How we ate and bled our way through Paris

As promised, this blog will be heavy on the pictures: we were recently able to spend a long weekend in Paris. It did not go as planned but we were able to spend a few days with a family studying French before moving to Senegal to do some pastoral training. We'll give you the highlights in no particular order.

 Bridge near the Military Museum and Palaces.

 We really enjoyed the architecture. This was near one of our train stops, Chatelet des Halles.

We took a walk down Champs Elysees starting at the the Arch of Triumph. There was McDonalds and Starbucks and yes, that black car IS covered in velvet.

Obviously, the Eiffel Tower. We walked about 10 miles on Saturday and ate a lot of delicious crepes.

We came back at night to se the Tower all lit up. It was definitely worth it. The Eiffel tower now "sparkles" for the first 5 minutes of ever hour.

We spent a morning in the Louvre which was enormous. If you were in there 24/7 and looked at each work of art for only ten seconds it would take 6 weeks to get through. We did see the Mona Lisa. Spoiler Alert: it's an 8x10.

 Again, beautiful architecture and the weather was fresh-in the high 60's which was a welcome break from the heat for us.

We even met a man from Dakar, Senegal selling Eiffel Tower keychains. He understood my Wolof. 

The bridge near Notre Dame (while there, you have to pronounce it correctly). Traditionally, when someone gets engaged here, the couple puts a padlock on the bridge and throws the key into the Seine. 

The Luxembourg Gardens 

We spent a good chunk of time on the RER subway system. We saw some tough guys working out along the river which reminded us of our Weightlift-a-thon...Also, cops on rollerblades. 

The Notre Dame Cathedral was one of our favorites. The builder started a project that took 190 years to build. What a visionary! And people have been worshipping in this building for 850 years!

We also walked our (literally) bloody feet to the Musee d'Orsay where there was a big Van Gogh display.

 We enjoyed the outdoor market shops all over: bakeries, pastry shops, cheese shops, veggie stands, nutella crepes. We ate our way through the city!

A few other things you should know:

Thanks to your faithfulness our account is full enough for us to finish out the month of April and start working our way home. We're aiming to be back by June 1, details forthcoming.

The Ebola Virus epidemic in Guinea has pushed Senegal to close their border with Guinea. Although this does not effect us directly, if Mali closes their border with Guinea, we will have a hard time getting out of here. Most of the cases remain about 200 miles south of us. Pray that we will still have the ability to leave Guinea when the time comes!

To give you some perspective on Ebola, we'll give you a little reading on some"Flu Facts" as everyone is supposedly well-versed in how dangerous the flu is in the US. Keep in mind that Ebola kills 90% of its victims regardless of age. Keep the people of Guinea in prayer too as they fight against this disease, and for the people who have lost many family members to the disease.