A Parisian Birthday

Jason surprised me with an overnight trip to Paris for my thirty-first birthday!  Then, just when I thought my birthday wouldn't get any better, I found an amazing horse sweater to wear for the trip.  What luck!

My adorable husband got us bread, wine and cheese to eat on the two hour trip.  The train ride took us under the English Channel (!) and was mostly dark along the way, so we spent our time chatting, eating and I also got quite a bit of knitting done!

You may be confused as to why there aren't already fifty pictures of our adorable child in this post.  That's because SHE DIDN'T COME WITH US!  My amazing friend Mary offered to watch her (thankyouthankyouthankyou).  I felt terrible for being excited to spend my birthday without my child, but having an overnight date with my husband in Paris was so romantic and wonderful, that I got over it pretty quickly.  Jason did too:

Our hotel was pretty cool.  Once upon a time it was a presbytery/rectory for priests, but has since been converted into a hotel.  It was a bit dingier than the website makes it look, but it was still lovely. 

Once we ditched our bags, we went on a long walk along the Seine over towards the Eiffel Tower.  There was a gorgeous path down by water, but it looked a bit rapey, so we decided to use the upper sidewalk.  It made for some lovely photo ops!

Eventually, we crossed to the other side of the river in search of some dinner. 

But I don't want to write about dinner.  The food was pretty terrible (how that is allowed to happen in Paris, I will never know).  It was also very expensive.  Le sigh.  However, we made up for it with an absolutely perfect Parisian breakfast:

 

Then we embarked on another long walk.  Here are some of the sites we saw:

pretty gardens

death place of Marie Antoinette

he needs to pay less attention to the ferris wheel and more attention to his lady

an Egyptian obelisk
(Seriously.  They dragged this thing from EGYPT!)

this marshmallow, cream thing was amazeballs

Christmas market

chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Jason and the Arc de Triomphe

we were already overloaded with sweets when we saw the Laduree shop, but still needed a pic

Jason getting a Christmas beer from a twelve-year-old boy.

Jason on why he likes Christmas beer:  "I like beer and I like Christmas" 

Lamborghini ride anyone?

cookies!

We want to take Charlie back when she is big enough so she can ice skate here!

I could go into way more detail, but I don't want to exhaust you all.  Just know that it was a wonderful, magical trip and I absolutely loved it!!

In closing, I should probably admit that we had not one, not two, but three Nutella crepes while in Paris.  I think I'm going to be in my fat jeans for the foreseeable future.