June 11th - 13th: Parisian Endeavours!

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I realize the posts about classes are incredibly slow and unexciting, so hopefully the weekend entries make up for that fact. I am especially referring to the entry prior to this one about the slow week, which I even had a hard time writing due to lack of excitement. Anyways, this entry is about our trip to PARIS, which was fantastic in my opinion!

We all had to be ready promptly at 9am to catch the bus to the Troyes train station, so it was a bit of a rush in the morning. To make things even more fun, we were being hurried along by our French teacher, who in case I haven't mentioned before is a short, silly man, so that was hilarious. As it turns out, he would be spending the weekend with us in Paris. Wahooo! So, at 9am, everyone was ready to go and we took off for the bus stop. We crammed all 33 of us onto the city bus and rode this to the train station, complete with luggage. At the train station, we waited about 15 minutes and then hopped onto our train for PARIS!

The train ride was only about an hour and a half, so we were in Paris sometime between 11am-12pm. When we got there, we rode the Metro from the Gare de l'est station to the Saint Michel stop. When we walked out of the Metro stop, I was amazed. I had forgotten from my Senior year of high school just how amazing Paris was. The people and buildings wowed me as I continued to stare for a short period of time. Once I started to calm down a bit, I realized I was standing in the same place I had 3 years earlier. We were at the Fountain of Saint Michel, pretty close to Notre Dame. We all set out from here about 10 blocks up the road to our hotel. What a great location!

At the hotel, called Hotel Excelsior, we unpacked a bit and then headed out (as a large group, once again) to the Trocadero near the Eiffel Tower. Since I have been to Paris before and seen the sites, I chose to conserve money and not go up the Eiffel Tower (or see Versailles, again, the next day). Instead, this trip would be more about taking in the less visited parts of Paris and really experiencing the city. Once at the Trocadero, we took the standard group pictures in front of the Eiffel Tower (i.e. holding it up, just group pictures, etc.). After that, a bunch of people went to go up the Eiffel Tower. Luis, Lee, David, Melina, and I instead went to watch some break-dancers under the Eiffel Tower and then to the FIFA Fan-Fest to watch the first World Cup match on a big screen in front of the Eiffel Tower. How cool is that? We couldn't help but continue to point that out throughout the match. As it turns out, Mexico and South Africa tied due to a very poor, poor call by the referees (once of the worst I've ever seen). Mexico should have won 2-1, but a tie would be the theme of every World Cup game I've watched so far. After that, we met up with Amanda, Melissa, and Jason once they were done at the Tower and went to dinner. We ate at an over-priced place (perhaps like everything else around the Eiffel Tower) and then walked around the street looking at souvenir shops. This whole endeavor took us until 7:45pm, at which point we left to go back to the Fan-Fest and watch the France/Uruguay game. Somewhere in there, Lee and Jason had decided they didn't want to pay that much for food, left, and told us they'd come back and meet us. Somehow, we were never able to find them again, so we were a little worried the rest of the night since neither knew Paris or French. The France game, in the end, was horribly boring to watch, although the people there were entertaining. It was absolutely packed with France fans (obviously), which made it much more exciting. Also, the Eiffel Tower lit up when it got dark, so that was really awesome, too. There are various videos up of the Fan-Fest on Facebook, but they don't do much justice to the experience. There's nothing like watching the most popular worldwide sport in front of the Eiffel Tower with crazy French people. For example, when a Uruguay player got ejected from the game, the fans set off flares and waved them around. After this, everyone was really pulling for France to score because it would have been total insanity. Alas, they did not, and the game ended in a 0-0 tie. Embarrassing for France, to say the least. Following the game, we Metroed back our hotel. Once back, Luis and I ate some late-night McDonald's (there were 2 within 4 blocks of our hotel), and then went to bed. Jason knocked on the door around 1am and had finally found his way back. After that, we talked for a while and then went to sleep.

The next day was Versailles for most people. We woke up at 7:30am for breakfast, which was only a baguette and a croissant. It was disappointing and not worth waking up for, so needless to say I did not do the same again the next morning. I went back to bed until 11am after this since we had nowhere to be, at which point Amanda woke me up and told me to get ready to go. I was ready in about 15 minutes, so I took a nap next to the open windows and took in all the sounds of Paris. It was one of the most restful naps I've ever had. At 12pm, we all went out for lunch and then split up. Lee, David, and Joe went on a walking tour of the city, but I chose to go to Roland-Garros and the Champs-Elysses with Amanda, Melina, and Melissa instead. Although the walking tour would have been cool if you haven't been to Paris before, we had a great time. We decided to walk to Roland-Garros, which turned out to be 3 hours. We went all over Paris, which is huge since we were going to the outer parts of the city. We had some interesting experiences ranging from buying cherries at a street market to helping a man from Alabama avoid getting washed in the self-cleansing toilets. We stopped in at the Luxembourg Gardens as well, which we SO much cooler than the Arb. I have pictures here, with my favorite one being the duck house that was built and put in the middle of the huge fountain there. These gardens were stunning. The walk was also interesting since we were equipped with terrible maps, but we somehow managed to make it anyways. After our huge 3 hour adventure, we arrived at Roland-Garros only to find out we could not go inside. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Roland-Garros is where one of the four biggest tennis tournaments, the French Open, in the world is played. It was closed because the tournament had been the previous weekend, so that was a little upsetting. We took some pictures of the outside of the building, and then took the Metro to the Champs-Elysses since our feet were killing us. One interesting occurrence on the way to the Champs-Elysses was the police kicking a pickpocket's ass (excuse my French, har har har!) on the subway. That was fun, but it intimidated the girls, so everyone was very wary of their things after that. Having been to Europe before (especially Rome), I was already being very careful of my things. We arrived and started our walk at the Arc de Triumph, of course. We took a few pictures here and them moseyed on down the street with everyone else in the world. It's a very nice road, but it's not for me. Everything is SO crowded and overpriced I don't see much attraction except the Arc. We stopped at a souvenir shop, the Disney store, and Zara, but no where else. We were all tired and trying to get back before the United States/England game at 8:30pm. We took the Metro back to the hotel, which we were getting good at using at this point, and grabbed some dinner. Amanda and I ate at a delicious pasta place, where I had Pesto Gnocchi. It was sublime. After this, we met up with some people and Amanda's friend, Sixtine, who had lived in Paris for all but two years of her life. All of us went to a bar to watch the game, which again ended in a tie, 1-1. At this point, I was frustrated with soccer games since the first three I watched ended in a tie. Once the game was over, we all talked for a while and split up around 12am. Amanda, Sixtine, and I went to go get food while everyone else went to the hotel. We got some pizza and ice cream. French pizza is amazing, in case I haven't mentioned that before. After that, Sixtine went home and Amanda and I went back to the hotel. Everyone went to bed at this point.

The next morning, we checked out at 9am and left our luggage in the hotel. A large group of people went to visit Notre Dame and the Louvre, but a smaller group of us went to the Gare du Nord to get EuroRail passes and then back to the Champs-Elysses. The Gare du Nord was so boring since I didn't buy a pass and it took everyone else forever to get theirs. We sat there for maybe 3 hours waiting for them. After that, we went to the Champs-Elysses because Luis wanted to go to buy souvenirs. In the end, we ended up doing the same thing: taking pictures in front of the Arc and walking down the Champs-Elysses. We also had side adventures of finding a bathroom (NOT EASY IN EUROPE) and also finding food, which would eventually be McDonalds, again (twice in Paris, I know...). After this, we had to hurry back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and Metro back to the Gare de l'est to go back to Troyes. We sat at the train station for about an hour and a half and finally got on our train at 6:11pm, and arrived back in Troyes at 7:45pm. From here, we waited for the city bus again and went back to UTT. Everyone unpacked and showered, and then Amanda, Jason, and I watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall. After that, our excellent weekend, like many good things, came to an end as we called it a night and hit the hay.

Now obviously, I omitted a lot of the specific details of this trip because there was just so much that happened that trying to write this post like all my others would be painful on both me and all of you. I gave the main highlights, which were hopefully interesting, but still may appear somewhat dry because they don't have the standard sites from Paris that you might have expected. I didn't see Notre Dame, Montmarte, Versailles, or go up the Eiffel Tower, and yet I don't regret not doing so at all. In fact, I'd recommend the approach I took this time around if you ever get the chance (if you've seen the important stuff before, of course). I got to see a completely different, calmer side of Paris, which made me love it even more than the huge attractions could. We walked down streets which were totally empty (I didn't know that was possible) and took in scenery that was stunning yet subtle. I also got to orient myself in this enormous city along with learning how to get around in various ways. I got to eat delicious food for reasonable prices and hang out and become better friends with many of the people on the trip. This was the best part of the trip to date, hands down. It never ceases to amaze me how enlightening and wonderful this trip keeps turning out to be, with one event somehow surpassing the next in awesomeness. Absolutely fantastic. The best part? Only 3 days of classes until 8 of us leave for Glasgow, Scotland on Wednesday! WOO HOO!

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