... I will explain the title later.
Ce week-end dernier, Ally, Ashley, Morrisa, et moi sommes allés à Paris! C'est la première fois que j'ai pratiqué mon langue française. Il était un peu difficile, mais je me suis souvenu plus que je pensais.
Ok, so I must admit, I did cheat a bit and use a translator for parts of that because I have forgotten my verb conjugations. BUT if it was 3 years ago, I could have totes done that. Plus, I can still understand it :)
So we began our journey by taking the Eurostar aka the really fast train that goes through the Chunnel. It's really convenient because St. Pancras International is 3 blocks away where we live so there is no need to spend extra money for trains to the airports... thank god. Since we left fairly late, once we arrived, we quickly got on the metro and went to check in at our hostel. On the way, we got to have a few laughs at Ashley trying to speak French first. Womp.
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| Compare the size to the people on the right... |
We started our first official day with baguettes and nutella for breakfast, aka the beginning to our carb feasting, and trying to figure out weird european showers (they shut off every 20 seconds forcing me to press a button over and over and over again), we were off to la Musée du Louvre where I got to have fun with glass pyramids, chill with the Mona Lisa (that is surprisingly tiny), and look at MASSIVE paintings. We then walked around to find another carb filled meal (pretty much all sandwiches are made with baguettes, and served with a side of baguettes) and went off to Notre Dame! Sadly, the clock tower was closed so I couldn't pretend to be a Disney character, but it was still gorgeous! Like I mentioned in my last post about Dublin, I loved the stained glass windows in St. Patricks Cathedral. The same goes for here as well. And then of course, we HAD HAD HAD to make our way to La Tour Eiffel! We hoped to see the sunset from the top but a. we could not go all the way to the top because of frost b. there was a line and c. it was so cold, I don't think I would have lasted. But even halfway up, the views were amazing! You could see every inch of Paris, even at dusk.
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| Louvre! |
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| Notre Dame |
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| Ally, Morrisa, Myself, and Ashley in front of La Tour Eiffel! |
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| GORGEOUS VIEW! |
Day 1: done. Now for day 2. We started off our morning at Musée d'Orsay where I got to see tons of the impressionist artists that I had learned about in high school including Renoir, Monet, Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, and the list goes on and on. I also find impressionism more interesting than the others with the vivid colors and you can get a different perspective depending on how you look at them. After that was time for SHOPPING on Les Champs-Élysées aka window shopping. I must say, to my parents disbelief, I have been very good at saving money and really only spending it on the necessities and travel. We walked down the avenue all the way to L'Arc de Triomphe to get our typical snapshots and then turned around, for some oh so delicious Ladurée. I was adventurous and tried all completely different flavors including Orange Creme, Rose Petal, Lemon, Coffee, Blackcurrant, Chocolate, Vanilla, and Raspberry. As lame as it sounds, Vanilla was my favorite, probably because the flavor was very rich which I liked. Sad to say, they were all gone within a few hours.
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| L'Arc de Triomphe |
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| Omnomnomnomnom... |
Ok so here is where we get to the title, Les Cauchemars à Paris... Nightmares in Paris. We went to Les Grands Boulevards expecting to have a good night out. For starters, as many people have heard, Parisians are rude (the custom officers were really rude when we left Paris too). At the first bar we went to, they wouldn't let us in because we were American, even though 2 of our other friends also got in. We eventually gave up and moved on. At around 1:00, we find out that the metro closed (we thought it was open until 2:30 since Friday is usually considered the weekend). By the point we were ready to go home, it was IMPOSSIBLE to catch a cab. People were up and down the street trying and every one is "occupied". It was below freezing and windy so we were not lasting long. Ashley and I kept running into phone booths to warm up...ish. Eventually, we gave up and decided to go back inside the now dying bar. At this point, we planned on staying there until the metro opened. We sat there falling asleep until the bar closed at 5. We are all exhausted and frozen. The metro does not open until 5:30. We could barely last a minute and nothing nearby was open so we were in a panic to find warmth. Eventually, we manage to walk into a hotel across the street and chilled in the hallway for a half hour until we could finally get the metro back to our hostel. We get back and the cherry on top of our horrible night? Someone is sleeping in my bed, so once we got that fixed it was about 6:30 and the sun was starting to appear. If any of you saw my "Worst. Night. Ever." tweet, this is that long story.
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| Room of PINK!!! |
3 hours later, we wake up to check out. ugh. Thankfully with caffeine, we managed to pull through. I guess being a college student helps you with that. We went to a boulangerie/patisserie down the street where we had... MORE CARBS!!! and coffee. We headed off to Versailles which was absolutely... WOW! No wonder why everyone hated Louis XIV. If you want to be a hated ruler, spend all of your money on your palace by making huge gardens, a mural on the ceiling of every room, and multiple crystal chandeliers per room. Sadly, we could not go in the gardens because of the snow (it wouldn't have stopped us).
Now all journeys have to come to an end, and we we kind've happy to be going back to London. It started on a high note, but unfortunately, did not end well. Hopefully, I will return again so Paris can redeem itself.
