Considering its been over two weeks since I got back from Spring Break, I figure it's about time I write a little bit about it!  After a week of "midterms", the time had finally come to jet off!  We got into Paris very late, grabbed some fast food (which was accompanied by French Fries- for some reason I thought those were taboo or something in France!), then found our hostel.  I was very nervous about this hostel stay.  I had stayed in hostels before, but the rating wasn't great, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  We stayed in a place called Peace & Love hostel and were very pleasantly surprised when we arrived!  The hostel has a bar downstairs (with a very cute bartender, might I add), our room had a three-person bunk bed with a shower and sink, and everything was very clean!  After doing a full inspection of the room, we went to bed early.


Friday morning kicked off a few days of non-stop running around.  We started off by doing a 3 1/2 hour walking tour with a group called New Europe.  (Side note about this company: it's AMAZING.  We did tours in all three cities we went to and we loved each one of them.  The walking tours are free and are purely tip based, but there are other tours and bar crawls that you can pay for.  I absolutely love this company and will continue to take their tours when I go to cities that have them.  I also wouldn't mind working for them either, when I move to Europe at some point in my life!)  It brought us around to all the major tourist spots: Saint Michel, the Notre Dame, the Justice Building, Louis XIV's bridge, Pont Des Arts (the bridge with all the locks), the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Pont Alexandre II.  After the tours, the leaders typically bring you an affordable restaurant where you can try the local food.  We tagged along, where I ate...get ready for it...DUCK.  Now, any of you who know me at all know that before coming here, I was the absolute PICKIEST eater, so this was a BIG DEAL.  I actually really loved it too!

After dinner we headed over to the Louvre.  Unfortunately, we didn't have a lot of time so we really rushed to see the main things we wanted to see: the Venus, the Nike, and, of course, the Mona Lisa.  I had really low expectations of the Mona Lisa, which was a good thing.  I knew going into it that it was going to be smaller than one would expect, but I expected so little that I was actually amazed.  To be standing with one of the most famous paintings in the world by Leonardo Da Vinci, was incredible!  I really wish we had more time to spend there, but we had signed up for a pub crawl that night, so it was decided that we would leave after seeing the things we most wanted to see.  I was very disappointed that we were so rushed, but the pub crawl ended up being a lot of fun- it was in the Montmartre district and I SAW THE MOULIN ROUGE.  I was so excited and it ended up being a great night.


The next morning was a rough start- we wanted to leave early for Versailles, but we left much later than we hoped.  After getting some croissants (soooooo gooooood, might I add), we caught the train headed to Versailles.  We had heard that you could get into the palace for free with an EU Visa, so we were going to try and do that.  If we couldn't get in for free, there were always the amazing gardens we could explore!  Unfortunately, they would not let us into the palace for free, so we walked around to the gardens.  We got some maps and decided to go to the places that seemed most beautiful/interesting.  We walked around for a few hours and were so confused: everything was dead, statues were covered, and all the little gardens were closed.  It took us those hours to figure out that everything was closed because it was the off season, which no one bothered to tell us about.  Honestly, it was an absolute let down.  I was SO excited for Versailles and it ended up being such a disappointment.  The way I'm looking at it, though, is now just an excuse to go back to Paris!  (What a bummer, right?!)


After we got back to the hostel, we ventured off to buy some bread, tomatoes, and cheese for dinner and make our way to the Eiffel Tower.  We took the metro half way, then walked the rest.  Paris is a truly beautiful city, both during the day and at night.  We saw the Notre Dame lit up, too, which was beautiful.  We finally made it to the Tower and just sat there, eating in complete silence.  It is such a beautiful structure (though the Parisians HATED it at first- the architect had to put a radio at the top to use for intercepting German messages during WWII to prevent them from taking it down!), and lit up at night, ESPECIALLY during the light show, makes it an unbelievable sight to behold.  After we sat, stared, and ate for a few hours, we took the metro back to the hostel to get some sleep before an early morning.


Sunday was our last day in Paris.  We woke up early, checked out, stored our luggage, bought groceries for the next few days, then headed out.  I really wanted to see the Bastille (the jail that the revolutionaries seized during the French Revolution), so we headed there.  Unfortunately, the actual jail was turned into an opera house, and all that is there is a monument.  We did, however, stumble across a cute little market right next to it!  I had my first crepe, got some more cheese, some veggies to munch on, and just took in the snippet of Parisian culture we were lucky to stumble upon.  We then headed to the Notre Dame, this time to actually go inside.  We wanted to climb to the top as well, but the line was too long, unfortunately.  The inside was incredible- BY FAR the most beautiful church (next to St. Peter's of course) that I have been in so far.


After wandering and sitting in the church for a while, we left to go to the Invalides, where Napoleon's tomb is located.  After "bowing" to him (he had his grave built so that, in order to see the grave, they would have to bend over and bow to him), we made our way back to the Tower so we could take some pictures with it while it was light out.  On our way there, it started POURING, which didn't let up for the rest of the day.  Normally, this would have put an absolute damper on my time, but they say that Paris is most beautiful in the rain- and they are right.  I can't really put the reason why into words, but it just adds this extra element of beauty that I just simply can't explain.  Even though I was soaked to the bone (the umbrella wasn't helping much), I was so happy.  The Eiffel Tower is just as beautiful in the day as it is at night.  We even saw several couples taking their wedding pictures in front of it!  It was wonderful.  After snapping some pictures, we ran to the closest metro to go back to Montmartre for another tour we had booked with New Europe.


Montmartre contains Paris's red light district (hence the Moulin Rouge), but was also the center of the Bohemian Revolution, art, music, and nightlife during the late 1800s and early 1900s.  Paris is a very flat city, and Montmartre is the highest point in the entire area.  Our tour brought us up the hill, going to the Moulin Rouge, the Amelie cafe, Van Gogh's house, and the Sacre-Coeur, the church at the top of the hill.  The top of the hill also has an incredible view of the entire city.  Our descent back down even allowed us to catch the Eiffel Tower's light show one last time.  Despite being soaked and cold, it was a wonderful tour of one of the most culturally rich sections of the city, and included a free glass of wine at the end, which definitely helped warm us up.  After we were done, we headed back to the hostel, changed into dry clothes, then caught our overnight bus to Amsterdam.



Overall, our visit to Paris was very rushed.  Everyone said that you need more than just three days to truly see Paris, and they were right.  There were times where I got very frustrated and anxious, but overall, it was a wonderful few days.  We had a lot of fun at the pub crawl and got to see at least parts of all the sights we wanted to see.  I can confidently say that I will be going back to Paris to see everything else I didn't get to see and go back to the places that I didn't get to spend enough time at.  Paris is an incredibly beautiful city, rich in history and culture, and in the end, I really did love my time there.

Abbracci e baci!  xoxo

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