Faith, Hope, and Love

Paris was not a part of the original plan. The original plan was simply London. Arrive a week before the wedding, spend time with the groom, meet the bride, get in some good family bonding time. Cheer them on their special day and then back to the States! But then my friends got whiff of my plans to jet to London and insisted they come along. And since one of them happens to be a French teacher, who just happens to take a group of teens every Spring break, but hasn't really gone kid-free in a while (if ever), Paris of course got added to the list. One thing Becky (the French teacher friend) insisted we do in Paris is climb the Eiffel Tower. She had never done it. I didn't tell her this, but that fact appalled me considering how many times she's been. Wouldn't the Eiffel Tower have been a mandatory stop on a school-related trip? Apparently not. So, on our second full day in Paris, we took the subway down to the Eiffel Tower and began our quest. It was bright, it ...

Actually, I hated Paris the first 6 hours we were there. And actually, maybe, even days before we got there. First of all, I wanted to take the Chunnel. I was very excited about riding a train or a bus under the English Channel from England and Paris. But, train tickets were expensive. And a bus basically took a whole freaking day. So we had to fly. And I had to buy our plane tickets like 4 times because of one disaster or another. It was a pain. But eventually, we got on a Lufthansa flight and we were making our way to Paris! Except, we had a layover in Frankfurt, Germany. And while Lufthansa itself is AMAZING (so much legroom, and free snacks and drinks for the shortest flight!), the airport was so... so... convoluted. We walked MILES just to get from one gate to another. Up stairs, down stairs, along walking sidewalks, up some more stairs, down some more stairs. I wanted to kill myself, as the hand luggage we decided to share dug itself deeper and deeper into my shoulder. (It wa...