Paris

I don't know where to begin with Paris.

Looking back on the whole trip now (as I write this we're in Ireland at Dee's uncle Victor's house in a small town called Enniscorthy), there is no question that Prague was the most beautiful city we were able to see on the trip (and that either of us have ever seen), but we both have the same opinion about our favorite city overall, and that is Paris.

There's something in the air in Paris, and you can't even explain what it is. It feels unlike any place I've ever been, and everything there seems coated in this romantic glow. Rain in Paris on Sunday even felt different from rain in other places, as we walked through the neighborhood Montmartre, with its windmills on several street corners (including the red one - Moulin Rouge), steep hills on mostly pedestrian streets, the cemetery where I was able to see the grave of one of my favorite movie directors, Francois Truffaut (as an actor, most people know him only as the French scientist in Close Encounters of the Third Kind), and just the general atmosphere of this cool and popular neighborhood on a hill.

But the romance of Paris was also there as we watched rollerbladers performing on the bridge from the left bank of the Seine to l'Ile de la Cite by Notre Dame cathedral... and as we took a boat cruise along the Seine, with the Louvre on our left, the Musee d'Orsay on our right (we visited both of those museums and loved them- and yes, we saw the Mona Lisa too!), and the Eiffel Tower behind us... and as we sat on the lawn in front of the Eiffel tower at sunset with a crowd waiting patiently for the sparkling lights to come on... and as we walked along the river passing vendors selling old books, postcards, and new paintings.

It was amazing, and it was the fullest three day stretch of our trip, and that's why we didn't get to blog for the last five days.