O-la-la Paris

Paris. Wow. It may be the most beautiful place that I have ever been. It was absolutely amazing. All of the things I have seen in textbooks, that I never thought were actually real. And then to finally see them with my own eyes. There is no way to explain it. It is by far the best place I have visited. Ok now on with the whirlwind 39 hours that was my Paris trip, again this will be super long.

So we arrive in Paris, to the smallest airport ever, and take the hour long bus ride into the city. So we arrive in a plaza, that we have no idea where it is. It’s not on our map. Yikes. Then we find a metro and a map and figure out where the hell we have to go. At this point it is 12:15am. We have to catch the yellow train and then the purple one and find our hotel, by 1 am otherwise we cant check in and we have no where to sleep. So we get the yellow train, but by the time we get to the purple one, it’s not running anymore. So we go back up to the Paris streets, find a map and then proceed to walk the fastest couple of blocks in my entire life. Me and Gina make it to our hotel in time, 10 minutes to spare. We get up to the receptionist, and the guy looks at us because we are sweating to death and because we are freaking out that we made it in time.

Now for the real fun. I tell him my name and who we are and he says, “You were supposed to check in at 11am, I have already given away your room.” So I freak out. Not like yelling or anything. But in my head my mind is racing like wild because OMG we don’t have a place to stay. So I tell him that I am positive that I put 1 am on the thing and he told us that he could help. He had one room left and we could have it for just a few more dollars then we had originally thought of paying, however we didn’t not have a room for the next night, but he would find it for us. How nice. So we get up to our room, and it was gorgeous. It overlooked a cute city street and we had two double beds and a shower inside of our room. How nice. So we sleep. And the next morning we get up to conquer Paris in a day.

So we start by walking to find a croissant. I mean hey, we are in Paris and we can have a pastry. We find delicious ones. Omgoodness. So amazingly delicious. As we eat our croissants we walk to find the Pantheon to find Lauren. We get there walk around and she finds us. And it was soooo exciting. You know how you and your friends from high school are always like one day we will meet up in Europe and travel together. It was so cool to actually do it. So we meet up and head off to Notre Dame.

Notre dame was absolutely gorgeous. The windows, the rose ones, you all know which ones I am talking about, were stunning. We walk all around inside and then decide to climb the bell towers so that we can see the view from the city. We climb the thousand billion stairs to the top and the view was gorgeous. You could see the entire city. I think it was really cool because you could see the Eiffel tower in the view. After taking in the view we walked down the stairs, which was super scary because they were really tiny and it was a spiral staircase. It took a lot not get really dizzy.

After Notre Dame we went back to the hotel so that we could find out where the receptionist had found our new hotel. We get there and he found us one right up the street that was only 16 euro and had a toilet en suite. Whoopieeee. So we go and find it and it was so nice. Very pretty and cute. We then decide it would be cute to have a picnic in front of the Louvre. So we find a super market and buy Wine, strawberries, brie and a baguette. Then we walk to the Louvre, find ourselves a nice little grassy spot. It was so cute. We felt very European. We sat and talked about our lives, and caught up a little because we hadn’t seen each other since Christmas time.

After our picnic we decided to walk to Sacra Coer, which is super super far. We walk and as we do so, we see the Opera house, you know the phantom one. It was so pretty. As we continue on we see Moulin Rouge. It was a very cool walk, until we hit the hill. Now Sacra Coer is located on the highest point in Paris. Now this hill was intense, like super super steep. We climb to the top and see this cute little town with an artist’s square. Really beautiful stuff, of the city and the various monuments in Paris. I bought a print of Sacra Coer, with a city street in front of it, and then proceeded to leave it in the airport. Boo, but my friends still haven’t gone to Paris so I am going to have them buy me one. The church was so pretty inside. I think it might be prettier than Notre dame. You just walked in and you were struck by the mosaics and paintings. It was gorgeous.

After Sacra Coer, we decided to take the metro to the Louvre because we were really tired at this point. At the Louvre, we saw all of the famous paintings and sculptures that you only ever see in textbooks. The Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Madonna on the Rocks, The coronation of Napoleon. It was absolutely amazing. You could never believe that they were real until you actually see them. I got goose bumps just because my mind couldn’t grasp the fact that I was seeing them for real. We did quite the abbreviated tour, because well the Louvre is huge. You can’t imagine all of the works in this museum. It took us like two hours just to see what we wanted to see, we had to pass over so many other things.

Following the Louvre we walked back to Lauren’s hotel to rest our tired feet a little. After a little break we went to McDonalds to get big Macs because we were starving. So delicious. We chowed down, bought a bottle of wine on our way back to the hotel, and proceeded to have some before we went to the Eiffel tower. Again we were against the clock. It was like 11:15 and the subway again closes at 12:15. So we get to the Eiffel tower. It is amazing. During the day you are just kinda like wow it looks nice, a symbol of Paris and all. But once night falls, it just looks so beautiful. I was completely awestruck. We stayed for like 15 minutes. Enough time to see it twinkle, which it does every 15 minutes and then we headed back to the metro. On the metro me and Gina had to depart from Lauren. We said goodbye on the subway as she got off to transfer trains and we continued on to the hotel. It was so nice to see her. I was so happy that we had the opportunity to have an amazing day in Paris.

Again me and Gina were basically running to catch our next train, which we did. Afterwards we walked quickly to our hotel so that we could get there before a curfew, which we weren’t sure there was one or not. Then it was bedtime, we had to get up early the next day.

The next day we get up and get another croissant and take the metro to the Champs Elysses. Again absolutely amazing. We bought crepes and walked up to the Arc de Triumph. Again amazing, it so hard to believe that you are seeing those things when they are right in front of your face. After the Champs Elysses we found our bus to take us back to the airport.

Even with our flight being delayed almost two hours, and me losing my poster in the airport it could not dampen such a wonderful trip. It was stunning and so much fun. It is by far the best trip that I have been on so far. I loved it so much. And would love to go back some time. It so different traveling with people you know so well. I also think that is a reason why I loved it so much.

So that’s Paris. I’ll post later about the trip me and Gina made to the Aran Islands. And the rest of her week here. It was so nice to see someone from home. I can’t even describe.

But anyways I miss you all like crazy. Pictures of Scotland, Paris, and Aran Islands will be up on facebook today.

Slán agat