals it. When we weren't hungry enough for one of those meals, we would seek out some fresh, warm croissants or mouth-watering macaroons unlike any I've tried before.
We very rarely stay anywhere for more than 3 or 4 nights in a row, so staying anywhere for an entire week is a relief. Paris was one of those places that obviously would have been easier and more comfortable if we'd been more familiar with the language, but our time there was well-spent.
