Spring Break!
Because I haven't posted in oh, a hundred years, I figured it was time to do so again. I spent an amazing eight days in Paris, France taking a class and seeing literally everything we could cram in. And also eating everything we could cram in. It was my first trip to Europe and also my first time leaving the country (don't ask me why I live just a couple hours from Canada and have never been there - like Canada counts anyway). So here is the story of my week with pictures. Lots of pictures. So sorry if it takes forever to load.
Friday, March 10
I woke up at 9 after like, three hours of sleep, finished the English paper I'd stayed up all night writing, and finished packing. At 11:15, Emily picked me up and drove me to the airport where I attempted to not have a panic attack because I seriously knew no one else going on the trip. But within a half hour, I met two really great people, and then I was good to go!
We seriously sat around the airport foreverrrrrrrrr because they made us get there at 12:30, and it took us 2.5 seconds to check our bags and go through security. And our flight didn't even leave until 3. We flew first to Houston (don't ask), but I'd never been there before so I was okay with it until it TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER we were flying back DIRECTLY OVER CLEVELAND. So sometime in the middle of this it became
Saturday, March 11
in both the US and France. The flight was long and uncomfortable and I couldn't move and I thought I was going to get a DVT and die, but eventually we made it. We landed at almost 11 AM Paris-time, which I just realized I don't even know what that time zone is called, but I should find out because I CAN'T ESCAPE IT. From the airport, we caught the RER train and rode that for a while. At our stop though, this really really small girl with a TON of luggage like, blocked four people from getting off and the train just drove away with them. And thinking back on that now, it's HYSTERICAL. But at the time we were a little freaked out. After a quick jaunt on the métro and a short walk, we reached our hotel
and climbed the narrow, tilty stairs to our room.
I think it was like, 2 pm by this time and we were basically pooped. But not too pooped to be both entertained and horrified by our bathroom. Especially when Alicia read us her travel book entry about bidets.
The horrified part came in when we realized our shower had no shower curtain, although later in the week other people would tell us that their showers didn't even have the glass wall bit so we felt better. Still, the glass wall, not all that useful.
So, like I said, we were all really really tired, but we didn't want to go to sleep and really screw up the time thing, so we decided to go out. Our hotel was only a block from the Seine, and on the map looked really close to Notre Dame, so we decided to go there.
We wandered amongst the other tourists for a bit. Josh, Tim, and I posed so wonderfully.
We went in for a little while, but they were having mass so it seemed slightly awkward. We went back out and realized it was freezing, so we ate some crèpes and ran back to the hotel to put on everything we owned. After that we decided to métro on over to...
We happened to arrive right in the middle of the light show, so that was highly awesome. We briefly considered trying to go up the stairs, but it was still freezing so we settled for running around and taking more pictures.
After that, we figured, since we were close, we'd just hop on over to L'arc de Triomphe. So that is what we did.
And here is my "proof that I was actually there and standing on a really bright light" picture.
We wandered up the Champs-Elysées a bit,
but we were cold, and it was 10 pm, so we went back to the hotel and passed out.
Dimanche, 12 Mars
We got up bright and early, had half a baguette, a croissant, and café au lait in the hotel basement/kitchen thing. Then we decided to head on over to the Louvre which was seriously only like, a five minute walk from us.
We admired the pyramid
and then we went in and admired the artwork. I unfortunately do not have a picture of the Mona Lisa because I was serving as a body shield so other people in the group could take pictures of her without being spotted by the Mona Lisa Nazi. But I do have pictures of Winged Victory,
Venus De Milo,
Cupid and Psyche,
and I forget what this was called, but it was like, my favorite thing (Okay here's an amusing aside. We walked through this one room of sculptures like 38294283 times because this guy named Jeff was "leading" us. But the very first time we saw this sculpture of this sleeping lady on a couch thing and moved on. And on the other side of the room we ran into this other guy in our group and he was like "Did you see the lady lying on the couch?" and we were like "yeah" and he was like "it's not a lady" and we were like "oh." So when we walked through the second time, Amanda and I stopped to see what it was called and it was definitely called "Sleeping Hermaphrodite" and we were like "oh well that explains everything." So we kept teasing Jeff about the hermaprodite because he seriously lead us EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE MUSEUM through THAT ROOM. And on our last time we finally went to check out the front of it, and everyone else took pictures which I will probably steal from them because it was just so hilarious. So anyway, here is the sculpture I was talking about way before this random story)
We also wandered through Napoleon's aparments which were sweet and admired his dining room
and his bed, which apparently was not actually his bed (so I don't know why it was in his apartments) but I guess belonged to one of the Charles. In any case, it was tiny.
Anyway, by the end of the afternoon we'd been in every room in the Louvre (except for the closed sections) and we were pretty impressed with ourselves, so we decided to go back to the Eiffel Tower since it wasn't so cold.
We also decided to go up to the top while we were there. And thus began the world's longest process ever. But we made it to the top just in time to watch the sunset over Paris, so it was all worth it.
And that was basically our first weekend. I'm now realizing that this is probably a gigantic post, so I think I'll do the rest tomorrow, because we were basically in class the entire week and I think it'll be much shorter and also I need to do my prelab :|
Friday, March 10
I woke up at 9 after like, three hours of sleep, finished the English paper I'd stayed up all night writing, and finished packing. At 11:15, Emily picked me up and drove me to the airport where I attempted to not have a panic attack because I seriously knew no one else going on the trip. But within a half hour, I met two really great people, and then I was good to go!
We seriously sat around the airport foreverrrrrrrrr because they made us get there at 12:30, and it took us 2.5 seconds to check our bags and go through security. And our flight didn't even leave until 3. We flew first to Houston (don't ask), but I'd never been there before so I was okay with it until it TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER we were flying back DIRECTLY OVER CLEVELAND. So sometime in the middle of this it became
Saturday, March 11
in both the US and France. The flight was long and uncomfortable and I couldn't move and I thought I was going to get a DVT and die, but eventually we made it. We landed at almost 11 AM Paris-time, which I just realized I don't even know what that time zone is called, but I should find out because I CAN'T ESCAPE IT. From the airport, we caught the RER train and rode that for a while. At our stop though, this really really small girl with a TON of luggage like, blocked four people from getting off and the train just drove away with them. And thinking back on that now, it's HYSTERICAL. But at the time we were a little freaked out. After a quick jaunt on the métro and a short walk, we reached our hotel
and climbed the narrow, tilty stairs to our room.
I think it was like, 2 pm by this time and we were basically pooped. But not too pooped to be both entertained and horrified by our bathroom. Especially when Alicia read us her travel book entry about bidets.
The horrified part came in when we realized our shower had no shower curtain, although later in the week other people would tell us that their showers didn't even have the glass wall bit so we felt better. Still, the glass wall, not all that useful.
So, like I said, we were all really really tired, but we didn't want to go to sleep and really screw up the time thing, so we decided to go out. Our hotel was only a block from the Seine, and on the map looked really close to Notre Dame, so we decided to go there.
We wandered amongst the other tourists for a bit. Josh, Tim, and I posed so wonderfully.
We went in for a little while, but they were having mass so it seemed slightly awkward. We went back out and realized it was freezing, so we ate some crèpes and ran back to the hotel to put on everything we owned. After that we decided to métro on over to...
We happened to arrive right in the middle of the light show, so that was highly awesome. We briefly considered trying to go up the stairs, but it was still freezing so we settled for running around and taking more pictures.
After that, we figured, since we were close, we'd just hop on over to L'arc de Triomphe. So that is what we did.
And here is my "proof that I was actually there and standing on a really bright light" picture.
We wandered up the Champs-Elysées a bit,
but we were cold, and it was 10 pm, so we went back to the hotel and passed out.
Dimanche, 12 Mars
We got up bright and early, had half a baguette, a croissant, and café au lait in the hotel basement/kitchen thing. Then we decided to head on over to the Louvre which was seriously only like, a five minute walk from us.
We admired the pyramid
and then we went in and admired the artwork. I unfortunately do not have a picture of the Mona Lisa because I was serving as a body shield so other people in the group could take pictures of her without being spotted by the Mona Lisa Nazi. But I do have pictures of Winged Victory,
Venus De Milo,
Cupid and Psyche,
and I forget what this was called, but it was like, my favorite thing (Okay here's an amusing aside. We walked through this one room of sculptures like 38294283 times because this guy named Jeff was "leading" us. But the very first time we saw this sculpture of this sleeping lady on a couch thing and moved on. And on the other side of the room we ran into this other guy in our group and he was like "Did you see the lady lying on the couch?" and we were like "yeah" and he was like "it's not a lady" and we were like "oh." So when we walked through the second time, Amanda and I stopped to see what it was called and it was definitely called "Sleeping Hermaphrodite" and we were like "oh well that explains everything." So we kept teasing Jeff about the hermaprodite because he seriously lead us EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE MUSEUM through THAT ROOM. And on our last time we finally went to check out the front of it, and everyone else took pictures which I will probably steal from them because it was just so hilarious. So anyway, here is the sculpture I was talking about way before this random story)
We also wandered through Napoleon's aparments which were sweet and admired his dining room
and his bed, which apparently was not actually his bed (so I don't know why it was in his apartments) but I guess belonged to one of the Charles. In any case, it was tiny.
Anyway, by the end of the afternoon we'd been in every room in the Louvre (except for the closed sections) and we were pretty impressed with ourselves, so we decided to go back to the Eiffel Tower since it wasn't so cold.
We also decided to go up to the top while we were there. And thus began the world's longest process ever. But we made it to the top just in time to watch the sunset over Paris, so it was all worth it.
And that was basically our first weekend. I'm now realizing that this is probably a gigantic post, so I think I'll do the rest tomorrow, because we were basically in class the entire week and I think it'll be much shorter and also I need to do my prelab :|