Parents in Paris (my dad's title)

After midterm week, my parents rolled in Friday morning! Since then, I've gone through lots of new tourist sites and definitely eaten more than I usually do (and much, much better). It's been really great. Friday, I met them at their hotel, two metro stops from my own. We wandered around while we waited for them to get the room ready (and munched on my first free pastry!). After we were situated, I showed them rue Daguerre, where I both take classes and do my internship. We ate at a cafe I couldn't generally afford and had a good time. We then stopped by Oxfam, where my adorable internship boss did her best to speak English to us and Mom bought a book. After visiting the IES building as well, we decided to do one of the walking tours. It started in the Luxembourg gardens...

Reflecting pool on the far side

Our next stop was Saint-Sulpice, a church I'd never been to and also heavily mentioned in the Da Vinci Code. I need to reread that book.

After a quiet dinner that night, we rested up so that we could go to Reims the next day!

The famous cathedral

David: Marat Assassiné. One of my favorites.

A modern sculpture entitled "Press on towards the goal"

See, they really were here!

Here St. Remi baptized Clovis, King of the Francs

Champagne tour!

It's the biggest bottle: 15 L/20 regular sized bottles

I don't remember which church this is. That will be a theme.

Sunday was free museum day! We went to the Orangerie, the Louvre, and Angelina's (not a museum, but very good). After dinner at my host family's house, we went back out to see the Monet exhibit. 200 Monets and an excellent audio guide later, we were very happy and went home to bed, thoroughly museumed-out.

Dad: Oh good, I took it blurry! I think his paintings make more sense that way.

Venus de Milo!

Dad, Diane, me, Mom, and Miles!

Monday, I had class and then we went to the Opera Garnier and the Galeries Lafayette, the fancy shopping place right by the Opera house. 

Me + Phantom of the Opera = win.

Tuesday night, Mom and Dad took a day trip and I went to class. My last class was at the Sorbonne. Here's the building my class is in...

 Pretty swanky, eh?

The next day we began our Loire Valley trip with the Chateau de Clemenceau!

spiral staircase by Leonardo da Vinci. It has two sides that never connect and intertwine...

Our fancy manor house-- where we stayed on Wednesday and Thursday night!

Sleeping Beauty's castle!!

Pretty gardens! Also, an accurate representation of the weather we had all week. 

The story of Sleeping Beauty, including wax figures, was reenacted in one of the towers.

There's the beautiful blonde princess!

I wrote the rest of this but all of it got lost thanks to some glitch in the system earlier today. I need to get some actual homework done, so here ends Part 1. The other part will be up soon!