Forget the days...I'm just going to do the date now...July 10th 2011

BACK FROM PARIS!! I assume I'll post pictures first so I know what I am going to explain instead of trying to remember everything...the captions will tell you all about what I saw and then I'll write more at the end of everything else that didn't get a picture...


This was the inside the Eurostar train station. They have the olympic sign for the 2012 Olympics which will be held in London.



Another view

Megz and E-roc

The Eurostar...this thing is so cool to think that I went underwater for like 25 minutes...it gets a little cold once you are in the tunnel that is under the water! So cool!

PARISSSS!!

This is the river that flows through the middle of Paris. It really is a great way to get around because if you follow the river, you will usually get to where you need to go. The Notre Dame is in the background on the left in the very back.

The Notre Dame again.

There were tons of boats floating down the river...some were tour boats and our group actually took a "hop on hop off" boat that made it easy to travel to the Eifel Tour and such.

The left and right nuts. This was the first restaurant we ate at which was by The Notre Dame and the restaraunt was called Le Notre Dame. I had a burger with no bun and an egg on top with french fries. I guess they didn't want me to have a bun. I fell in love with their holandaise sauce that was killer.

I had myself a Stella and it was delicious and poured correctly! Here is Erica's Coke as well...I know I'm a little picture happy :)

Megz taking a picture of me drinkin' my Stella

The Notre Dame.

Myself in front of the Notre Dame.

This is the center of France. I thought it was cool that I was there so I took a picture :)

So let me be honest, there are tons of statues, bridges, and arcs that are all over Paris...and as a human being, it is really hard for me to remember which ones are which so instead of wondering what each arc, bridge, statue, etc is called please bare with me and just deal with the fact I don't want to sit and try to look up every single arc, bridge statue, etc. They were all just really pretty and I figured they deserved a picture.

Crazy bird man in front of the Notre Dame.

Birdman "BURR"

A bridge. No name that comes to mind but I do know that the N's stand for Napoleon and there were a lot of N's around the city so it was clear that Napoleon really had a thing for himself.

Pretttty bridge :)

So this bridge had all these tiny faces on them and each one were different and were so detailed. I was truly surprised about the detail that had to go into this city and how many man hours it took for each piece of architecture, artwork, etc. It was so amazing to see the work.

Pretty statue! I know that this King was responsible for really cleaning up Paris in a time of crisis.

The Louvre!!

A military building of some sort.

The pyramids at the Louvre!

Tons of pictures of the Louvre...

Me standing on a cube in front of the pyramids. I was pretty excited to be at the Louvre if you can't tell.

So the French used to believe that the Prime Meridian was located at this spot I am showing here. Now it is truly in Greenwich, England which I will get to visit very soon!! 

Megz pretty excited about it.

The Louvre, again...

Some ancient Greek statues that were HUGE and really cool to look at.

Cake pop and OJ at Starbucks.

An arc of some sort.

Do I need to explain?!?!

Another really cool arc. Pretty much anything you see in my pictures that is gold is pretty much real. They were pretty obsessed with gold and I thought it was interesting.

The river...again.

The Louvre from the outside.

This is a building where they put together world fairs. It was a huge building and somewhat interesting to look at.

Here is a statue that was near a bridge that was extremely pretty. It was decked out in gold so I had to take a picture!

Eifel Tower!!

This is a staircase that goes from the river to the entrance of the Eifel Tower.

Here is the Winged Victory at the Louvre! It is a big statue of a lady and she has no arms or head but she is pretty cool. To the left of the picture is a case that has her hand in it. It was found long after the statue was torn apart and the French luckily got a piece of her back.

Winged Victory from the side. 

Do I even need a caption for this lady?

So there is not a big interesting story behind this picture besides the fact that it was my favorite painting I have ever seen. The fact that the woman in this picture is taking down a dragon and has a feather in her hand is so awesome. She seems so calm and collected and that just shows how fierce she is as a woman.

I seemed to like all of the dark and mysterious paintings because they were harder to understand.

Pretty dark painting...

Leonardo da Vinci...no big.

I look a little stunned...but here is Mona and I.

The intersting hair style that a few men seemed to enjoy...shaved heads on top and rat tails with dreads...what the....

This was the original layout of the Louvre. Before Louvre was to become a museum, it was supposed to be a palace before the Palace of Versailles.

A well that was constructed at the Louvre.

More of the original construction of the Louvre...not going to lie I reached out and touched the bricks and it was pretty awesome...quite the rebel I am.

Sphinx! Ancient Sphinx! So cool to be right in front of it!

This thing was pretty awesome to look at because it had to be one of the older pieces in the bunch considering it was from Egypt.

Meg and I at the Louvre and its original construction...

The gelato shop at the Louvre made our gelato into the shape of flowers!! So cute.

This was a pretty site for me because the really pretty bridge and the Eifel Tower in the background :)

I just had to put this up because Megan's hair was so absolutely insane...SIMBA!!!

So here we are at the Champs Elysee and it is time to eat so we ate at the Pub Elysee. For those of you who don't know much about the Champs Elysee, Hitler marched the Nazi's through this street during WWII. Now this street is full of cars and expensive shops but the history is so rich and to think of the Nazi's walking down this street is extremely crazy.

Meat and cheese plate at Pub Elysee.

So here is Megs Croque Monsiuer. This sandwich is basically like a ham and cheese but they add cheese on top of the sandwich and butter on bottom and broil it. It is so extremely tasty but so bad for you but considering we had to have walked over  20 miles in less that 4 days makes up for our bad eating habits!

At Pub Elysee.

Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triumph.

Me standing on the Chaps Elysee.

I loved the Arc de Triumph because before I went on this trip, Mary (my teacher) showed us a video of Hitler driving through the Arc de Triumph and the Champs Elysee so I was infatuated.

So I love dogs, and this dog was huge and so incredibly sweet. I had to take a few pictures with this gentle giant!

In Paris you can have a beer and drink it too!

Erica Megz and I at the Eifel Tower trying to take pictures in the grass :)

The Eifel Tower and the beauty of it all lit up!

Enjoying the night at the Eifel Tower.

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Breakfast lunch and dinner = CARBSSS (this was breakfast)

This is the Palace of Versailles! This is where the Treaty of Versailles was signed and Marie Antoinette and King Louis XIV (the sun god) lived. 100,000+ people lived here at one time under King Louis XIV's reign serving him and doing whatever he wanted them to do.

This is a little out of place but we went to the Hard Rock Cafe in Paris and this is Eminem's outfit from a show he did.

A guitar used at one of Eminem's shows.

AC/DC!!

Another statue right outside the Palace of Versailles...this is King Louis XIV...the sun god!

Seriously...these are the doors into the Palace of Versailles.

Just a fraction of the hundreds of acres of gardens that were at the Palace of Versailles. A little bit of useless knowledge but King Louis used to make his servients go out and turn on the fountains when he passed by strolling through the gardens and it was the job of the servients to make sure each fountain was on as he was walking by. What kind of life is that?!

So here is inside of Marie Antoinette's cottage which is more like a small mansion in my eyes. The story about all the clothing is that a lot of top designers have put together clothes that kind of are influenced by Marie Antoinette's lifetime and companies like Chanel, Prada and many other companies put their wardrobes in her cottage and are on display for the public to see all year.

Marie Antoinette's "cottage"

Some more of the designer clothing inside of the cottage.

Some decoration in Marie's cottage.

A hall in Marie's cottage. I pretty much touched every door handle I could...I have a little history on my hands ;)

One of Marie's bedrooms.

The garden right behind Marie's cottage.

Another picture in front of a fountain and the garden's at the cottage.

These are real accessories that Marie used to wear in her days.

Her shoes were so narrow and high heeled and to put this into perspective, I was wearing flip flops and considering the floors were marble, it was extremely easy to slip and walking down the stairs I had slipped once. SO to be Marie and walk in those shoes leaves me wondering how she did it! She probably had someone carry her everywhere hahaa.

So here is Mya Erica and Megz on our boat we rented that was on a pond in the garden's at Versailles. I can't even tell you how funny it was to have four girls try to row a boat outside of the dock area...wasn't possible for us. But at least we have awesome and cute pictures that make us look like we were professionals.

One of our friends Kelsey and a bit of Ashia on the boat next to us!

Boating it up!

Megz and I!

So here is a chapel that was in the royal sector of the Palace of Versailles. Everything within this palace was HUGE and pictures unfortunately do not do it justice. France in general is just larger than life.

Some music making thing-a-ma-jig within the royal quarters of the Palace.

So the cool thing about this picture is...here is the fireplace...

And in this picture here is a lady sitting right next to the exact fire place as the picture before...it was pretty crazy.

So Hennessy and Louis Vuitton celebrate their anniverary at the Palace of Versailles eh? SHEESHHHHH.

Not exactly sure what the LP stands for but I had to put my hand on a window that had to have been touched by royalty :)

A palace view of the gardens.

The window handle up close.

Here is the famous "Hall of Mirrors" where the Treaty of Versailles was actually signed to end WWI. This room was extremely beautiful but also was filled with excitement and tons of history.

Me inside of the Hall of Mirrors.

The Chandelier was so pretty :)

So here is the most exciting part of the palace...here is where Marie Antoinette slept in the royalty quarters. There were tons of people in this room and of course being as tall as I am...I got a good shot of her bed. She had a gold gate surrounding her bed and the detail of her room was absolutely insane.

Marie's room take 2

A statue inside the Hall of Mirrors. The detail is just wild.

The mirror inside Marie Antoinette's room.

The dinner table in the royalty chamber.

A room inside the royalty chamber. More than likely a place where royalty could sit and relax and enjoy company.

Once again, pictures do not do justice but this painting was HUGE and covered an entire wall. Of course this was in the royalty chamber and the ceilings were painted with angels and all the crazy detail you could EVERRRRRR imagine. WOW.

So here we are back at the Hard Rock Paris and these are the glasses of Elton John! It looks like the shutter shades in the background began with Elton...not Kanye!!

Mya me and Ashia!

Megz and I awaiting our train from Paris to London to get back home to Nottingham!

Erica is sad to leave lol.

Our aching and swollen feet!

So basically those were the most important pictures from Paris in my eyes. The amount of detail put into that city is mind blowing and I couldn't imagine putting the man hours in. To touch on the quality of the city, the city was extremely dirty. The air was polluted, the river water was greenish brown and the underground smelled of urine. You definitely have to get passed the dirtiness of the town to enjoy what Paris has to offer. To get around, it was fairly easy but Mary, Lisa, and Steve had to help us out a lot which made my life twenty times easier. The food was delicious! We stayed at Excelsior Latin which was a pretty decent hotel. Thankfully not a hostel! I just have to say that I am so blessed to be doing the things that I am doing and I couldn't thank my supporters enough. Life is a journey and I feel like I really am taking advantage of what life has to offer. I love you all and I will post tomorrow about my last two days in Nottingham so you can soak Paris in and so I can get some sleep...LOVE YOU ALLLLLL!!!!

SINCERELY,
ASHLEE JORDYN MURRAY