Fun times in Par-ee!!!

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My trip to Paris was greatly anticipated. I wasn’t exactly sure how it was going to work or who would be on the tour, but I was really excited to be going on my own…with a tour group. 

It was a wonderful 3 day weekend in Paris that I had waiting for me. The days leading up to it were a bit stressful because I would be missing my classes on Friday (all of which are for my beloved vector calculus and fluid dynamics class. *gag*) and I always 2 assignments due on Fridays. I also always struggle to get the assignments done properly by that time because they are usually long and tedious problems. So, you can maybe see why getting them done by Thursday’s class may have been problematic for me. Luckily, a classmate was nice enough to give me some help and by 5pm on Thursday all I had to do was pack and get ready for my adventure that began with a 5:43am train ride to London and catching a cab at 5:30am. This was my first cab ride (aside from one…but I don’t remember that one due to a slightly intoxicated state. Sorry mommy! ) and it was a lot nicer and way cleaner than I expected. It was, however, just as expensive as I would’ve thought. I probably wasn’t even the cab 5 minutes and it was a whole 5 pound 50 pence for that bloody! Haha

I made it to my platform in just enough time to realize that Casey and John (two other American study abroad students) were also joining me on the Paris weekend, before the train arrived. I didn’t really know either of them that well, but I was secretly relieved that I would know someone on the tour. We had all planned to get some sleep on the train but instead enjoyed a nice hour and half conversation. Once in the London St.Pancras train station, we were just awaiting the rest of the group before we could board the infamous Eurostar that would take us under the English Channel and into Paris, France. Gary, another Leicester study abroad student showed up and we met the rest of the group. They were all American students studying in London.

During the ride on the Eurostar, Casey and I had yet another great conversation and I immediately regretted not talking to her sooner. We got along so well and that just made us even more excited about the awesome weekend that awaited us. There was no evidence that we were in fact under the channel. It seemed like we were just traveling through any other tunnel, except for the non-stop ear popping!

We met our tour guide. Larry the Par-ee, boarded a coach and set off on our first tour. It seemed quick and we saw so much. But, I would just have to say that Larry was merely a very efficient tour guide. Hehe He was a lot more hands-off than any other tour guides I had experienced before. So, among the things we saw were, the Arch of Triumph-Napoleon, Napoleon’s tomb, another obelisk-esque thing from Napoleon, a gorgeous fountain from the 12th century, the opera from The Phantom of the Opera, the Eiffel Tower and THE SUN! It was so nice to see and feel the sun…oh and of course all the wonderful monuments! 

After the tour, all we had to do was check in to our hotel and we were free until the morning. The great thing about all this free time was that it gave us many things to choose from and Larry had many suggestions about what to do, where to go and also many and helpful tips! One of which was the on Friday nights after 6pm, people under the age of 26 could get into the Louvre free!!! I couldn’t believe it! So, the plan was for Casey, John, Gary and me to get a quick dinner then hop over to the Louvre where we could have free reign for almost 4 hours before they closed. We walked across the Seine at sunset (it was so beautiful!) and looked a little café where we could grab some dinner. After much debate we settled on a cute little place where I had the best ham sandwich! I don’t know if it was because the food in England has been gross or if the French food was actually that good, but man was it good! After dinner, we quickly headed back across the Seine and over to the Louvre. First stop: The Mona Lisa. That was really cool because now I can say that I have seen THE Mona Lisa, but it was very underwhelming to say the least. Plus, I though it wasn’t positioned in a way that flattered it at all. It was on the wall across from a GIANT painting that literally took up the entire wall and then you look behind you and behind the swarm of mostly Asian tourists and their glaring flashes (which are prohibited by the way) and you see a glass box with a little rectangle inside it and, yup, that’s it, the Mona Lisa! Haha I somehow managed to make my way through the crowd people where there was a girl who was nice enough to take my picture for me. 

In the next couple of rooms I had an entirely different experience. Since taking the Introduction to Art History course this semester, I have become really interested in art how closely it is linked to history. It’s so fun! So, I have been studying different paintings, sculptures, artists and countries and some of these artworks are (surprise, surprise) in the Louvre. So, in this next room I saw a portrait of a woman that I immediately recognized and I got SO excited. I was in a room full of Jacque Louis David!! I enjoyed his paintings a lot in class so this was really cool for me. If I remember correctly…he did many history paintings in the neo-classical style. Haha Anyways, these paintings that I liked so much were right there in front of my eyes. They were so much bigger than I could’ve expected. I had no idea. I am pretty positive that the people depicted in the paintings were taller than I am. It is so impressive. I could’ve spent all day in the Louvre, but not everyone was as excited as was to be there. So, we hurried along to see the famous Venus de Milo (or something along those lines) which was very cool. All the sculptures from ancient Greece and Rome were absolutely amazing. Not only were there way more statues remaining than I thought, but like the paintings, some of these things were larger than life and they are still very well in tact (most of them). The only things missing were usually a few noses and private parts. Haha But, other than that a lot of the details still remained. It was remarkable, the amount of detail and precision it must’ve taken to get such an accurate representation of the human body! Sometimes I wish I had artistic abilities just so I could understand how stuff like that is accomplished. After that exhibit, we spent the remainder of our time wandering around looking at as much art and artifacts as we could possibly take in. I saw everything from ancient Egypt to old German decorations and furniture to French sculpture. This was our last stop. Considering our very early start and that it was now approaching 10pm, we were all fading fast. So, we left the Louvre just before closing time, made our way across the Seine once again to find some wonderful French dessert. We found another cute café and Casey and I shared some chocolate crepes. They were pretty darn good. We met a family from the US and they had been in Paris for about a week and couldn’t stop talking about how much they loved it! This made us all even more excited for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday morning got off to a great start…Casey and I woke up at 7:30 and were taking our time getting ready as we did not have to leave until 9:00. Unfortunately, we had forgotten about the one hour time difference between France and England and we hadn’t changed the time on our phones (we used them as our alarms). Oops! So, at what we thought was 8:00 we got a knock on our door asking if we were ready yet? We weren’t ready! But, we hurried to get out stuff together, grabbed some fruit and snacks from the breakfast room and met the rest of the group. We had a walking tour in the morning that took us all around the adorable back streets of Paris. We saw a lot of different points that were pertinent to French history, but I don’t know much about it, so it is really hard to recall what all we saw. It was interesting nonetheless. Our walking tour ended at Notre Dam and the rest of the afternoon and evening was left to us. Casey and I went into Notre Dam. It was pretty amazing. It was the first cathedral that actually had a substantial amount of stained glass in it and it was much darker and had a totally different feel than cathedrals in England. The inside was very large and impressive and I liked being in there except when you would walk past the souvenir booths. It totally ruined the atmosphere so I just decided to pretend they weren’t there.  After, Notre Dam, we went into the Latin Quarter. We were ultimately looking for a place to get a small lunch but all the shops were distracting. All of the streets are FULL of restaurants and little shops carrying the most random assortment of trinkets. It was so cool! Casey and I were also enjoying doing a bit of people watching. It was really fun because everyone looked really happy and there tons of couples being all romantic and mushy. It was perfect. Somewhere along on of the many tiny streets, we found a patisserie where we enjoyed a very nice pastry and an itty-bitty coffee. We sat and talked and people watched until it was time to do some more window shopping. We also went looking for some gifts for friends and family! I know it doesn’t sound that exciting, but it really was. It felt like more a vacation than a tour and it that feeling was very welcome! Hehe I mean I was just hanging out in the streets of Paris. PARIS of all places! Anywho, we met up with John and his new friend Gwendolyn at 4. Our mission was to find this very specific dark chocolate ice cream that is made by a very particular shop. Larry said we couldn’t leave Paris without trying it. It was definitely worth the half hour search!! After walking around and shopping for a particular gift that Casey wanted for her sister we thought it was time for dinner. So, we headed back for the Latin Quarter and found an Italian restaurant that we could all agree on and had a very nice, long dinner. After dinner, we walked to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. We didn’t walk up to the top because the line was way too long and it was getting late. We just decided to wait until the top of the hour when the whole thing glitters for a good 5 minutes. It was very pretty. After that we went back to our hotel and then to one of the squares where it was kind of like a carnival and we got these special French desserts. They were pretty good, but I was so full from dinner. We were all standing in a circle, talking and enjoying our desserts when I noticed that Casey was looking confused and had her eyes on something behind me. There was a guy standing there staring at John. Casey said he had been there for a few minutes. After we had all acknowledged that he was there, he took that as his cue to come up to John and start rambling on in French. John tried talking to him…if it were me I would’ve just walked calmly away. But, Casey and the others started walking off quickly yelling for us to come. I think it was this kind of a reaction that he was looking for and wouldn’t have bothered us if we just ignored him. But, he followed us across two streets until we all decided to go into a restaurant where we could be safe. He didn’t follow us in there and just kept walking down one of the streets. Everyone was freaking out and I couldn’t understand why. I am still really surprised at how I was so calm that night, but oh well. After everyone felt comfortable enough to walk back to hotel, we all did and decided to call it an early night.

Sunday morning we could sleep in and we didn’t have to meet the group until the afternoon. Casey and I slept in a bit, had a very good breakfast and our plan was to find a café near where we had to meet and do some of the reading we had to do for classes. Before that we stopped at the market that was going on near our hotel. It was so adorable. I felt like a local in there. There were tons of French families running their little stands and people everywhere. It was great. We didn’t stay for too long because we weren’t actually shopping for anything and those people don’t like you hanging around if you have no intention of buying stuff! Hehe So, we were off to do some studying and eventually met the group at the Moulin Rouge. I was really excited to see the Moulin Rouge because I am pretty much obsessed with the move, Moulin Rouge!! Unfortunately, we didn’t go inside, but it was still pretty neat. Next, the tour went all over the hill of Montmartre, which is the highest point in Paris. It was a very important place for artists in the 19th century and is still full of artists today. I saw places like the apartment of Vincent van Gogh (my favorite artist!) and the ‘school’ where Picasso started his career. We also went to some of the popular hangouts for artists at that time. Montmartre was probably the prettiest part of Paris that we had the pleasure of seeing. It was even more the ideal image of Paris I had in my head than the Latin Quarter. At the very top you could see all of Paris. It was a hazy day, but the view was still gorgeous. The rest of the day was spent hanging out around Montmartre and that evening we took the Eurostar back to London and then the train back to Leicester…back to reality! Hehe 

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