Home again!

Well, we're back.
Our "fly home" day was probably one of the longest days I've ever had the displeasure of being involved in. We were up for 22 hours straight by the time we got home and sat down for a minute. But before we talk about me being on a plane, you might be wondering "What happened in between the 30th of December and now?"
On New Year's Eve, we attempted to go to see the City of Paris catacombs, but they closed early! We got there an hour before they closed, but the line up was two blocks long. A museum employee came and told us that we could stay in line, but at that point it would take us an hour and a half to get close to the front. We decided it wasn't worth it to try our luck, and instead hopped on the Metro and rode to Notre Dame. We hadn't been inside yet, so we lined up to do that instead.
Because the inside of Notre Dame is nothing like the top (there's lots of space, it doesn't cost anything to come in, and there's no limit of people on a tour) the line moved really fast and we were inside in about 15 minutes. I was stunned at just how big it was. The church itself is huge, and then there's alcoves along the sides that hold graves, models of the church, statues, paintings, and the famous stained glass windows. We wandered for about an hour inside, taking pictures of everything and keeping quiet while doing so. There was about 100 people in the church praying when we walked through, spread out through the many pews. There were even priests there, taking people into booths for confessions. Once we were done looking at things in Notre Dame, we went back to our favorite restaurant, Pizza Enio! We ate and then went to our apartment to get ready for New Year's, which we thought was supposed to be a big deal.
Once we were ready, we went to Champs d'Elysses to see what was going on there. We'd read on the internet that it was supposed to be festive and a lot of fun. When we got there, we found that it was just very crowded. There wasn't anything going on other than people walking up and down the street, and all of the stores were boarded up. The police were out in riot gear, and all of the restaurants were super busy, because they were the only things open. We walked the street for a bit, and then decided we'd go check out the Eiffel Tower instead.
We walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower instead of taking the Metro, because the trains were so packed. The park around the tower was really busy, but wasn't nearly as crowded as Champs d'Elysses. We found a spot in the park, and watched the fireworks. The fireworks weren't nearly as good as the ones in Edmonton, we were a little underwhelmed. It was cool to see them light up the tower with flashing lights when the clock struck midnight, though. Once the fireworks were done, we walked a few blocks to a smaller Metro station hoping that a smaller metro line would be less busy. We were right! We hopped on a train that was nice and roomy, and took it home.
On New Year's Day, almost everything was closed (except Pizza Enio!), so we cleaned up the apartment and started packing. We got up really early the next day, took a taxi to the airport, and flew for 11 hours to Calgary. Once we got into Calgary, we found out that British Airways had lost Kassandra's luggage, and we had missed our flight to Edmonton. We lined up at Air Canada, got tickets and then went through the long (really long) security line up. Once we got back to Edmonton, we basically flopped over and fell asleep.