Paris the City of Lights and Missed Trains

So my time in Germany has been great so far but I had yet to take a weekend trip somewhere. A couple of friends on my program had really wanted to go to Paris and I thought that sounds like a great idea. We planned to spend a whole weekend in Paris starting on Friday afternoon/morning and leaving on Sunday night. Of course plans don’t work out real great when you wait until the day before you leave to buy the tickets. I got a ticket leaving on Friday and getting in at 4:00pm by train but I couldn’t take a train back since they were book so instead we went for a bus. Sadly our travel plans on Friday were killed when our first train was late to arrive in Koblenz, Germany and that meant we missed our connection. We went and talked to the travel office and got a new travel plan that started in about an hour. So we got on our new train going to Luxemburg. We got into Luxemburg and waited for our next train and while waiting we then noticed that our next train was over 10 minutes late meaning we missed our next connection that would have gotten us to Paris. We get on the train from Luxemburg to Metz and try to figure out how to get to Paris from there. Unfortunately we had a really hard time finding someone that spoke English or German. Finally a guy told us to just get on a train that was leaving in an hour and that should get us to Paris. We waited around and got on a packed train. It was so full we had to stand near the luggage. We stood for about 15 minutes when a guy asked for our tickets. He started demanding 40 Euros since we had missed our last train. We tried to explain it wasn’t our fault until he mentioned getting the Police. I caved and gave him the money. We finally got to Paris at 8:30pm about 4 hours later than expected. We spoke to the travel office and luckily got our money back since it wasn’t our fault. It was about the craziest day of travel I ever want to have but in the long run we were in Paris. I the first place we went was a bar for a beer to relax.
Since it was late on Friday all we did was go to dinner and then check in at our hostel. The hostel wasn’t too bad considering the sketchy name: Aloha Hostel. We got up early the next morning early to start our packed day in Paris. We started off by going to the Eiffel Tower. The tower might seem like a huge tourist trap but it really beat all my expectations and was absolutely beautiful. We climbed up to the second floor (670 stairs) to see amazing views of the city. After the tower, our next plan was head towards the Louvre. We walked along the Seine River towards the Louvre and got some amazing views of a really beautiful city. We finally arrived at the Louvre and I was amazed how huge it really was. We walked around it for a couple hours seeing all the most famous painting including the Mona Lisa. It was really amazing to see so many famous pieces of art in one building. We then headed towards Notre-Dame. It is a really amazing Cathedral on the Seine River. We went inside and walked around for a while. That is when one friend said her camera was running out of space for pictures. I told her to maybe try decreasing the quality of the pictures. She looked at a few setting but we didn’t see anything. We walked a little farther when she notices that all her pictures were gone. She must have changed a setting that deleted every picture. She had been the one taking all of the group shots so we were all bummed that those were lost. So we decide the only way to fix it was go back to all the places. On our way back we stopped at the Arch de Triumph. By the time we got back to the Eiffel Tower it was night and we were able to get some great night shots. We started our walk back to the hostel and all of us felt like our feet might fall off. We must have walked about 13 miles over the whole day and nothing felt better than getting my shoes off at the hostel.
The next day we stopped one last time at the Eiffel Tower and started heading towards our trains and buses for home. I got on my bus at about 2:30 and started the 8 hour ride to Dortmund, Germany where I needed to catch a train for home. Around 9:00 I asked the bus driver if we were going to arrive on time. Of course we were 20 minutes late which meant I missed my train home. So I called my host family to ask them to search for another train that would get me home. Thankfully my host family said they would just come and pick me up from Essen and take me home. I got home about midnight and went straight for bed. It was one of the best weekends I have had yet in Europe but also one of the unluckiest weekends of my life. In the long run all I can remember is how amazing Paris was and if you ever go to Europe it should totally be on your list of places to go.

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