Blogs from Paris, Île-de-France, France, Europe - page 350

Well today is our last day in Paris for now until the 3rd of June. We are going to be taking an overnight train to Venice, Italy. On the train we reserved an couchette which will sleep 4 other people besides ourselves! Should be interesting! We got to see a lot of stuff in Paris. The Louvre, Notre Dame, Saint Chappelle, Orsay Museum, Eiffel Tower, of course and much more... There are many strange things here that we have noticed. Everything is quite small, showers, beds, traffic signals, cars, streets, elevators especially and the dog leashes are so small in fact that you can't even see them. The sun doesn't go down here until about 10pm which is really strange but it's also cool because you get a lot more stuff done. All the stores ... read more

We spent a long day yesterday traveling through France. We decided to head straight for Paris, skipping the Burgundy region. Too little time left to waste on more wine and cheese and we both are excited to see Paris and Normandy. Today we went to the Louvre Museum, expecting a mile long line like in the Vatican. Surprisingly we walked in after a 5 minute wait, got tickets from a machine and within 10 minutes we were staring at the Mona Lisa! She is much smaller in person! It was strange seeing it because we have seen so many replicas and pictures our whole lives, it almost didn't seem real. Same with the Venus de Milo. We spent a long time wandering through the Egyptian section where most of the artifacts and artwork are several millenium ... read more

As an etudiante de francais, I looked forward to Paris a great deal. I went there with a fear of the French because, well, being an American I expect everyone to hate me abroad. The Parisiens we met were very nice to us, including the cab driver, the hotel workers and the waiters, possibly because we spoke French and are not your typical asshole, ethnocentric Americans, however crappy our accents may have been. We thought we were lucky because we stayed in the first arrondissement and literally one block from the Louvre. I would much rather have stayed in the ninth, though it is the prostitute district and home to the Moulin Rouge, because it was much livelier than the first. (We had the Louvre. They had the Musee de l'Erotisme, a museum dedicated to centuries ... read more

final leg of my trip and i must say it will be sad to go. meanwhile i am super excited to be in paris! the new hostel i am at is good too, unlike the milan one. i dont think i am that picky, just some little things can get youdown, like no toilet paper/seat, and mirrors set too high so i can only see my forhead. short jokes aside that is a big much. tonight i am going to the eiffel tour, and apparently some guy parachuted off it last week? crazy, and me without my own chute! lunch with larry garber tomorrow and the latin quarter, exciting... i am still rusty with my french, i walk around and name things to myself to practice. le internet. bon!... read more

Well It's the end of our first day here in Paris France. The trip was extremely long and tiring. Getting out of the airport and to Paris was really confusing but everyone who worked there was very helpful. As a matter of fact most of the people here are very nice. Most people here can speak good enough english to understand what I'm saying. Today we saw the Eiffel Tower; it was just like the pictures I've seen and it sits on a really neat park that was packed with school kids. It was really different to actually see people using parks because back in San Diego you never really see kids outside playing anymore. Our hotel is really cute and you can see the very top of the Eiffel Tower from our room. My feet ... read more