Paris - The city of Love and Lights. February 16-20

Paris is hands down the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.  I felt like everywhere I looked I just wanted to take a picture to remember the moment.  Coming from London, we quickly realized how much we took speaking English for granted there because none of us knew a word of French except to say “Do you speak English?” which 99% of the time the answer was “Yes, a little” which translated to “I really know 3 words but I want your business.”  The funny thing was that in our mind a “foreign language” is Spanish, not French, so when we tried to communicate we would all of a sudden switch over into Spanish mode although that just made the situation worse sometimes.  For example, if the lady in the bakery finally realized what we wanted to buy we would respond “Si si claro muchas gracias” and get a nice little stare down…

Paris!

We arrived in the city of lights and love (both true) Wednesday afternoon.  Caroline’s cousin Jamie (from Wisconsin, in a masters program for professional French and has been living in Paris since August) offered up his apartment to us for the weekend (to which we are eternally grateful we didn’t have to find a hostel).  The bad news was he had a webinar right about when we were arriving so he wasn’t able to pick us up from the airport.  He did give us great directions and I’m very proud of our navigation from the airport – we took a train from the airport to the metro station, got on 2 different metros, and walked to his apartment without knowing any French or asking for help!  His apartment was very nice with a lot of character.  He had a roommate from France, named Jen (pronounced Shen) who was very friendly and spoke English very well.  Us 3 girls took over the living room and shared a pullout couch between the 3 of us which didn’t end up being half bad.  That night we went grocery shopping and Jamie cooked us dinner – pasta and keesh – before we crashed for the night from such long travels.

Lourve

Opera House

Notre Dame

On Thursday Jamie agreed to take us around the city a little bit before he had to do work.  We walked along the Seine River to many gorgeous sites.  We walked around one of the main shopping districts into a shopping mall.  In my head I’m thinking, why would he want to take us here? but I decide to go along with it.  We reached the top floor of the shopping mall to a view overlooking the entire city of Paris complete with the Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower, Opera House, Museums, etc.  After taking in the views, we walked around a bit more to see more of the city.  One of my favorite stops was a bridge called Ponte Des Arts.   On the chain linked fence that lined the bridge, there were a million locks of different sizes, shapes and colors.  On this bridge many people go and “lock away their love” with someone they’re thinking of marrying.  Most of the locks had their names and the date they “locked their love”… Reason #394873 I’m going to fall in love in Paris one day!  For lunch Jamie took us to a stand (which for some odd reason Lenny Kravitz loves) that sells falafels (pronounced Full-lah-fulls), a typical lunch item in France.  Jamie said it was the best one in the city and I believed him when I saw the line in front of the place!  A falafel is fried chick peas, cabbage, cucumber (I think?), eggplant and some special sauces mixed in a pita.  The looks of it is a bit frightening, but it was SO GOOD.  Bet Mom and Dad are surprised I liked that one, huh?  Jamie left us to do some work so us girls wandered over to Arc De Triumph and the famous Champ Elysses (large shopping street).  The sweetest store was probably Louis Vuitton; we definitely got the “once-over” walking into that store.  The weather turned lousy on us once again so we made our way home and decided to cook dinner for Jamie this time – a gourmet meal of frozen veggies and pizza.  Let’s just say Caroline and I should probably stay out of the kitchen for a while, although Jamie was a good sport about eating it.  The wine probably made up for it.  We checked out the nightlife a bit by Notre Dame in an area called San Michel, Jamie’s favorite.  Of course we ended up in an Irish pub once again – looks like we’re going to have a blast in Dublin when we go!

Love bridge.. my favorite!

Fallafel

Heaven on Earth!

On Friday Jamie recommended a little bakery down the street from his house to go and get a pastry for breakfast.  I chose some mixture of ham, cheese and egg on 2 slices of bread.  Really, don’t ask me what it was called, all I know is I wish the US had food this good sometimes!  We took the metro to Notre Dame for an early afternoon mass which we thought would be awesome after doing the same in London.  We lasted legitimately 30 seconds when we realized the mass meant nothing to us since it was in French.  We were able to walk around the church a bit and in my opinion (huge brat alert) I wasn’t impressed at all compared to the other churches I’ve seen.  There was just nothing special there to really see – guess I’m going to have to watch that Disney movie again to see if it sparks my interest.  From there we went to visit the Eiffel Tower – FINALLY!  Caroline and Lauren gathered up enough courage to take an elevator to the top with me and the view of the city was awesome – it would have been better though if it wasn’t for the foggy weather!  The Eiffel Tower is exactly what I expected but even more unique and gorgeous in person.  Of course we did all the typical pictures in front of it… I took about 30 pictures of it JUST in case it moved or changed for some reason haha.  We hit up more shops in the area and I even visited Chanel since I’m obsessed (shout out to my Auntie Marie!)  I feel like I’m rambling on about this day but we pretty much did all of the main touristy things on Friday – the day was jam packed.  After shopping we went to Musee d’Orsay which had a lot of impressionists work, like Monet.  He’s the only artist I really knew there so we didn’t stay for very long.  We made it to the Louvre (the biggest museum I’ve ever seen… we checked online how to get to all the things we wanted to see ahead of time otherwise we could have wandered around that place for hours on end) by late afternoon.  It must have been because we were really worn out, or the intimidation of the building but the only 2 works we sought out were the Mona Lisa (which was under so much surveillance and security… and like rumor has it, very little) and Venus de Milo, a statue.  I was shocked we were able to take pictures of both of them since cameras are usually prohibited in the museums. 

That's her!

Jamie met us up later for dinner at a place Jen recommended for us.  Caroline’s dad was very generous and took us all out for that meal.  Dinner in France works very similar to lunch in Spain – everyone gets 3 courses and it’s the heavier meal of the day.  I ordered a soft boiled egg appetizer with toasted bread (Jamie said it was very French) and filet mignon for dinner.  Jamie ordered duck and made us taste a little bit of it; it wasn’t bad at all!  We hurried through dessert because Jamie all of a sudden said he had a surprise for us.  We left the restaurant and all of a sudden he started jogging through the streets and told us to follow.  After what seemed like 1000 stairs and a mile run (we were SO full) we reached the top of a hill overlooking the city with the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the distance.  At 9, 10 and 11, on the hour for 10 minutes the Eiffel Tower is lit up and glimmers like its covered in a million sparkles.  Behind us was the Basilica of Sacre Coeur on top of the hill as well.  There was a mass going on and we peaked inside a little bit – it was beautiful both inside and out and in my opinion more impressive than Notre Dame.  Jamie took us around the city a little more and we decided to visit Moulin Rouge which was in the Red Light District of Paris.  I never realized that most cities in Europe have this type of area, I thought it was only something that existed in Amsterdam.  Let me tell you, it was quite the experience.  We didn’t go inside anywhere, but that area seemed like an entirely different country.  Jamie said its not somewhere you want to be walking by yourself at night; you might get asked “how much” if you catch my drift.  When we finally got home we all collapsed onto the sofa – we had been gone for over 12 hours straight that day!

Since we did so much on Friday we were able to sleep in as late as we wanted to on Saturday.  We didn’t end up leaving the apartment until late afternoon and headed to a famous cemetery in Paris.  Many politicians, some musicians, etc are buried here… Jamie says you have to be pretty legit to be buried here and one of the rules is you must die in Paris.  One of the more famous grave sites here is that of Oscar Wilde, the famous poet.  It’s tradition to bring a tube of lipstick and kiss his tomb, something Lauren of course wanted to do.  The cemetery was actually pretty in a way; most of the tombs were actually small “huts” where people were buried.  It still was creepy and the dreary and rainy weather added to the experience.  We wandered our way around and finally found his tomb, like Jamie had promised, COVERED in kisses!  It was crazy… Lauren fulfilled her wish and kissed the tomb, I declined for fear of diseases.  On our way back to the metro we stopped to get crepes, another food Paris is famous for.  They were good, I chose banana, but not my favorite thing I’ve tried in Paris.  That night, we had dinner at a family friend of Caroline’s.  Caroline has a friend from home, Shannon (who I got to meet last summer), whose parents recently moved to Paris from London for business.  They generously invited the 3 of us over to their apartment for dinner and drinks.  One of their neighbors from home, who also went to Caroline’s high school, also came over for dinner as well.  It was nice and almost comforting (although I had just met the McKercher’s) to have a nice sit down homemade meal after so much traveling.  I’m so jealous of their lives in Paris – they’ve visited over 58 countries and have been to all the continents except Antarctica!

When we got home from dinner at the McKercher’s we had a tough decision to make.  Our flight left Paris at 7 am the next morning and our gate closed at 6:30 am for our flight.  By train, Jamie’s apartment was about 45 minutes away from the airport and the first train in the morning was at 5:18 am, getting us to the airport just before 6 am.  If we didn’t make that first train, the next one wouldn’t leave until after 5:30 am making it almost impossible to make our flight.  We could either leave for the airport Saturday night and spend some quality time with the metal seats in the airport (aka like 6 hours worth) or take the train the following morning. I don’t know what got into us, but we decided to risk it and leave in the morning.  Jamie called ahead of time for the taxi for us, which was picking us up at 4:35 am to drive us to the train station. We barely got a wink of sleep, but in the morning everything thankfully ran exactly as planned.  We got to the airport at about 5:50 and sprinted through the airport to our terminal to go through security.  Caroline had a little trouble with her carry-on (EasyJet is so strict and made her pay to check it, ugh!) but we made it through security and to our gate just as they were boarding, phew!  We got into Malaga, hopped on a bus back to Granada for 2 hours and finally arrived in Granada about 2:30!  It felt so good to be home sweet home in Granada after so many travels.

I’d say the only complaint I had about France was the language barrier that made things a bit frustrating at times.  Other than that, it’s definitely my favorite city so far!  On our trip we learned that it’s a rule in Paris that buildings can only be a certain height because the French don’t want huge sky scrapers taking over their city.  For this reason, the view of the city is beautiful because the major things (like the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumph, etc) stick out above everything else.  I could definitely see myself visiting Paris again in the future.

My updated list of favorite cities is as follows:

1. Paris
2. Sevilla
3. London
4. Madrid