Shallow Pockets Brimming with Bridge Scaling

Paris is a pretty big city, especially when you're walking it. After the Arc we tried to decide which sites we really wanted to make it to. I had been hoping to see the Louvre but you really have to dedicate more than an afternoon to it, so we decided to journey towards Notre Dame. And I really wanted to see the islands! I never made it there last time.

If I ever make it back to Paris my trip will revolve around the Louvre and only the Louvre.

When I came across this bridge last Spring Break I didn't know the meaning behind the locks. I found an article a few months later explaining that lovers decorate a lock, attach it to the chain link, and toss the key into la Seine as an illustration of their forever-love. Seeing as how it was my parents' 25th anniversary it seemed only fitting they have a lock of their own [cue 'aww's]. There are vendors all along the river and most of them sell little locks, so we found a vendor and my mama borrowed a Sharpie [my dad has typical left hand scrawl so mam's penmanship was the obvious choice].

 

Now here's where the humor of this touching little story comes in. The vendor was a few blocks down the river and my mama's heeled boots were aching her feet so deal was- mom writes the names, dad goes back and locks the lock to the bridge, and then we bring the keys back for mama to toss into the river. So, daddy finds a spot on the bridge [nice choice, no?] and we walk back to mom and cross another bridge. She poses for a picture of her dropping the keys in and, when she lets go, she drops them straight down... not into the water but onto an overhang on the bridge about two feet down!! My poor mama feels so bad about this that my dad actually scales the bridge to retrieve the key and hand it back to my mom for a proper throw.
If that's not love, what is?? <3

We did finally make it to Notre Dame but tours were closing in an hour and the line was INFINITE. Also, they only let twenty people in at a time... so we settled on outside-pictures and drinking wine at a cafe in view of Notre Dame. Basically the same thing, right?

 

Charlemagne and the Dame.

We didn't linger long in Paris the next day. While our hotel was lovely and the city was beautiful... it just wasn't the city for us. Parisians don't exactly go out of their way to make you feel welcomed, or even tolerated, do they? So we headed to Strasbourg and crossed our fingers that there might be more German than French influences there!