Bienvenu à Paris

Finally, some real world traveling. I spent this past weekend in wonderful Paris, France. I went with Sam and some of her friends from the program. We left early on Friday morning (so early that we had to stay the night in the airport). Trying to sleep in the airport is one of the worst things in the world. It was cold, then hot and 100% uncomfortable. Our flight left at 635 and we landed in France at 830ish. We were in some random airport that we had to take an hour and 40 minute bus ride until we were in the actual city. We all slept either in the airport, on the plane or on the bus. Once we arrived at the city, we went to our hostel to drop off our bags. We couldn't check in yet but they had places for us to store our belongings. Our hostel was located right up the street from Moulin Rouge. (We didn't go to it) We first went to Notre Dame (with the Notre Dame kids. Kind of funny.) We walked all around the cathedral and took lots of pictures. It is about to celebrate its 850th birthday. Crazy! We ate some lunch afterwards and then walked around for a bit before checking in at our hostel. While the rest of our group took a nap, Sam, her friend Dallas and I went to go meet up with some other people from their program to go look through a park and a famous cemetary. Afterwards we went on a night cruise through the city which was very cool. We got to see so much of the area around the Eiffel Tower. We went back to our rooms that night and slept so hard. We were all exhausted. We were up early on Saturday and took the train to Versailles. Versailles is amazing. It is a huge palace with so much to see. The best part was that everything was free. We got free access to the palace, the gardens, the Trianon and Marie Antoinette's hamlet. We spent the whole day there. We didn't get back to Paris until maybe 7:30. We ate dinner at a little Italian place and then went to the other girls' apartment (that they rented) and we all watched Beauty and the Beast. It seemed like an appropriate movie to watch while we were in France. It was a very fun and relaxing night. On Sunday, we went back to the Eiffel Tower (that way we could take pictures during the day). Afterwards we walked to the Arc de Triomphe, took a few pictures and then Sam and I hopped on the metro to the Louvre. We met up with one of our friends who was visiting Europe for a few weeks. We were so excited to meet her in Paris. We all then met up and went to check out the Louvre for a bit. We went to see the Mona Lisa (kind of a let-down but necessary I guess). Shortly after the Louvre, we said our goodbyes to our friend and then started the journey to the airport. We had to go to the hostel to get our bags, take a couple of metros and then jog to the bus. We made it in time and everything went well. Our flight left at 10:20 and I eventually arrived at my apartment by 1:30-2. My overall impression of Paris was as follows..I loved it. It was absolutely amazing in my eyes. I am not a huge fan of the language; I think Spanish and Italian sounds a lot better. The weather might have had a very big impact as to why I loved it. There was an actual fall season. The weather was around the 50's and the leaves were falling and filling the streets. We were very lucky because it was supposed to rain all weekend and it didn't rain one time. My favorite part was the food. I made sure I did all the essentials. I had french onion soup (there known as onion soup), french bread (they gave us bread at every meal),croque monsieur, escargot and, of course, crepes! Crepes are possibly the best thing that France has ever done. The best crepe-with Nutella and banana. I ate so many. They still haunt my dreams. The people weren't mean at all either. We only had encounters with friendly people. I would love to return to this country one day. Now it's back to school. I am not sure if I am traveling this weekend but if anything else exciting comes up in the next couple of days, I will let you all know.

Luke