Ma premiere fois en Paris!

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Hello everyone! I just spent the last few days in Paris and it was such a great experience- I can't wait to go back! Rouen is only about one hour and 20 minutes from Rouen so it was really easy to get to. In France they also have discount train tickets for people between the ages of 12 and 25, called a "Carte 12-25" which is valid for a year, so my friends and I all bought one. With the card, the train ticket from Rouen to Paris ended up only being 10 euro! That motivates me even more to go to Paris as often as I can!
Once we got to Paris we took the metro to our hostel which was in the "Marais" district. It was a really cute area, there were lots of shops and one of the roads lead to the "Champs Elysees" so we ended up walking there and stopping in some of the shops along the way. The shops were crowded because from January 10 to February 10 France has their sales- all of the stores marked down their merchandise- sometimes up to 60%!- so a lot of people were out shopping. We shopped at bit and then headed over to the Eiffel Tower once it got dark outside. It was just so amazing to see. I couldn't help taking like 50 pictures as we got closer and closer to it. Once we got right in front of it it was just breathtaking. It was so nice just to stand there and take pictures- definitely the best part of the trip! After that we went back to Marais and had dinner in a little Italian restaurant and bought crepes for dessert (fresh crepes with nutella and bananas = perfection!). A little while later we went to a cocktail bar. We talked to this nice man from Ireland who was sitting next to us who lived in Manhattan for a little while. He said that he thought New Yorkers were great and was so impressed at how motivated they were and said that if you're young and live and work in New York City you'll go far. I thought that was really nice that he appreciated that and it definitely motivated me for my plans after college!
We went back to the hostel fairly early and rested up for the next day. The next morning we walked down to the Notre Dame Cathedral which was also AMAZING to see in person and it was a really nice day. The Seine looked so pretty and so did all of the Parisian architecture. The rest of the day we went shopping on the "Rue Rivoli" which had stores like H&M and the Gap (even a Starbucks- you don't see that much in France!). We got back here to Rouen at about 11PM on Friday night and rested up for an all day French language intensive course on Saturday (it sure was intense but it helped me remember a lot!). Paris was such a fun time, I can't wait to go back and see more sites and continue to explore the city!

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