It's Like a Postcard From Paris When I've Seen the Real Thing

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This might be the exact script from PBS when they want your money. I'm not entirely sure though.  

So I just got back from Paris, and you may have guessed it was a little spendy. But definitely worth it. Vale la pena, if you will. (That's "worth it" in Spanish).  As I didn't post yesterday due to travel tiredness, I will try to catch you up.

Thursday:

After class ended, we (five of us, including myself) headed to Madrid to stay in a hostel.  We had an early flight (7 am) and decided to get something to eat (also free Margaritas much?) and then go to bed early. This wasn't entirely successful as we weren't necessarily interested in sleeping when we could be talking and joking instead. So it goes.

Friday:

PARIS! Actually, this involved waking up reaaaaal early, like 3:45 am early, to get to the airport and go through security to catch our flight.  We took a taxi to the airport and made it through security in record time, which meant we ended up sitting in an airport terminal exchanging embarrassing stories for a few hours before our flight.  I slept for most of the flight, but when I talked to the flight attendants, I spoke in Spanish....which was wrong. We booked with Air France so they speak French. Duh.

Mona Lisa. Obvs.

When we landed, we had to deal with the Paris airport. Which was probably the worst part of the entire journey because there weren't any unconfusing indications of how to actually get into Paris. The airport is outside the city a little, so we needed to take the metro, but we originally bought the wrong tickets and the lines were super long and the world is not a wish-granting factory. It took us three hours to make it to our hostel because there are exactly eight thousand metro lines and you need to switch stations and actually go the right direction (we got a little turned around) to make it into the city. When we finally made it, we were starving, and I ate the best pizza of my life at a French restaurant before checking into our hostel. The pizza was big and delicious and mmmmmmm. No words.

Creepy/Cool Catacombs

After leaving our stuff in the hostel, we made a quick decision to visit these catacombs near(ish) our hostel.  Before coming to Paris, I didn't even know these catacombs existed, but they were really cool to see.  They were underground quite a ways, so we had to take a million spiral stairs down, and I was quite dizzy by the time we got to the bottom. As we walked through the tunnels, there were dates inscribed on the walls, usually from the late 1700s or early 1800s. Which is almost as old as our country, no big deal.  The catacombs had been used as a mass burial ground for people who couldn't afford a more expensive one.  So towards the end, we saw all the skeletons and skulls which was both interesting and....I can't find the word. I talked about mortality and time in another post, but I had those same feelings again down there.

Ba da ba ba ba: I'm Louvre-n it!

After the catacombs, we went back to the hostel. We got lost for a while on the way back, but luckily I wasn't the navigator or we might never have made it. When we got back, it was time to relax for a little bit until we could head out to see the Louvre. The museum is free after 6 pm so when the time came we, once again, took the metro to it. (Sidenote: I spent a small fortune on the metro this weekend but even I know how to use the Parisian metro system now.)


The Louvre was absolutely incredible.  It has a ton of interesting sculptures and some of the most famous pieces of art in the world. (Mona Lisa, anyone?) We spent about three hours there, looking for the most interesting pieces including: the Aphrodite sculpture, Ramses II, a medieval moat (how do you get one of those in a museum?!?), the apartment of Napoleon (fancy) and many, many more paintings, sculptures, works of art, and ancient um...stuff.

We took eight million pictures there, both inside and out because the place is beautiful. All of it. I miss my Louvre already.

Napoleon's Apartment. Can I live here?

After, we took the metro (this phrase will show up more, I promise) to our hostel and went to look for a place nearby to eat. In true Spaniard fashion, we didn't eat until after ten at a place where I had probably my first or second salad with real dressing (not olive oil) of the trip. Oh how I missed you, dressing. Also, free water. Neither Spain nor Portugal give free water at restaurants, so it was exciting (no joke) to get that in France.  We walked back to our hostel and headed to bed after being awake for far too long.   

Saturday:

My first minutes of consciousness on Saturday were due to a fire alarm. It was, to say the least, unpleasant, and included me pulling pants over my shorts, grabbing my bag and coat, losing an earring and not being able to see due to no glasses. I've had better mornings. Also, my dislike of smokers continues to grow. After the alarm, we ate breakfast at the hostel, which was cereal, a mini french baguette with jam, and hot chocolate.  The cereal was absolutely delicious because it was like a chocolatey version of Honey Bunches of Oats with mini white and milk chocolate chips. The French know how to breakfast.

After breakfast we split into two groups, where half of us went to buy things we needed (a camera charger and new boots) and the others went to the impressionist museum, Musee d'Orsay. I went to the museum and am so glad I did. It was free because we are students, and that made it even better. We couldn't take pictures so you get to use your imagination: yay! There were some really famous paintings there too, and my favorites include all of Van Gogh's (I don't care if he was crazy, he's my favorite!) and Monet's works. Also, the pointillism ones were absolutely fantastic. Go to the Google machine if you want to check them out.

After the museum, we all met up and headed to the Champs Elysee, which is the big shopping area in Paris and where the Arc de Triomphe is. At one point we walked right outside Paris Fashion Week and saw Jessica Chastain, (a super famous actress who was in The Help and recently Zero Dark Thirty) so that was pretty cool. We took a ton of pictures by the Arc and were incredibly touristy.

We next went out to eat and I had delicious French crepes. They reminded me of the fam but were too delicious for me to be homesick. I would conservatively estimate I had roughly 39174928yr9 crepes on this trip because they also had them for free at our hostel (with just sugar and butter like at home!)

I am actually terrified in this picture. This is my brave face.

After eating we went to the Eiffel Tower. I need to preface this with childhood memories. As a young'n, we went camping quite a few times each summer. At many of these places there would be lookout towers you could climb to see the entire area, so they were incredibly tall. Now as a young child, I had a very big problem. I could make it up one, maybe two of the levels before I freaked out completely and had to stop. These towers were really tall and I could make it only like twenty feet in the air. Not so high. Remember this.

For some reason we decided to climb the Eiffel Tower and took the trusty metro to get there. Thankfully, we could only climb to the second level. Unfortunately this is still incredibly high and the entire time I was climbing, I thought I would throw up. I know there is supposedly some courage required to face your fears and all that jazz, but if someone said to me: Emily, you have a choice. You can climb the Eiffel Tower again or can get shot in the kneecap. These are (for some reason) your only options.

I would choose getting shot. That is how I feel about heights. So now you know I'm a chicken... Despite my complaining and fear, the view was incredible. It was a cloudy day and everything but still worth the climb. It was so beautiful that I could almost forget about those stairs. *Shudder* We came back again later that night to see it all lit up, and that was even better. They have it light up extra with sparkly lights once an hour so we stuck around to see that too. Even though it's a cliche/touristy monument, it is worth it to see. Go book your tickets to Paris now!

We cooked our own dinner when we got back (metro again) to our hostel. It was a late dinner, 11pm-ish, so I can tell I'm getting used to the late Spanish schedule. We packed up everything and went to bed to prepare for our journey back the next day.

Sunday:

Paris (and me) at night. Shnazzy.

Oh, Parisian metro, what did I ever do to you? Sunday was, at best, hectic. We were pros at the metro system by the time we left the city, but apparently we didn't budget our time properly on Sunday. We checked out of our hostel at about 9:30 am so we had three hours to get to our plane, but that almost wasn't enough.  The subway took way longer than we anticipated and we ended up having to take a bus as well to get to the airport. By the time we got there, we were running through the terminals like the guy runs after the girl in every good chick-flick. We also were able to get through security quite quickly because adrenaline. Thankfully, we all made our plane despite minor separations and setbacks regarding the metro taking its sweet time.

I'm going to save you the trouble of reading an 8-9 hour day of travel: metro, metro, bus, plane, metro, metro, bus, feet, THE FUND. Never have I been so happy to see my dorm.

I'm not going anywhere this weekend so I fear my next blog will be less exciting. Lo siento.

Ciao for now!

P.S. Claire, the Batman shirt made it to Paris!