Paris... my birthday and a little extra!

Our trip on the Thalys train to Paris was about a 4 hour ride. We arrived around 10:30 pm and were quick to find our next transportation to get to our hotel. We soon arrived to our last subway stop, walked up the stairs and there stood the well known Arc de Triomphe. Not a bad Paris greeting! From there we walked about 5 or so minutes to find our hotel. We ended up getting a really good deal on our hotel (stay 2 nights, get the 3rd night free) and would soon realize why! The whole hotel was going through rehab... so half the hotel was "new" and half was definitely old. We were first shown the new, updated rooms, which I am not quite sure why they do this because they immediately then showed us our room that was very small, dark, and very old! The air conditioning wasn't working and there was not typical breakfast like the website promised. We would find out later that the internet wasn't working as well. Needless to say we weren't very happy about all the false advertising, but remembered we were in Paris and decided to head to the Eiffel Tower to erase all bad thoughts.

To view the Eiffel Tower, it was only about a 5 minute walk from our hotel (which might have been the only plus for the hotel). I had read before coming that at the top of each hour the tower would begin to twinkle it's 10,000 white lights. It only seemed appropriate to watch the Eiffel Tower twinkle at midnight... the start of my birthday! After standing in front of the massive structure for a while, we decided to head towards to Champs Elysees to grab a bite to eat, view the street at night time, and then head back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.

The next morning we awoke and decided that the Eiffel Tower would be our first stop of the day. I wanted to go up into it on my birthday, but upon arriving we noticed the lines already were very long and the skies were starting to get a little black. We stood around contemplating if we should wait for another day, but ended up deciding to go up. However, we chose to go up the stairs to skip the long lines (because obviously no one wants to climb 668 stairs except our crazy selves). It didn't take too long to reach the 2nd level and then we went up the rest of the way in an elevator. The views were fantastic. You could see every part of Paris perfectly whether it was the Seine River, Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, Louvre Museum, or the Paris Ferris wheel. After a million pictures were taken, we headed back down to see what the rest of the city had to offer.

While walking down the street to find a place to eat breakfast, we ran into the Flame of Liberty. This was made to replicate the Statue of Liberty's flame, but also is an unofficial memorial for Princess Diana. It just so happens the Flame is right above the tunnel entrance where Princess Diana died in a car crash in 1997. From there we crossed the street and ended up at a small cafe where we ordered some ham, cheese, and potato omelets which were quite delicious.

We then walked down the Champs Elysees to see the many expensive shops as well as view the Arc de Triomphe. Throughout the day we did quite a bit of souvenir shopping and also found some nice shirts in the NikeParis and Adidas stores. We might have been able to spend all day in the Adidas store because they had some cool coordination games to play, but figured that probably wouldn't be the best idea. By this time we managed to do quite a bit of walking so we decided to go back to the hotel to take a little rest before our next adventure.

After a nice rest, we hopped on a metro towards the Hard Rock Cafe for my birthday dinner. We both got delicious meals, I had chicken nachos and Andrew had a steak sandwich. We also celebrated with a birthday shot because you then were able to keep the shot glasses that read Hard Rock Paris on them. From the Hard Rock we then made our way back to the Eiffel Tower to watch more twinkling lights!

Andrew and I actually walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower on my birthday night and tried to find the best place possible to view the twinkling lights... the ending to a great birthday. Little did I know Andrew had a little more up his sleeve than just to view the tower. When the thousands of lights began to twinkle Andrew dropped down on one knee and asked me to marry him!!! I was by far taken back and asked him a good 5 times if he was joking. Finally he convinced me he was serious and I of course said yes! I always knew we would get married, but never expected to be proposed to in Paris, France! It definitely was the best birthday (and birthday present) I have ever had and a day I (and I know he) will never forget! We then called our parents to tell them the fabulous news and walked back to the hotel to get much needed sleep for another eventful day on Saturday.