France!
Getting to Paris was possibly one of the worst 8 hours of my life. My first leg of the tour wasn’t so bad but during the second half I was on a train full of people who didn’t speak English and it was an hour and a half late and I had no minutes on my phone. I was supposed to meet Jess and Emmy at the train station which is simple enough with a cell phone. However, my phone had no minutes on it and my train was an hour and a half late. They didn’t know what train I was on but they were amazing and figured it out and waited for me! I will forever be in their debt. I almost cried when I heard them yell my name on the platform because I was so ecstatic to finally be there. The only thing I wanted to do was sleep after my train ride so we took the metro to our hostel which actually turned out to be a real hotel! We had our own room with a private bathroom and TV and a mini fridge. It was pretty awesome. Definitely not 5 star but for 3 students used to hostels it was pretty amazing. The next day we woke up and headed into the city to go to the Louvre. The whole weekend we struggled with our metro tickets because they were very sensitive and sometimes we had to climb over the gate things so that we could get through. The Louvre was pretty much everything I had dreamed it would be. I got to see the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Liberty leading the people, and so much more! It was so cool. After the Louvre we walked down the Champs Elysees eating crepes and hot dogs on baguettes. The funny thing about the Arc d’ Triumph is that it always looks so much closer then it really is but its a very rewarding feeling when you finally reach it! On the underside of the Arc there are all kinds of inscriptions that cover about every surface of the wall and the ceiling is marble tile with a flower design in the middle of each tile. It was really beautiful. Our next stop was to see the Eiffel Tower during the day. It’s really hard to get a good picture of the whole thing and you kind of have to turn your camera diagonally to get mostly the whole thing. It’s much bigger then I thought it would be. I knew it was supposed to be a very large structure but actually standing there it just struck me how massive it was. Our plan was to come back that night and see it light up and sparkle but until then we didn’t have much planned. We went to see the Invalides which used to be an old hospital and Napoleon is buried there. We didn’t go inside to see his grave but the outside is pretty and the gardens around it are done very well. After that we just wandered the streets of Paris looking for a supermerche (super market) so that we could get dinner for a picnic by the Eiffel Tower. We found one and we got baguettes, cheese, salami, and iced tea for our dinner. Baguettes are way cheap and you can find them pretty much everywhere in Paris. After that we made our way back to the Eiffel Tower and sat down to enjoy our picnic. We finished eating before the tower lit up so we just sat around and talked while we waited for it to light up. It was a huge shock when it happened for me because I wasn’t even paying attention to how dark it was getting and then suddenly the whole thing was lit up and sparkling, it was amazing! The next day we headed to the Montmarte area. First stop...the Moulin Rouge! Unfortunately there is not really an elephant but it was still really cool to see the real thing. We took a short break from walking after that and sat on a bench and ate some strawberries for breakfast and there was a live street performer which was pretty cool. I think she was American because she kept singing American Jazz music and when she spoke French it was a little rough. After finishing our breakfast we made our way to Sacre Coeur which was stunning! We went inside and it’s just so old it’s unbelievable. I just like how it looks down on the rest of Paris how it’s literally the very top of the city; the post cards look really cool. After we looked at Sacre Coeur we did some souvenir shopping and then headed back down the hill to see Notre Dame. We did get a little lost and ended up going up instead of down but we figured it out and made our way back to the center of the city. The line for Notre Dame is a bit long but it moves quickly. The thing about churches in Europe is that they all kind of look the same after awhile so I was struggling with getting excited about Notre Dame but when I finally saw it, it hit me that I was seeing Notre Dame! At first I didn’t even get my picture taken with it but when we left I did. That was the last major land mark we saw but we did go back to the Eiffel Tower and picnic again but a creepy guy kept coming up and asking us for something to drink but we told him no. After that we headed back to the hotel and slept because we had to get up the next morning and head to Switzerland!