Paris

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Paris is a wonderful city with soooooo much to do! Luckily we had four days there, but that still wasn't enough. We arrived super early on Thursday morning, our flight landed at 8 something. But then our airport wasn't actually in Paris, so we took a bus ride for about an hour to the city center. Weirdly enough, when we landed, nobody was at customs. We literally walked right in the country without speak to anyone or showing our passport...

Their metro system is pretty easy, and we got right on it and right to our hostel. After dropping our stuff, we headed for a free, 3.5 hour walking tour. The tour was awesome, and our guide was super funny/knowledgeable. Without her we really wouldn't have known what we were looking at, and in 3.5 hours we got to see most of the main attractions of the city.

After the tour, and the cold weather, we were exhausted. We headed back to our hostel for a nap, but we had the most noisy neighbors in the world. Sounded like 20 people in one room. We ate somewhere yummy for dinner, not especially Parisian, but good nonetheless, and we practiced some french there.

The next day, we headed to Versailles, which is conveniently free if you are under 25, I believe it was 25. Versailles was really cool, and for free they gave you the automated tour/telephone looking thing, so we actually knew what we were looking at. After the inside of the palace, the gardens were really amazing. The only thing that could have made it any better would've been warmer weather... but it was still really fun. Lots of weird and perfectly manicured hedges and tress, awesome fountains, swans, sheep, cool stuff.

After this, we began our search for onion soup. It was actually really hard to find. But Sarah and I went out for dinner one night alone (because everyone was asleep). We found a place with great onion soup. We split that and cheese and a bottle of wine. Then went to the Eiffel Tower at night, which is a must. Every hour on the hour it twinkles and looks really pretty. It didn't come out in photos, but one of my friends took a video.

The next day was pretty crazy! We woke up and headed to the catacombs, in the rain : ( .... But it was okay because after the huge line, it was obviously under ground. The catacombs is an old burial ground that they took millions of bodies after the graveyards reached capacity (way long ago!). Now it's a very eerie, fun underground maze. It is even below the metro and the sewage system. After this, we headed to the Louvre, which is literally a day in itself, if not more! The Louvre was gigantic and really cool. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa, we saw lots of Egyptian and greek pottery/artifacts. And we got very lost, because the Louvre is a pretty difficult place to navigate. We were exhausted at this point, and the rain didn't really help. So we headed back.

One night for dinner, we headed to a really fun fondue place, called Refuge des Fondues. I had seen it in somebody else's photos, and because of my love of cheese, naturally wanted fondue. The place was a party in itself. The whole restaurant basically sat at one large table, and to get to the other side, you had to hop/stand on the table. They don't recommend wearing skirts... The place was loud and the owner was very very friendly. They only have maybe 30 seats in the whole restaurant, so there is a quite a wait. To top it all off, they serve their wine out of baby bottles, which was really sillly/fun.

Our last day in Paris (Sunday), we woke up and headed up the Eiffel Tower. It was really cool to see the city from so high up, but probably not all it is cracked up to be. Long, long, long lines..... Then we went to visit a cemetery in Paris which has some famous graves. We saw Oscar Wilde's and Jim Morrison's, but couldn't find Chopin. After this, we headed near the river to visit the Notre Dame. Notre Dame was really cool, with amazing architecture and stained glass. But we were getting pretty sleepy. Eventually, we were about ready to head back to the airport and return home.

All in all, Food: excellent! Sights: Great, so much to see, and mostly free for students! People: not that mean, because I tried pretty hard to learn some french, I've got down a couple of basics. Weather: Absolutely awful, especially coming from Spain : ( Was very cold and rainy that weekend.

Will definitely be returning whenever I can (way in the future) to get to some of the things I couldn't this time!

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