Paris

Friday, November 20, 2009: I landed in France with Samantha. We actually made it. And whats better (but not best, don't worry mom), my aunt Kara is there WAITING for us! In France. In Paris. In the airport! We get directions at the airport for the hostel I have written down in my handy, dandy notebook, and I direct us there Perfectly... only to get there and realize that it is not actually the hostel we are staying at... oops! So make Samantha and Kara lug their luggage around another hour until we reach the right place. By this time I am really good at navigating the metro. I can get to the destination fine, its whether the destination is the right one that I have a problem with :]

Our hotel is perfect. Just what we imagined a small Parisian hotel to look like. The room has paper thin walls with wallpaper that dates back to the 60's, just big enough to fit a double and a twin, with a sink and some sort of toilet thing. Our window overlooks more buildings and has a basket of red flowers hanging off the side of it. Our room was on the 3rd floor, up 2 flights of extremely steep stairs that I feel like I could fall through at any moment. The 3rd floor is uneven and feels like at any second I could end up on the 2nd floor... But it was perfect.

Our first night was full of adventure, mostly trying to find a place to eat. After getting settled in our hotel, all of us agree that we are hungry. We go back and forth on a couple of restaurants, finally decide on one, and sit down only to realize that they don't serve dinner until 7, and its 5. So we settle in on the most practical place we can find, somewhere with pictures. We point at our dinner and hope that it is going to taste good. Friday nights are free admission at the Louvre for EU students under 26. So Samantha, Kara and I march up to the booth, show them our passports like we know what we are doing, and the next thing we know we are standing face-to-face with the Mona Lisa :] We are not EU students, and Kara is just a couple of years older than 26. This is a first to our many "free" activities among Paris and Dublin. (P.S. the Mona Lisa is super small). We ended the night off with a trip to the Eiffel Tower.

The next day we were with Samantha's friend, Liz, who studied in Paris for about a year. She trained in from Strausburg to take us around and be our personal tour guide for one of the days in Paris. I think we walked about 12 miles that day. We headed straight to the Eiffel Tower to see it in all its glory during the day. We ordered Crepes and Cappacino's made our way to the base. We walked up the first two flights of stairs, then took an elevator to the top and looked out over all of Paris. It was beautiful. After our excursion up, Kara got sucked in by the people selling things and we all ended up with cute little Eiffel Tower memorabilia. Thanks Kara! Our next stops were the Arc de Triumph, Moulin Rouge, Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, Notre Dame, and ended our night with eating Escargot. Kara and I also visited the Palace of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower once more before we left, the WWII museum and saw King Phillip XIV's tomb.

Paris was beautiful, somewhere I had always wanted to go, but I'm not sure I could call it my favorite city in the world. The people were very unhelpful, and caused us to get lost on several occasions. But, their transportation system was awfully easy to beat. Between kara and I, we bought a child's metro ticket and I would sneak in behind her before the gates closed. One day, there was a random ticket check and I just handed them my child's ticket from the day before and they let me through. That was a plus that we didn't have to spend so much on the metro everyday.

But again, I am thankful for the opportunity to even be able to visit Paris and see it. Then, we were off to Dublin!