those city lights {paris, part one}

{view from the top of the eiffel tower}

happy tuesday! i hope you’re weekend was great. mine was spent recovering from my trip to paris last week. it was everything i ever dreamed of. i’m blogging this in two parts  cause i’m a chatty kathy and a snappy sally (is that a thing? i feel like that a should be thing. a snappy sally. ya know someone who takes a lot of pictures?) i almooost did it all in one post, but turns out that i’m more of a chatty kathy and snappy sally (i am fiercely fighting for this to be a thing guys) than i originally thought so two posts it is!

{versailles}

{hall of mirrors}

{fountains of versailles}

{marie antoinette’s hamlet}

versailles was unbelievable. the gardens stretch for miles, and not only is there the world’s largest royal palace, but there are also several outbuildings including the grand trianon, the petit trianon, and marie antoinette’s private estate, the hamlet, which she created to mimic the life of a peasant in order to get away from the pressures of royal court.

{ the belllsssss offfff notreeeeee DAMEEEEEE. said like this guy. psssst skip to 6:35 }

{ inside the cathedral }

oh my gosh look at that light on the wall from the stain glass. gah i can’t get over it.  i got to climb to the top of notre dame and not gonna lie i felt like quasimodo….minus the hunchback. no scratch that, i felt more like esmeralda. when i was studying up on travel guides i read that there were 387 steps to the top and i was like “no biggie. pshhh 387? i will OWN those stairs,” but they didn’t tell me that the stairs weren’t normal stairs. they were almost 800 year old stairs that were shaped like wedges so if put your foot down on the wrong side of the step you would fall alllllll the way down, and they were about one and a half feet wide and two feet steep. scary stuff guys. the view at the top was all worth it though.

also, afterwards i was so inspired in quasimodo/esmeralda-ness that i watched the hunchback of notre dame as soon as we got back to our hotel and it was so weird because i was like “hey i sat there. hey i climbed those stairs. hey thank goodness i didn’t try and jump off the top like he just did” basically i was travelgeeking out.

{ point zero }

look out for part two!