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Published: November 18th 2008
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Paris is definitely one of my favorite cities. I had such a great time with my two lovely travel buddies, Maxann and Ashley.
First off, taking the train for a million hours from Turin to Paris was funny. We ended up sitting with these five men from both Italy and France and some of them knew Italian some of them knew French and they didn't know much English so we were all talking in broken Italian and English and they were trying to translate to each other and things were getting lost in translation and they were arguing over the stupidest things so it was really funny to see where things were going and just from observing all of this going on. It was basically just a lot of chaos. However, they were very nice and in the end, they ended up asking us where we were staying and and gave us some advice and some numbers to call if we found ourselves in trouble.
The train ride itself was rather beautiful. I have taken the train in the states only once from New York to Vermont but this was nothing like that. Crossing the border of Italy was
Pip getting stuck in the metro system! Haha
I still crack up every time I see this picture really nice. There were all of these little towns and there was water on either side of the train tracks where we suspect quarries were and they all were brilliant colors of turquoise. Che bellisimo! We also passed through part of the alps and so the mountains were also magnificent. I tried to take pictures, but it was absolutely impossible to capture it. I guess I'll just have to go back some time =)
When we got to Paris, we went to the hostel and then just out to dinner. We were recommended to a place called "Chez Papa" because they had some good duck there. So we went. Actually, we kind of didn't know where it was exactly, but we wandered the streets a bit and with a little bit of dumb luck, we found it! There, we all tried the duck and we also tried escargot. I've had better escargot, but the duck was very good.
The following morning, we went to a cafe and had baguette with homemade jam. It was delicious. I have never had baguette like that before! It's kind of funny to see the differences between the bread in Italy and the
bread in Paris. Especially in Tuscany. The bread there has no salt because they specialize in cured meats, but the bread in Paris really was exquisite. The food in general was good. I can't say I starved in Paris, nope.
Later on, we saw the Charles de Gaulle monument and bought some food to eat in the park by the Eiffel Tower. We spent most of our time just wandering around the streets. We didn't want to stick to a tight agenda and we wanted a little time to just enjoy ourselves, so we did just that. We went to the terrace on top of a huge shop that kind of reminded me of Macy's on 5th Ave and saw a wonderful view of Paris.
In the evening, we ate Indian food. The people there were really nice and told us all about the different dishes and let us try all sorts or different things. Even later, Ashley and I went for a glass of wine and I think that if Paris is good for something, it's all the random bars that they have. They have the most interesting looking places. The bars there are all decorated differently
and have their own character.
the next day, we got up and went to see Notre Dame. The cathedral was rather lovely and we spent some time in the little park behind the Cathedral. Then we walked our way over to the Museo di Orsay. It was definitely nice to be in a smaller art museum than the Louvre. Although, I'm sure I would have loved that too and part of me wishes I had went, but there are over 30,000 pieces of art there and we would have never even made a dent in all of that. Anyway, I saw a whole bunch of pieces by Degas and I enjoyed that a lot.
After that, we went to meet up with that girl we met at Terre Madre and had hot chocolate in a cafe in a lovely part of Paris. She also took us to an organic bread place and I had this bread with nuts in it, yum. We then just wandered around Paris a little more. We walked through a beautiful park and by the Pantheon. For dinner, we went to this place filled with locals and had some nice food there. I tried
foi grais. It was actually pretty good. After we went for a drink, tried a little french wine, and then turned in.
In the morning, we checked out and caught our flight to Barcelona.
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