VIVE LA PARIS

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I arrived in Paris on Monday - proceeded to get lost, except this time I left my ginormo bag in London (thanks Jenna/John) and took my much lighter reasonable sized bag to bring to Paris. This helped when I spent an hour searching through side streets for my hotel……or as I found out a hostel with angry people in charge. However I got in safely.

I visited the many of the standards tourist haunts within Paris, Eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, the louvre, Musee D’orsay, and the musee des beaux arts, and Sacre Coeur. I also took a day trip to Versailles. Chateaux de Versailles is phenomenal….gardens are lovely and I even rented a bike (with a basket, how cute was I?) and cruised around grounds! On my last morning I went to a fabric market.....some people buy cheese and wine in Paris, I buy fabric!

Over my three days here I’ve found that there are many things that I previously thought about Paris/Parisiennes that are actually not true:
1) No one wears berets (to my disappointment)…..I felt like it was a trend I could actually pull off, much like I did when I was 6 or 7 when I used to wear my white beret everyday (remember mom?).

2) Everything in Paris is not romantic (although many things are), particularly being squished against hot and sweaty people the metro (to be honest, I was probably the sweaty one), lining up for hours for tourist attractions, and the sex show strip in Montmartre (where my hotel was) which looks like you are in Vegas. None of these things scream romance.

3) Parisiennes are not as mean and unhelpful as they seem to have a reputation for….most everyone was quite nice and helpful, and put up with my accent and terrible recollection of the French language (why did I take french immersion again?).

And things that I have found that are true:
1) Still alot of smokers……turn your head to quickly and you might get an ash in the eye or a lit cigarette in the arm….
2) The cheese is freakin’ amazing…..even their crap cheese, kills our best cheese any day of week. I had cheese on a sandwich I bought at a makeshift hotdog stand and it basically melted in my mouth…….from a hot dog stand! Wow I love cheese.

All in all, Paris was great. Hopefully I get to come back some day.

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