Paris!

Bonjour! My dream of going to Paris came true this past weekend! First, I’d like to say that I did not meet any rude Parisians. Every waiter/waitress/store clerks/people on the street were very nice to us. Sooo do not believe this when people tell you that they are rude! Anyways, I took a flight on Wednesday afternoon with my friend Kelly and arrived at our hostel that night. It turned out being a hotel and was very nice considering the cheap price that we paid. Our room was cute and quaint, and the best part was that there was a terrace overlooking our street. We were basically in the center of Paris and had a metro station right by our hotel so we could get anywhere we wanted really easily.

            I got to practice my French and I ordered most of my meals in French, so I was pretty proud of myself. There was a French song that I learned in middle school in which some of the lyrics are “Je voudrais une orangina”…I was able to say this for real at a café which I was pretty excited about. I had the following foods, most of which I loved.

- pain au chocolat

- croissant

- the crepes were fabulous (I had one every day, and one I even had under the Eiffel Tower)…one with nutella, w/ nutella and bananas, w/ jam, and with dark chocolate. I am pretty much addicted to Nutella after coming here because it is served with everything.

- quiche

-parisien salad

-steak et frites

-croque monsieur

            The first morning we went off to the Louvre! We got some pictures with the pyramids (which are in the Da Vinci Code!) and then headed inside. I had known this museum was huge, but didn’t realize exactly how huge it really is. We headed right to the Mona Lisa because we knew that there was going to be tons of tourists heading there. It is so small, under inches of bullet proof glass, and you have to wait in line to see it…extremely over-rated, but I’m glad I saw it. The Louvre is very tiring and we were ready to leave after 2 ½ hrs…barely enough time to make a dent in the amount of artwork there. They say that in order to appreciate every piece of art in the museum, that you would have to spend 9 months there.

            After leaving, we got to see the Notre Dame and I posed like Quasimodo. After learning about this church in class for years, it was great to be able to see it in person. It is right next to the Seine River, which had tons of huge boats going down it packed with tourists. Then we headed over to Luxembourg gardens which was absolutely gorgeous.

            The next day we went to the Eiffel Tower! We climbed up to the 2^nd level and took an elevator to the top from there. The view was absolutely breathtaking. I never realized how huge the city of Paris is until I was up there. Pretty much as far as the eye can see, is buildings upon buildings. We even ate a croque monsieur on the Eiffel Tower! I also got my picture with some good-looking pro soccer players on the second level. Unfortunately, I have no idea what team they were on.

            Then we walked over to the Arc de Triomphe which is surrounded by a huge rotary with 11 streets that enter it. We strolled down the Champs Elysees, the main shopping road of Paris which leads into the rotary. We went in some pretty sweet stores including Mercedes, Louis Vuitton, and other high end stores. There was even a Disney store we went into. That night we went back to the Eiffel Tower and got to see what it looked like with it’s lights on. Every hour they do a light show, where a bunch of lights start blinking and sparkling on the tower. We got to see this happen three times. We took our time walking around it, taking pics and eating crepes.

            Saturday, we got up early and went to go see Sacre Coeur, which is a beautiful basilica up on a hill in Paris. It was built in the 1800’s, so pretty modern compared to the hundreds of other churches I have been into this past month. I think I’ve been into more churches in the past 4 weeks than I ever have in my whole life. Then we walked over to the Moulin Rouge area which was pretty cool…too bad I’ve never seen the movie!

            After that, we went to the Pompidou which is a modern art museum…one of the coolest museums I’ve ever been into.  The museum itself was designed by a modern architect, so there is bright tubing that makes up the exterior of the building, and then a clear tube that we got to take an escalator through. The art inside was really neat also, including a bright red rhinocerous and Duchamp’s “Urinal”!!! I was pretty excited to see that.

            Sunday morning, our last morning in Paris, we went to see the Catacombs. We walked down a hundred steps or so to the ground below the city. Back in the 1700s, a cemetery in Paris was causing a disease to spread, so they had to get rid of the bodies. What they did was bury them all below the city. I was pretty creeped out because there are piles and piles of skulls and bones that you are walking right next to. You can literally touch them if you wanted to (I don’t know why you would want to though). Once we came back up, a guy asked to see my bag. I was really confused and then realized that he was making sure I didn’t steel any bones. Right next to him was a table with a few skulls and bones that people had tried to steal. Crazy right?

            That pretty much sums up our trip to Paris. Even though it was wicked expensive, the trip was worth every penny. Au revoir!