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Published: April 21st 2008
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this was while we were in the line for the non-notre dame I resisted the urge to call this blog Last Tango in Paris since although the title would have been good since it was the last trip, I have not seen the movie and from what I have heard the events of the movie vary slightly from my weekend.
First off, the trip started at 8 am with a 6 hour bus ride to Madrid to catch our plane. this went well but at the bus station sarah was pickpocketed and lost her passport, wallet including cash and credit cards, and her camera. she couldn´t leave the country without her passport and had to stay and figure out stuff at the police station and u.s. embassy. we wanted to stay and help her but she insisted that it would be stupid for us all to miss out and that she wanted us to go. we all felt bad leaving and we saw her to the police station, made sure she had info about the embassy, contacted the school, and all gave her some money to help her over the next few days. after that we got on the metro and realized that while we were helping sarah time kept passing and
louvre
yep, that´s the louvre we had to jog through the airport to catch our plane which we made with not a lot of time to spare. the thing about ryanair flights to paris are that they say paris and take you to beauvais and you have to take a 45 minute bus into the city. we eventually got to our hostel which was good and just called it a night after some 14 hours of travelling.
Friday was a whirlwind. Louvre in the morning which was cool but so packed that you couldn´t really enjoy much. Saw the Mona Lisa and some other Da Vincis, Venus de Milo, and other scluptures. then we went to find the code of hamurabi but it was moved to an exhibition hall. this is when i did something that sounds stupid to most people but i knew my mom would murder me if i didn´t. michael and i decided that we needed to see it so we went and bought tickets to the exhibit on babylon, which actually cost more than the museum´s general entrance, just to see the code of hamurabi. it was pretty awesome and i actually thought it was the coolest thing that i
venus de milo
there wasn´t too many people around this one, which was cool to get to check out. saw there. the mona lisa was cool just because it´s such an icon but there´s glass in front of it and u r far away and it´s not easy to see and appreciate. next we walked up the champs elysees to the arch du triumph and then down towards the river to the eiffel tower. went to the top and could see the whole city which was really cool. we had a picnic on the lawn next to the tower for lunch. the afternoon was shopping and eating crepes. it rained at night so we hung out in the hostel mostly and played cards.
Saturday started with Notre Dame, actually, what we thought was Notre Dame. When you get off the metro, there is another big gothic church on the same island so we stood in line for that for a while, snapped some pictures then realized that we were stupid and left. The real one was cooler. we heard the bells and tried to look for the hunchback but no luck. the inside was decent. nothing too crazy besides the beautiful windows. the flying butresses were pretty cool though. i´m more of a renaissance cathedral guy than a
mona lisa
this was the best of like 7 pictures i took. not easy to see really gothic. i like light and vast open spaces so notre dame wasn´t my fave. right after we went to montmarte and climbed the hill to the sacre coere which i have no real idea how to spell. i think they use some goovy e and a combo letter that they made up. anyways, the view from here was cool, it´s the highest land in the city and we chilled out there for a while before we walked down the street to the Moulin Rouge to take pictures of the outside only, don´t worry. i wasn´t about to spend 140 euro for dinner. the neighborhood around the Moulin Rouge was ¨interesting¨and i was glad that our hostel was located elsewhere since about 80% of all the buildings in the area were of the same industry as the Moulin Rouge. Sketchy. Ater this we went to the Orsay Museum which I actually enjoyed more than the louvre since it was more impressionists and i could actually see the paintings without 5,000 people all around them and glass in front. Monet, Manet, Renoir, Whistler, and my personal fave, Van Gogh. The museum wasn´t open long while we were there so we missed some
where the code of hamurabi should have been
we saw it in the exhibit but they were randomly really anti photos there so i don´t have one of the actual one. i took this pic out of anger and saddness stuff and were kind of rushed but there was one room with van goghs that branden said was cooler than the van gogh museum in amsterdam when he went since this place had a bunch of more famous works. i stared at starry night on the rhone for a long time and it was cool to see the textures of the paint up close and see the individual brush strokes. that´s something you can´t come close to doing with the mona lisa.
that night we went to dinner at the hard rock cafe, michaela and michael were craving american food. and then we went back to the eiffel tower to see it at night. i guess that every hour there is a crazy light show and we caught the 1 am one which was certainly awesome. i´ll put up a video and some pictures depending on how much time i get.
i had a different flight back than everyone else so on sunday i walked by the pantheon, sorbone, opera, and metroed to the gran arche. i hung out in the luxembourg gardens for a whiel and just wrote in my journal and chilled out. i was trying
omg the holy grail!
you´d think they´d move it now that everyone knows... to have a semi relaxing day. i had a coffee and one more crepe before the long journey home that lasted about 16 hours and ended at 6:15 am which left me 3 hours of actual sleep in a bed before class. i slept some on the bus but i wouldn´t call it substantial. i´m in need of an uber siesta today.
paris was incredible. definitely the coolest individual city i´ve been to this trip. i missed versailles so that´s one good excuse to come back later. there are just soooo many things that you have to see. despite the dramas early, it was a perfect last weekend trip. i still have about 2 weeks in sevilla then a week cruise through greece and turkey, a little time in athens and berlin and that´s the ball game. it´s crazy that in one month not only will i be at home but i´ll be working and summer will be in full swing. it´s been a fantastic semester and i can´t wait to see how it all ends. it´s hard to quantify or evaluate while it´s happening. it´ll probably be a while until i really see what it all means and
just how awesome it was.
well anyways, i´ll try and post one more, at least, wrap up of the whole last two weeks in sevilla before i head out but the greece/turkey/berlin one will probably be when i get back to the states.
hasta luego
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