Coghills Go International: {Day 1-2: Flight + Paris}

This is the first of several recaps from our trip abroad! These will be a mix of regular camera pictures, and those I took on my phone of Mars. I have a book on Shutterfly all made up, but I'm waiting for the right sale so that it won't be so costly to print ;)

{Just in case I didn't explain this before, we took Mars with us on our trip with Jillian's permission. You see, Mars is a birthstone beanie baby bear for the month of March. Original Mars was given to her at the hospital when David got really sick in 2014. (That Mars was lost, so we replaced him) When I asked her at the hospital what the bear's name was, she said "Colored Bear" o_O  (I quickly shut that one down!) I told her he had a birthday cake with the word "March" on there, and that he was a colorful bear. Well, shortly thereafter, March morphed into Mars, and that has been his name ever since (thank goodness!). Mars is actually the French word for the month of March, so I thought it would be something fun to take him to France with us. Plus, then Jillian could see all the cool places we saw/stuff we did that would be more interesting because of her bear. She loved getting an email every other day with pictures/videos of Mars to see what adventures he had. Now that we're home, I decided to make a full book of the trip using only Mars photos for Jillian to enjoy :)}

Without further ado, let us begin!

May 23, 2016

{Eating lunch at Chili's at O'Hare in Chicago}

{Waiting at our gate to go to Toronto}

{When in Canada, get Tim Horton's! We got a maple flavored iced cappuccino to share}

{We don't have any nearby, so I wanted to try it :)}

{Ready to board!}

May 24, 2016

{Our continental breakfast was a slice of banana bread, and any cold beverage we wanted. Mars and I agreed we were hungry, but had to wait until we landed}

{First stop in Paris, (well, after dropping off our luggage at a storage locker at the train station), the Eiffel Tower! We had tickets to ride up to the second floor and made it just in time. We took pictures, looked around, then got a quick bite to eat while enjoying the view :) After looking out, we walked to a nearby park for a better look}

{We passed under the tower on the way to another spot in town}

{We stopped at a tea house I wanted to see. It was a little fancier than I thought, but we got some really nice tea from a very nice, and polite gentleman}

{It was fun to just walk around the streets with no particular time to be anywhere. I truly enjoy just soaking in the atmosphere of a new-to-me city.}

{Mars in front of the Army Museum. I believe this is where Napoleon's tomb is! We didn't have time, or extra money, to go and see it in person this time. Maybe next time :)}

{Then we took the Metro to the Arc! Very crowded, but very cool to see in person. It would have been neat to go up to the top, but we had one more mission before we left Paris}

{For our anniversary, we decided to purchase macarons from the two stores who claim to have the best in Paris, Pierre Herme and Laduree. It was a close call, but we determined that Pierre Herme had the softest, and yummiest, macarons!}

{Soon, we boarded the train to get to the conference in Montpellier. To be continued...}