Je suis tellement heureuse d'être ici!
Paris... where to begin? My first visit to the la ville lumiere exceeded all of my high expectations. There is indeed an unmistakable romance in the air and the food is nothing short of amazing. (I would undoubtedly double in size if I ever lived in France.)
Going to Paris this past weekend was an expensive, spur of the moment decision. On Wednesday my friend Ola invited me to tag along with her and our friend Matt to their already planned out trip. Since I'm normally pretty uptight my initial response was a responsible that-would-be-awesome-but-no. On Thursday night I was supposed to be working on homework, so naturally I met up with Ola and Rebecca to discuss our European tour we're embarking on in April. Getting distracted, we began talking about Ola's weekend trip to Paris. Rebecca and I decided to check out Eurostar ticket prices, you know, just for fun. :D After some "rationalizing" and finding some fairly reasonable fares (crack of dawn or midnight traveling, anyone?) Rebecca and I decided to just take the plunge and go. I mean, how many opportunities will I have in my life to be in Paris in the midst of fashion week?! Just consider this trip supplementary to my fashion merchandising degree. ;) I was cringing the whole time I was typing in my credit card information, but that holy-crap-what-have-I-just-done feeling was quickly overshadowed by indescribable excitement. PARIS?! ME?! It has been my number one dream destination for what seems like forever (hence the high school French classes).
I had only a bit over 24 hours to get all of my ducks in a row (Where should I go, what should I eat, what do I wear? What's the weather like, what phrases do I need to brush up on, what do I do and how do I not pass out if I run into Karl Lagerfeld outside of the Grand Palais?, etc.- you know, the important stuff). :D
The four of us had to meet up at 3:30am on Saturday morning in order to make it to St. Pancras station in London in time for our train to Paris and, due to my meticulous outfit planning, no sleep was had on my part. After a VERY close call (we got on the train from Guildford with literally seconds to spare- let's just say running was involved) we were on our way to London. I think we were all too excited to sleep en route to St. Pancras, but we all four passed out on the two hour and something trip into France. I woke up to us passing the French countryside and the conductor (?) on the intercom saying that we would be arriving at Paris Gare du Nord shortly. I decided I wouldn't believe I was in Paris until I laid eyes on the Eiffel Tower.
We stepped out of the train station and were greeted by French dudes saying "Ooh la la" a lot and calling us "sexy ladies". I thought it was hilarious but I think Rebecca was a little creeped out. Wanting to put our heavy backpacks down ASAP we headed toward Ola and Matt's hostel. En route we happened upon the Sacre Coeur. It is a massive, old church positioned on top of a hill and used to be the highest point in Paris. Having read that this place boasted one of the best views of the city I insisted that we climb the ridiculous amount of stairs to take a look. (Don't worry, we made up for all the calorie burning we did by busting a FAT munch at every opportunity.) Unfortunately the smog obscured our view and we couldn't see the Eiffel Tower. So, I still didn't believe I was in Paris. On our way around Montmarte to the hostel we passed innumerable wedding dress shops. We later figured this was some kind of marketing scheme and that Parisians were simply capitalizing on the whole most-romantic-city-in-the-world thing. Most of the dresses were COMPLETELY over the top but they were still fun to look at.
Finally, we got to Matt and Ola's hostel. After learning they were completely booked for the night (as expected), mine and Rebecca's hostel fiasco began. Not wanting to drag Ola and Matt around for the ride, we insisted they take off to start exploring. I will save you all from boredom and say that after a few hours everything was worked out and Rebecca and I set off into the city. Goal: macarons and the Eiffel Tower. For some reason we had a really difficult time finding macarons. We walked down the Champ Elysees in search of supposedly the best macarons in Paris but, much to our chagrin, had no luck. The sun went down and we finally found some okay macarons. Sitting at a little table outside of the patisserie, we were typical tourists in awe of the Eiffel Tower light show. (Apparently, Parisians hate this. Apparently, Parisians hate a lot of things.) Mission accomplished. I believed I was in Paris. Kind of. :) Fun fact: I got a bit overzealous with my macaron eating ability and couldn't even look at them for the remainder of the trip.
Since the next day was the first Sunday of the month, a lot of tourist attractions were free. The four of us took advantage of this by visiting the Louvre and Versailles. Both were breathtaking and amazing- as expected. In between those Rebecca and I explored a Parisian flea market and sipped espresso in some mismatched flea market chairs on the bank of the Seine. That night while we were walking around we came upon something I was really eager to see- Pont des Arts, or as I call it, the love lock bridge. Couples come to the bridge, put a lock on it, kiss and throw their key into the Seine. So romantic!!! I'm such a girl. I thought it was really sweet. After that we made our way to Montmarte to have a look at the Moulin Rouge marquee- another thing that was a bit underwhelming but glad we did it. Sidenote: Montmarte is SEEDY at night, ha! I've never seen so many sex shops in my life. Overload!! Anyway, Pont des Arts and the Louvre were my two favorite things about Paris, so Sunday was a really good day.
On Monday we met up to take a free, tip-based tour around the city. It was great because the guide told us the interesting anecdotes and tidbits about historical figures and monuments- you know, the interesting stuff, like exactly how commoners tortured and dismembered the man that assassinated King Henry IV and what all of those people standing outside of the Chloe fashion show are really doing. It was lengthy- three and a half hours- but time flew by because it was so interesting! Afterward Rebecca and I attempted shopping. Fail. It's like shopping in the city is either top-of-the-line designer or garbage. We were glad we tried because we would have regretted it if we hadn't. It didn't take long before we gave up on the shopping and happily settled for some creme brulee, meringue and cafe au laits instead. ;)
While Matt and Ola had to leave Monday night, Rebecca and I still had another day. (Someone was playing hooky.) First thing on Tuesday we toured the Catacombs de Paris. Interesting, spooky, sad, gross- all of the above. It is unbelievable how many people are stacked up on each other down there. After several rooms of the same thing- skulls stacked into cross shapes and walls made of femurs- I had to just stop and look at one skull. It didn't matter which one I looked at, I just needed to focus on one. That was a person with a name and a family. Now that person is a number in a massive underground tomb that tourists come to marvel at. I thought it was important for me to pay respect to that person for a moment. I guess because of the catacombs reference, this song was playing in my head the whole time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXsgdXuokIA
The catacombs are way below the Metro and a lot of stairs descending into the earth were involved. Once again, okay with us because of how much we had consumed the past three days. After a while Rebecca and I noticed that the ceiling was dripping and that we were stepping around more and more pools of water. Right about the time Rebecca dubbed this as "skull juice", we reached the end of the route through the Catacombs. (Upon resurfacing onto the street we saw that it had actually been raining- not "skull juicing".) We then made our way to Notre Dame. What a beautiful, breathtaking church. After having learned the day before during the tour that Notre Dame was where Napoleon grew impatient, snatched the crown from the pope, crowned himself and pretty much declared to the world he was God's gift to the planet I was very interested in seeing it. We waited in a long line and, after faking accents and saying we were EU citizens in order to get in for free (what? we're broke students), climbed to the top of the cathedral. Despite the notorious Paris smog, the view was incredible and completely worth the wait and Stairmaster workout we got climbing to the top.
Rebecca and I walked past the Pompidou with intentions of going in before we realized that we only had a couple of hours left of our Parisian getaway. I told her that before we left I wanted to get some fruit, cheese and wine and have dinner on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, so we did just that. Mmm SO good! After the sun went down and we watched the light show one last time we made our way back to the Gare du Nord to catch our train back to London. Although we were a bit sad to go, we were excited to sleep in beds not embedded with cigarette smoke and with bedding that smelled like it had actually been washed since the turn of the century. (Gotta love hostels! ;) Unfortunately my camera broke on day two, so the limited number of pictures I do have are currently being held hostage on a memory card. I will post those ASAP. Fortunately I was able to take pictures with Rebecca's camera for the remainder of the trip, so those will be available as soon as she gets around to uploading them.
I'm still daydreaming about the awesome food (FATTY!) and the head-in-the-clouds feeling the city gave me. Although we're wrapping up our Tour de Europe with Paris in April, I told the girls that after that I'm not returning unless it's with Mr. Right. :)
*sigh* Je t'aime, Paris. Until next time...