Paris - the City of Love

What a weekend in Paris! It was an early start - we met the bus tour at 6am about a 5 minute walk from the flat. We rode in the coach for 2 and a half hours, picked up more people, and drove to Dover where we caught the ferry to Calais, France. Before we left England, we all had our passports stamped by a Frenchman. He didn't even look at our passports to see if we really were who we said we were! But we rode the ferry across and that was fun! The ferry was like a small cruise ship - it had a huge shop for perfumes and food, three or four restaurants, arcades, and lots of sitting areas to look outside and watch the water. We crossed the English Channel without any problems and got back on the coach for a four hour drive to Paris! The French countryside was beautiful. It wasn't very populated and it was mostly flat. The drive got longer and longer it seemed, but I finally arrived at the hotel around 4:30pm. Laura and I checked into our room, situated our stuff, and met up with four other girls, Lauren, Julia, Kim, and Leah, who were also from our college program, and we all braved the Parisian Metro and rode to the Louvre! Here's a few pictures. Can you recognize these famous statues and paintings?

From left to right, they are the Discus Thrower, a random ceiling I thought was pretty, the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa!

We rode the Metro home and took this picture...haha! We got back to the hotel and walked the opposite direction from the Metro and tried to find a place to eat. We finally came across a restaurant called "Hippopotamus" and we ate there! The waiter was fun and helped us pronounce the names of the food we wanted in French. I had a little trouble when I was trying to ask for water to drink...he didn't know that word. He left for a minute and came back, and I told him I didn't want anything to drink, and he said, "You only want water?" Funny how he didn't know the word before! I went home exhausted and slept soundly in the most comfortable bed I've seen since being gone.

The next morning I made the mistake of turning off the alarm without actually getting up, so I had to rush to be ready in time to go to breakfast and then on our coach tour of the city. Breakfast was delicious with lots of bread and crepes and fruit and my favorite part was the chocolate chip croissants. Absolutely amazing! The weird thing was that the milk they set out was not cold - it was lukewarm milk. So I had juice instead!

Our bus tour was quick and informative. The tour manager told us what she knew about the places we were going, but it was hard to take good pictures from the bus.

The most exciting part was I got to see "The Thinker" from the back! I wanted to return there later to see it from the front too, but completely forgot. Oh well. We got to see everything "tourist-y" from the coach and then were dropped off near the Eiffel Tower. The rest of the girls and I all walked over to the tower and took tons of pictures on the way! Faced with a two hour queue to go up the Eiffel Tower, we waited patiently and snacked on bread and cheese. Then we were approached by an Irish couple behind us who said they'd found out that if we had a group of 20 or more we wouldn't have to queue. They asked if we wanted to join their group and if we knew anyone else that would like to go quicker. We'd seen about five people from the tour bus, so we got them, and added a few more stragglers who spoke English and before we knew it had a group of 21! It was a mixed group of people. While we waited to get tickets, I grabbed a piece of paper from my bag and had most of the group sign their names and write where they were from, just for my scrapbook! We had people from Italy, Nepal, Ireland, India, Croatia, France, the U.K., and of course the United States! It was really neat to see how just a small group could come together for this, all just to save a little money! Then we were told they had shut down the top, so we only got to go up to the second level, but it was still AMAZING! Here's me admiring the view with the Tower above me!

Afterward, the girls and I walked down to the Arc de Triomphe, another famous landmark of Paris. I don't know much about it, so here's some pictures.

We continued walking down the Champs Elysees, the most expensive street in Paris you can shop on. We mostly window shopped, but went into a few places and looked around. Laura got some fancy French perfume, but I was holding out for a traditional tourist-friendly souvenir shop! Our four friends wanted to head back the other way, so Laura and I went off on our own and walked down the Seine River bank by some street vendors. I got a small painting of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe from one of the vendors and I love it!

We walked across the "Love Bridge," decorated with gold-plated statues of Cupid. This is a famous place for couples to kiss and have a romantic view of the Eiffel Tower together. The sun was setting as we walked across, making for this great picture! We thought it would be littered with smooching couples all over, this being Valentine's weekend, but it was strangely quiet! We did see a horse-drawn carriage with a happy-looking couple inside!

We kept walking and finally made it to Notre Dame Cathedral! It was so huge! The pictures say more than I can. It's impressive size and gothic style made the whole area seem more grand. We walked around inside for a little while. It amazed me that they were beginning mass, but still let the tourists walk around the outside edge of the nave! It was neat to see such an ornate building, with flying buttresses and all that. And the moon came out just in time for a great shot of the gargoyles howling at the moon!

After dinner at the hotel with more frustrating language difficulties, Laura and I made our way to the River Seine, again by way of the Metro, to take a boat tour of the city at night. We rode on the Bateaux Mouches, (Baa-toe Moo-sh) which means "boat fly" in French. These tour boats dot the river like flies, giving tourists and Frenchmen a nighttime view of the beautiful city. There were few people on the boat so Laura and I went to the back of the boat, on the top level, so we could see clearly and be silly having a great time! It was freezing the whole weekend, by the way, even more so at night, and out in the open air on a moving boat! Here's some of the great pictures of the Tower, and little did I know that the Eiffel Tower sparkles with a light show every hour at night! Here's a video of that...I hope it works!

Here's another skyline-shot of the city and the Eiffel Tower. It makes a great landmark because you can tell where you are in the city by looking for the tower!

We got back to the Metro and rode home, exhausted again but very much happy with the day.

Sunday morning came all too quickly and we gathered our stuff, put the backpacks we took in the locked room the hotel provided for us, and had a wonderful breakfast again. It was as delicious as the first day! This time I had hot chocolate and confirmed what I'd kind of already figured out - European hot chocolate is not nearly as sweet as American hot chocolate. Kind of a nice change, but I miss my good old Carnation hot chocolate!

Laura and I decided to go see the Sacre Coeur at Monmarte, a large basillica basically on top of the only hill in Paris! It offers a great view of the city of Paris, again making me realize how absolutely HUGE Paris is! We walked around inside again...they were getting ready for the service at 11am. We wanted to stay but had to be back to meet the tour group at 12:30. Around behind the basillica was a small painting market where dozens of painters had set up their easels and were painting scenes in front of our eyes! There were also little cafes all around, giving me a look at what I assumed Paris would be like. It was neat to see that after all the commercialized tourist sites I'd seen this far. Laura and I found a cute little patisserie where we got some YUMMY French pastrys and some French chocolates. We sat down and ate one of our pastries in front of the Sacre Coeur. So delicious! Here's me devouring my coffee filling filled huge chocolate covered pastry. Oh and we got to hear a French musician playing - this lady was dressed up in really brightly colored clothing and was playing the accordion. The music was so pretty and sounded exactly like what you would think romantic French music would sound like! That was exciting, but I only wished I had seen a mime...

It was a great trip - we only had a little scare when the coach driver exhibited some road rage on the way home! We finally arrived back at our flat that night at 10:30, hungry and tired, but happy with our weekend. And I had two packages waiting - one from Aunt Connie, and one from Greg and Laura's dad! It's always great to get things from home - thank you all for the American treats!

Next chapter will be about Dover and Canterbury...and soon after that our trip to Italy! We leave in exactly one week! Yikes!