The church had a really interesting design. You can see in the picture above the building is kind of in a square and the cars are all parked in the middle. You also had to walk down a little alley way to get inside. It was pretty cool, and it was only a few blocks down from the Notre Dame Cathedral. While we were there I got to say hi to someone who was on the same Delta flight as me. He and his wife and little 5month baby girl were here for a business trip. We waited for our luggage and started talking and mentioned "I'll see you at church on Sunday then!" but didn't actually think we would see each other again. It was kind of cool to see them and show Daniel who I was talking about when I told him about a nice couple helping me get my luggage off the belt.
When church was over we met up with one of Daniel's French friends just outside the church entrance and we walked over to the Pompidou Center in between the church and the Cathedral. Daniel's friend Pier sings with the Notre Dame Choir and became friends with Daniel during the tour. One of the days while Daniel was having lunch with Pier and some other friends from the choir they were talking about food and Pier mentioned how much he liked Peanut Butter but it was so hard to get in France. Daniel e-mailed me the next day and asked me to bring a jar of peanut butter in my bag. While hanging out at the Pompidou Center we gave Pier the peanut butter and he just started to laugh. He thought it was so nice of us to go out of our way to bring him something like that. He's a really nice guy.
We made our way over to the Cathedral and took a few pictures outside. Pier told us that he could get us in the employee entrance (since he was an employee of the choir) but we couldn't take our stroller. There were about 400 people waiting in line to get into the Cathedral and this was our last day to see it so since Daniel had been inside plenty of times rehearsing then performing during the tour he decided to wait outside with the boys while I went inside with Pier. He took me to the side entrance and punched in a code to get us in the big gate. He told me to look like I was suppose to be there. We walked into the side entrance and started making our way towards the inside of the Cathedral when a lady stopped us. She was speaking rapid French with Pier while I stood there quiet but confident that oh of course I was suppose to be there! Pier gestured to me a lot while talking to the lady and all of the sudden she motioned with her hands to follow her. I had no idea what was going on but I played along. She led us into a bathroom and locked the door behind us. Confused I turned to look at Pier and he said, "Oh I had to tell her that you had to go to the bathroom or she wouldn't have let us in. Do you need to use the bathroom?" "No" I said. "Well I do!" and Pier went into the stall to use the bathroom while I sat there with a red face waiting for the lady to come back. When she came back to let us out she started leading us back to where we came from but Pier told her that we could find our own way out and she said goodbye and walked off in a different direction. Pier detoured me off into the main part of the Cathedral and let me look around a little bit.
...How many of you can say you were locked in a bathroom with a French guy at the Notre Dame Cathedral?!!
After we said goodbye to Pier we started to walk back to the Pompidou Center to find somewhere to eat. We sat down to eat our sandwiches and noticed some really weird looking people dressed up in Alien costumes. Then we noticed a camera crew filming what looked like some low-budget French alien movie. They did a whole scene right next to our table the whole time we ate. I'm curious to find out what movie it was so I can see if we are in the background during that scene. What a random thing to happen while eating lunch huh?!
We watched the street performers at the Pompidou Center for a while then we kept walking to find the Hard Rock Cafe in Paris. Daniel's sister Rose and her husband Rod collect glasses and pins from the Hard Rock Cafe's. Since glasses are hard to keep safe while traveling we decided to get her pins from every Hard Rock Cafe we crossed in Europe. Our first stop we found a pin that looked like the Eiffel Tower. On our way to the Hard Rock Cafe we passed some cool looking museum thing that I'm sure is famous but I have no idea what it was called. The picture I took of Joshua was while we waited for Daniel to come out with the pin. He was so happy and smiley! It was still early enough to do something else so we decided to take the metro to the Eiffel Tower again. When we entered the Metro we saw this cool weird statue of a lady with her arms up carved into the wall. Random, but cool! We also saw this REALLY cool HUGE picture of Voldemort advertising the Harry Potter movie. Daniel and I are huge Harry Potter fans and we were holding out to see the last movie until we got to England but it was so much fun to see all of the posters all over the Metro stations advertising it. It got us really hyped up to see it.
We decided to take pictures underneath the Eiffel Tower this time. It was a really cool angle but the kids were not interested in getting their picture taken again. Which was totally fine because I got to take some one on one pictures with the man I love!
We decided to walk down to try and find the Statue of Liberty (I've wanted to see it since watching the movie National Treasure 2!). We started walking down what seemed like the right way to go until we hit a dead end. Annoyed we turned around and realized how incredible the Eiffel Tower looked from that angle. It was so gorgeous with the street lights and grass area that we decided to stop and take a few more pictures. We started walking again and after a while finally made it to the Statue of Liberty. My sister Brittanny was in Las Vegas with her family and she took pictures of her kids at the "Eiffel Tower" and "Statue of Liberty" all in one day. I decided to one-up her on that and we used the panoramic shot on my camera to take a picture with the REAL Eiffel Tower and REAL Statue of Liberty at the same time! Daniel's picture looks a little funny because there were cars driving by when I took it but you get the idea :)
We kept walking from there to try and find a Carrefour to buy some food. Along the way I got to try a Self-Cleaning Automatic Toilet. You go in, pee, wash your hands, then leave and the door shuts behind you and flushes the toilet and cleans the entire thing before letting the next person in. It was a little strange but kind of cool. We walked, and walked, and walked until we finally got to the Carrefour and found out it had already closed. The kids were going crazy being locked up in the stroller so we stopped off at the park next to the Carrefour and let them out. It was getting late and they were about to close the park but at least we had enough time to smell the flowers before we had to go.
I demanded we take the Metro all the way back because my feet were killing me and I was tired and hungry. By the time we got home we were all exhauted but happy with how the day went.
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