30th birthday! (Part 2)-French Police Stations and broken elevators.

Saturday was my birthday and I woke up to a beautifully sunny day in France. I started the day off right by opening my present from Meagan! It was a wonderful box full of 30's! Pictures, memories, balloons, candles, cards, and oreos. After I fully reviled in my presents, we headed out for the day to explore the sites of Paris, starting our day off right at a cafe'. We sipped hot chocolate and ate croissants and crepes while looking at the Pantheon in front of us. But, back to the croissants. They were A-Mazing! These were not your pillsbury-dough-pop-the-top-and-roll-out croissants. No, they were indescribable! After we finished. we headed for the Pantheon, which was beautiful and picturesque. From there, we could look one direction and see the Eiffel Tower and look another and see Notre Dame. The Eiffel Tower looked pretty far away so we opted to walk to Notre Dame.

Notre Dame was beautiful and awe-inspiring. It is a huge cathedral that is still in use today.  After we explored that, we bought a painting on the street as a memento of our time spent in Paris. Then we decided to head back to check on our car and grab our coats out of it before heading to the Eiffel Tower(by the metro, not by foot!).

When we approached the place where Dan parked our car, we realized that the whole line of cars that was there the night before was gone, including our car!! This could be a big problem. So we head back to the hotel and the manager called the police for us to see if it had been towed but they claimed they did not have it. The manager gave us the address for the police station to go make a report for our apparently stolen car. When we arrived at the station, no one spoke English. I felt like it was a scene from a movie. The woman helping us could say a few words but had a difficult time understanding what we were saying. We were there for about 45 minutes before they were finally able to locate our car in the French impound lot. Our car had indeed been towed.

Now to most, this might seem like a bad thing, but if you were originally thinking your car was stolen and you were going to have to buy a 38,000euro car that you don't even get to keep, then a 136euro fee for getting your car out of the French impound was a small price to pay. By the grace of God, we found the impound lot after taking the Metro(subway), getting lost, taking the Metro again and finding a police officer who directed us to the 4th story underground of a shopping center, where we found our car. It was a crazy time.

By this time, we were tired. Our feet were tired. But dangit, it was my 30th birthday, we were in Paris, and I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower! So we hopped back on the Metro and headed to the Eiffel Tower.

After we came out of the metro station, I was frantically looking around for the Eiffel Tower but couldn't see it. Finally we came around a building and I looked up. . .and there it was in all its glory. It was everything I ever imagined and then some. It was beautiful and majestic and took my breath away. We took pictures and marveled at it. We decided we were going to come back the next day (because I wanted to see it in the daytime as well) and we would go up it then. If we went that night, we would miss our train home and have to walk 4km. I could barely walk the 200 yards to the train station so we were not missing that train.

When we got back near our hotel, we decided to eat dinner at another cafe. We sat outside under an awning, with heat lamps and enjoyed some French cheese and some of the best wine I have ever tasted. My birthday was complete! I was 30 and in an amazing city, sipping wine with my husband, watching the Parisians pass us by.

The next day we headed back to the Eiffel Tour and rode the elevator up to the 2nd floor. The 3rd floor was closed due to congestion so we couldn't go all the way to the top but the view from the 2nd floor was amazing! It was very surreal. We were trying to decide if we should take the stairs down (yes and crazy people take them up as well) but opted for the elevator because our feet were still recovering from the day before. As soon as we got to the bottom, the elevator went a little lower than it was supposed to, not aligning itself with the door. All of a sudden these loud sirens start going off, not exactly the sounds you want to hear when you're stuck in a world famous monument. The elevator went up a few inches, then back down a few inches. The lady operating the elevator told us it would be 2 minutes. They would take the elevator up a few feet and then back down but it would never align itself to where it was supposed to go. Finally, it took us all the way back up, stopped half-way down, at which point I started getting pretty nervous because who wants to be stuck several hundred feet in the air? But we started moving downwards again and finally they gave up after about 20 minutes of this and pried the doors open and let us all out. It was an experience. Next time, I think we'll take the stairs down.

Then we had lunch at one more cafe' and then headed out of town. We stopped in Brugge, Belgium for the night and spent the next morning wandering around this cute city and eating Belgian waffles and buying Belgian chocolate. It was fantastic.

Overall, I have to say this was the best birthday ever.  Thank you to a wonderful husband who knows how to surprise me and makes sacrifices so that he can treat me to incredible experiences!