Paris: the city of baguettes, cheese & wine!

Kayla, Dom, Bella and I booked a weekend in Paris!  Unfortunately we couldn't take the Thursday night flight.. so we had to take the one at 6am Friday morning. Well, to make that flight at the airport we have to leave our house at 3:45am to take the N6 night bus to Largo Argentina and walk to the taxi stand to meet my two friends and take a taxi to the airport. We're college kids in Europe.. obviously we're broke so we have to take the cheapest way possible. So once we got into the airport in Paris, oh wait.. excuse me in Beauvias.. because we have to take an hour bus ride into Paris. Oh and the line for this bus takes an hour.. and the airport is basically a tent. Essentially, Ryanair is very, very interesting.

Oh I forgot to mention.. throughout all of this i'm very sick-can't hear out of either ears and filled with more congestion that should be humanly possible. So I can't hear for about 8 hours after our flight.

We get to the drop off point and have to figure out the French metro system.. compared to Rome's it's a little different. We finally got to our hostel and checked in and ate some yummy lunch. Took a nap (sorry, I couldn't help it.. I was so tired). Then we went and bought baguettes, cheese, meats and wine and took a short little metro ride over to the Eiffel Tower and had a lovely picnic as the sun set. Then we met up with Austin McDonnell and some of her friends who were having pizza and wine there as well. It was so awesome to see someone from back home and be able to have conversations where someone actually knew who I was talking about. A nice change since all of my roommates know each other...

The next day we went on a tour of Paris with a tour based on tips called New Europe Tours. I would definitely recommend them to you guys who are planning to study abroad. Our tour guide's name was Onno and he took us by:

• Notre Dame de Paris
• The Latin Quarter
• Ile-de-la-Cité
• Pont Neuf
• The Louvre
• Palais Royal
• Haussmann’s Renovations
• Eiffel Tower
• Tuileries Gardens
• Les Invalides
• Académie Française
• Opéra Garnier
• Musée d’Orsay
• Pont Alexandre III
• Napoléon’s Tomb
• Assemblé Nationale
• Champs-Élysées
• Arc de Triomphe
• Grand & Petit Palais
• Place de la Concorde

Afterwards we went to a lovely French lunch and I had frog legs.. to me that's not really French, it's Southern. We found a little bakery and got some macaroons and eclairs. Then we went to the longchamp store to go buy me and Kayla a longchamp. As we walked into the store I got a nice little text from Daddy reminding me that the money I have is all I get.. so needless to say it was a blessing in disguise that they didn't have the color I wanted. 

Then we went to go climb the Eiffel Tower BUT there was a protest going on.. on it.. and there were men with riffles around the bottom and the drug vans and ambulances everywhere. I was becoming highly frustrated because I didn't know what was going on. So I kind of asked aloud "WHAT IS GOING ONNNNNN" and although it was obviously rhetorical. This nice recent college graduate named Scott responded. We talked for quite a while and he was very nice.. he wanted to go for drinks but we had to go to our bar crawl.

This bar crawl was really cool-it was by moulin rouge. I met so many different people on it.. Sascha and Vivien from Berlin (Sascha went to high school in Wisconsin) then I met Matteo and all of his friends from all over Europe. There were so many other people I met, but I am awful with names and remember none of them. All I remember is having a very dramatic fight with this kid from Michigan State because of this years bowl game. Oops. Then on the way home we ran into these oh so sweet French men-NOT. They tried to follow us home on the metro and wouldn't get out of my face.. I kept it very calm and talked to them in about 6 different languages and told them to stop. It was really great. Oh did I mention all the French people around us were just laughing at us and not helping.. thank goodness for this one lady who made them leave. I was beginning to get very angry and uncomfortable. 

Sascha

The next day we went to the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa and other really famous pieces of art.. that museum is absolutely huge. I'm pretty sure it would take you an entire week to go through it all and see everything. Then we went to another really good lunch and I had this amazing seafood salad.. seriously I don't think I'll have a better salad in my life. I realize it's probably a bad thing that in all my blogs I talk about food.. and trust me you'll be able to see the evidence when I get back from Europe. Then we went to the Eiffel tower and actually got to climb it.. we only climbed to the 2nd level because it would have taken too long to get to the top and we would have missed our flight.

But Paris was great, I'm pretty sure I need more than a weekend in that city.

Ciao Parigi, Tornata a Roma!