The Louvre (also known as the Luve)

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Thursday, June 12th 2008
Today is the day that we left for Paris. It was a group of 8 girls and then Andrew, Jeff, and Ryan. From my apartment it was Kami, Amy, and I. Our flight left at around 430 so we had to catch a train to Pisa and then to the airport at around 12:30. It was nice not having to rush in the morning…I got to get to the gym with time to spare to pack and relax a bit. I was up early knowing that I had to do things so I walked around the city in the morning until 9 when the gym opened. Once we got to the train station we met up with the girls from upstairs that were going (Jenna, Jen, Lauren, Laura, Danielle). We hung around the airport once we got there and met up with the boys. I sat with Andrew on the way there, we had just hanging out and then we both passed out. The flight wasn’t bad at all, it was only an hour and a half **at the most. When we landed we had to buy bus tickets in order to get into the city. It was an hour ride and once we got there we had to get the metro into our district of the city (Bastille). We all were STARVING when we got there so we checked into our hostel and walked to find a restaurant. The district that we stayed in was great. It was filled with nightlife and restaurants…I wish we could have stayed longer to have fun there. We ended up at a pub called Bastille’s Pub (go figure). It was happy hour until midnight so we just made it. We had 2 for 1 mojitos and made good friends with the bar tender (Romeo). He loved us!! We got dinner and went through baskets and baskets of the bread and chips they gave us. By the end of the night we were getting free shots and were behind the bar taking pictures with Romeo. We met a few guys who had just got to Paris that night. They wanted to party with us so we walked to a different bar and ordered drinks. Kami, Laura, and I were beat and done drinking so we walked back to the hostel to fall asleep.

Friday, June 13th 2008
I wish I could say that my first day in Paris was as awesome as the city really is. Traveling with 8 girls is never ever a good idea. Everyone really had their own ideas of what the weekend should entail and it was tough not to have a lot of tension. First we all went to the Eiffel Tower. It was gorgeous, huge, and the perfect day for pictures. The only problem at this point was that it was FREEZING!!! It was at the most 60 degrees. After the Eiffel tower, we decided to take a boat tour around the city. It would have been nice if we all were not icicles. I feel horrible bitching about Paris, I mean common its Paris! But the cold coupled with the tension made it kind of lame. After the boat tour we walked to this huge shopping street champs elysees (sp.?) we got some lunch and then went to do a bit of shopping (to get some gear for the cold weather!) after that we walked a bit more and found this itty bitty crepe restaurant that looked like it was straight out of Holland.. I don’t know why I thought that, but I could just picture little wooden clogs in there! I got an AMAZING chocolate crepe. Afterwards we walked some more and ended up splitting up. Me, Amy, Laura, and Kami went to the Louvre (I call it the Luve). It is the biggest museum in the world and God only knows that I am not artsy at all! It was so annoying to be honest because I was with 3 artsy people. We split up and I ended up putting on my ipod and sitting in a gigantic room. I used the back of my itinerary to use as a input of my journal. I sat there writing on a scrap piece of paper, listening to Sugarland in the most famous museum in the world…I am PATHETIC!!!! In the 3rd hour we were there I bumped into Kami who had bumped into Jeff. He was obviously there with Andrew…I have never been so relieved to see him! We had made a plan to meet up with the other girls at 9 to figure out dinner plans and I couldn’t stomach being with girls anymore (on top of it they didn’t want to eat until 11! And I was hungry!) We ended up getting a group together to get some dinner. We ended up at this bar and grill that we picked because they had a lot of variety. I had a salmon dish and we split a bunch of French onion soup (we were in France so it was necessary…) Afterwards we were going to go see the Louvre at night but Laura was SO cold so I offered to go back to the hostel with her to change. Turns out she didn’t have the keys to her room. We got messed up on the metro and were trying to get back to the Eiffel tower by midnight to meet everyone. We finally made it, and got some crepes. Every half an hour at night the tower lights up like crazy it was out of this world!!! It was definitely one of the most amazing things that I have ever seen. We met up with everyone and finally decided to head back to the hostel. At this point it was around 12:50 and we had heard that the metro stopped at 1. Instead of walking to the metro we waited in line to hail a taxi (they are very democratic about hailing taxies in France). Once it was our turn and we successfully hailed one, he told us that it was too far away and he wouldn’t take us! We decided to try the metro and ended up making the last train. We had to go to a stop called Nationale and then get on a different train to our stop. We made it all the way to the connecting train and then saw that we were going to have to get on the next metro in four minutes. Four minutes turned into 45 and then a girl came by and said the metro was closed. We hiked our butts across the city back to our hostel at 3 am. God It felt SOOO good to go to bed.

Saturday, June 14, 2008
We woke up at 9 today to be out of the hostel by 10. Amy Kami and I split up to see a few sites around the city before we had to leave for the bus station. We went to the Muse del Orsay *** after this trip I will NEVER step foot in a museum EVER AGAIN! I walked around aimlessly and couldn’t wait to leave. After the museum, we went to the Church of Notre Dame and got egg and cheese crepes (so good!) the church was actually pretty amazing too. We shopped around the area for a bit and then hopped on the metro to get to the bus station. We made it just in the nick in time and I had to pee so bad!! I waited until the bus started (because I know from bus2alps that the bathroom doesn’t work unless its on). Turns out the bathroom didn’t work and I had to SPRINT my butt off at least a half a mile to the nearest bathroom…that wasn’t the worst of it…The other Jenna was missing!! I guess she insisted on climbing the Eiffel tower by herself and is as dumb as a rock and couldn’t find her way back. Everyone was livid. We got to the airport with no word from her and realized that the flight was delayed…thank goodness. We sat around the airport until the flight left and Jenna got there as we were boarding. She was so lucky. After the flight and the 2 train rides I decided to go out (no one else wanted to those lazy buttheads) and so I went back to Andrew’s apartment, made dinner, got ready and met my other roommates at Red Garter. It was Deana’s 21st birthday and she was definitely utilizing her new American privilege!! She was destroyed. I ended up talking to some cute Italian who bought me a rose  he was so sweet but nothing worth exchanging numbers. He was like 26 ( I know I am ALWAYS going for the older men!!) and was a professor in Florence. He was originally from Florence but had lived in Pennsylvania….so we had some stuff to talk about. I walked back to Andrews with Hilary and found Deana there drunk on the couch. The 3 girls slept at his apartment and woke up in the morning feeling the night before for sure!!!

Sunday, June 15, 2008
I woke up at Andrew’s today and then walked home with the other girls. We showered and ended up going to Ari’s diner... which has American Brunch. It was UNBELIEVABLE!!! Holy goodness, I cannot put into words how delish it was!!! I got an omlet and it came with potatoes, toast, and fruit..it was humungous! After that we went to the Calico Storico. It is a medieval “soccer” game that is intensely violent!!! It was so crazy to watch. It was just a bunch of dudes beating the living daylights out of each other in weird outfits. The girls walked back and got ready for Deana’s birthday dinner at Aqua del 2. AMAZING MEAL!!!! It was so good we split a salad sampler for 3 and then got veggie pasta and balsamic steak. I don’t want to elaborate on the meal or the restaurant because I want to surprise the parents when they are here. It was by far the greatest food that I have had here. After dinner we went to the boys and then to Michael Collins. I was BEAT so left after a drink with Dusty and Amanda. I went to bed and passed out until the morning without waking up once. It was amazing.

Monday, June 16, 2008
We didn’t have our first class today which was so nice. I walked around; grocery shopped and moseyed around the city until our 1:30 class. For our food class we went to listen to an anti-mafia speech. I was dying of boredom. Afterwards I went to a bar that had free wireless and sat in there to catch up on pictures and email. I went to the gym after that, made dinner when I got home, and then the boys came over to just have a relaxing night. It was such a nice relaxing day.

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