Arc de Triomphe

I'm finally finishing our France trip. I know I kind of left it hanging for a while, but I'm back in commission.
All I can say about this place is that there was crazy traffic and it's a lot bigger than you think. I have video of it, but I'm still trying to get that to work. We heard a honk about every three seconds because there is a huge round about that goes around the Arc. You take a tunnel that goes under the street and up to the Arc. Also, it is the start of Champs Elysees a really famous street that we walked several times. The shopping was AMAZING! I just ran from rack to rack saying "I love Paris, I love Paris!" I literally could have dropped 1000 euro in 30 minutes. Too bad that's like a billion US dollars! Nonetheless, I got a few great things and I'm saving big time for next time.

Louvre

Notre Dame

I LOVED Notre Dame. It was one of our favorites. When you get off the metro it's right smack in front of you. It was the first thing we saw in Paris and maybe it was the surreal feeling that we were somewhere that we've only seen on TV or in pictures, but it was truly amazing.

Luckily there were some girls from London that were staying at the same hotel as us and we all got to the bus station at the same time. Come to find out they were headed to Notre Dame as well and they took us around for most of the day with them to help us learn the Metro. Our hotel was about 40 minutes from Paris so we had to take a bus to the train station and then a train into Paris. We were really nervous about it. I honestly don't know what we would have done if we didn't run into them. Little did they know they were an answer to our prayers. There was also a French man who overheard we needed a three day pass for metro/train/buses and he went to the ticket office with us and told the lady in French what we needed. Everyone said that the French hate Americans, but we never had a problem. They were all so nice to us. Maybe we just ran into the few who just don't care. haha.

Forest

Aimee and Renaud have a forest almost in their backyard and it's so beautiful. The best way to describe it is Robin Hood.

All of the castles have escape routes the lead to the forest in case they were seized. This was one that either collapsed or was blown up in world war two. A lot of people used them to hide during the war so most were bombed.
These slugs were disgusting. At first I couldn't figure what a bright orange thing was doing in the forest and then I nudged it with my shoe and it moved. I was a little freaked out.

Usse

This castle was what inspired the author of Sleeping Beauty. It was most definitely a princess castle.
Just having a picnic next to the castle. No big deal, Gregg and I totally do that all the time.

The guy in the left of this picture was one of the people who lived in the castle. It appeared he was trying to get layed by bragging to the girl. Okay, I'd brag too, but not to get layed...haha.

Langeais

We ate like this every day and still lost weight. whasssup?!

Downtown Le Mans

This was seriously breathtaking. I found that the Gothic era was my favorite architectural period.
People still live and use these roads. No wonder their cars are so little.

Aimee and Renaud took us out to dinner and these were our yummy appetizers. The top is scallops and grapefruit and the bottom is shrimp. I forgot to take pictures of the main dishes. It was like eating at La Caille, but much better. In fact I had Caille for dinner which is some type of bird.

24 Hour Races

For all of you car people out there we got to go to the famous 24hr race track in Le Mans. They had a car museum that had a ton of really cool cars that I knew nothing about. I took pictures for my dad because I knew he would know most of them. Also, I'm combining a lot of pictures into collages so just click on them to see the pictures bigger. I took the Bentley picture for Josh and Kim and they'll know why!No, I'm not being serious in this photo.