Paris

Oh Paris! J Paris was a BLAST! Got to see so many places and the atmosphere was exciting just in its self! The Eiffel Tower was defiantly my favorite by far! We left Trier on a train Friday morning at 6:00 am and went to another town an hour away and from there got on a bullet train that went directly to Paris east. The bullet train was awesome! It went 200 miles per hour and right through all of the beautiful French countryside. We arrived in Paris about 11 am and went off trying to find our hotel. We watched them take a boat through the locks which was pretty cool and quite intense. When we found or Hotel… it was disappointing. We decided to book as cheap as we could get this time to save money but this place was unlivable. It was nasty! The beds were comfortable and we all slept like rocks but the bathroom leaked and smelled terrible, with mold and hair that wasn’t ours so we didn’t even go in at all. The last night we were there they switched us to a different room that at least didn’t smell so at least we could pee and wash our face. But we didn’t shower the entire time we were in Paris, which was bad, we all (at least I did) smelled terrible by the last day! But we were only in the hotel to sleep, we were busy around town the entire time so it wasn’t that bad!

The first day after we got our hotel and everything situated we walked and found where we could get on a “hop on Hop off” bus tour, just like the ones we did in Washington D.C. So we bought a 2 day pass was able to almost take all of them, we missed half of one of the 4 routes they took, so we pretty much got to see EVERYTING in Paris! J We drove by places like the Louvre, the opera, and hundreds of cool old looing famous buildings. Just driving all over looking at the streets and the people and simple not famous buildings was interesting!!!

 We got off at Notre Dame and looked around and got to go inside! Notre Dame is a Cathedral and was built in 1330, the outside was super detailed and the inside absolutely beautiful!

We finished out the main bus line and hoped off at the Eiffel Tower right when it started to pour, and it rained on us for a long time. We did decide to go ahead and go to the tower and try and go up in it because it was the only time we had planned on doing it. I am super glad we did it the views we got after the rain was beautiful. Dark skis really contrasted with the white architecture of the city, and there were at least 2 beautiful Rainbows that came out too! So my pictures are AWESOME!!! We paid 9 euros to walk. So you walk up to the second level then you take an elevator to the very very top.

The Eiffel tower was built for the 1889 World’s fair by Gustave Eiffel. It’s a metal tower that is 300 meters tall and used 2,500,000 rivets! There are 360 steps to reach the first level, then 380 steps to reach the second level. And before the elevator was built and used there were another 1062 steps to get to the very top level. It was a lot of work to actually get all the way to the top, we were tired and our legs hurt the rest of the weekend! But the view from each level was just amazing! I took so many pictures!!!!

It was my favorite thing of the whole Paris adventure and maybe even the whole Europe trip so far! Everything else in Paris was ok… But nothing compared to the Eiffel!!!

From there we got back on the Bus and Rode it around all over the place, Saw quite a few more famous places that I don’t remember the names of! But they were all so Pretty!!! We walked up to the Moulin Rouge because Kenra really wanted to see that, she is big into Theatre, and it wasn’t that impressive from the outside. We didn’t go in so I bet If we would have I would have changed my mind.

We decided to grab a bite to eat near there at a place that was called Buffalo Bills. It was entirely American food and we were starving!  So I ordered Steak bites and French Fries, the steak was pretty good, nothing like us Americans can cook! But because it was only the 3^rd time I had had any type of Red meet in the past 2 months, it was delicious!!!! Then for dessert we had a doughnut warmed up with hot fudge sauce and a scoop of Ice cream… It was YUMMY!! J

We went home that night and was out really quick, we were all exhausted! The next morning we walked to where we could get on a bus and on our way we saw one of my favorite buildings, I had forgot it was actually in Paris! Pompidou designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers in 1971. A fairly new building but it is really cool because it was designed to have all the functional elements, like the piping and important equipment located on the exterior of the building. All is color coated and it looks super cool!

I did give up and buy my first American thing while we were waiting on one of the busses, it wasn’t a big deal! I got a Vinti Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks! It was huge and super delicious! I still have yet to eat an any American Fast food restaurants, like McDonalds, Pizza hut, Subway, or Burger King…. And I drink Coca Cola Light a lot and that it! Doing pretty good!

The second day we hoped back on a bus and took of touring the newer side of Paris, the East side where there are a lot of new and fancy buildings.  We drove by a hospital that you could drive under, quite a few sky scrapers, a library, and then an awesome sports arena that had grass covering it. The bus told us all kinds of crazy events had taken place here, like wind surfing, American Football, Soccer matches, Snow Skiing, and concerts.  It looked pretty cool!

We rode on the very top of the bus and at one point I made a stupid bet that Audrey couldn’t make her empty Coffee cup into a trash can as we drove by it… and she did! Lucky little shit J All of us get along so great, there are times where we want to strangle one another but that happens!

We had been wanting to tour the Catacombs, but had no idea where they were, the bus randomly mentioned it so we sprinted off and stood in line for about an hour to get into them, I had really no idea what to expect but it was completely different than what I had imagined. Soooo what are the Catacombs and how did they come to be? I will tell you….. Paris had buried its dead on the outskirts of the city for centuries and by the 10^th Century when Paris hit a population growth they were unable to expand due to the dense cemeteries. So they decided to start doing Mass graves where they would just dig a hole and burry people in it until it was full then dig another hole and start again. This had one big problem… water sanitation. By the 17^th Century the conditions were unbearable and the cemeteries were overflowing. SO around 1777 they had a great idea, they took the abandoned stone quarries that lay underneath most of the city and began to transfer all of Paris’ dead to the underground caves. There are over 6 Million people buried in the catacombs……

So when we arrived we went down 62 feet in the ground by taking a spiral staircase (which was tiny and made me dizzy) we walked about a mile in a long tunnel that brought us to the entry into the burial grounds. The stone wall said “Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la Mort” ('Halt! This is the Empire of the Dead'). And from there we walked FOREVER through rows and rows of neatly arranged piles and piles of human bones.

I was surprised at how much it bothered me. I figured with all my TV show watching that things like this would be no big deal to me but I honestly did NOT like it! I have developed a mild form of Claustrophobia and then adding on the fact that I was around 6 million dead people just freaked me out!!!

When we finally reached day light we hoped back on a bus and took off again, finishing out all of the routs available! We then walked around to find a place to eat, and stumbled upon a cute little place called Pasta Papa. It was the best food I think I have had in Europe especially for the price! And we were STUFFED after, which doesn’t happen very much around here, portions are usually small! But for 15 euros we got a drink, a HUGE bowl of pasta and a dessert. We got to choose what type of noodle we wanted, there were like 20 choices, and then choose what type of sauce, also like 20 choices. Then for dessert I had Delicious tiramisu!!

The third day, Sunday we woke up and took the metro out of town 45 minutes to spend the day at Versailles. This is a huge palace and gardens that was built by Louis XIV to house his government, and create a magnificent royal town, built in 1661. It is one of the largest Palaces in Europe Now it’s just a museum, and a very large one! We got in free since we are students studying Architecture which was nice! Some really famous rooms and artists had worked on this palace. One of my favorite and most famous Rooms is the Hall of Mirrors. Absolutely Beautiful! It was super cool to see this place because we have studied a lot about the architecture and the furniture design in this time frame!

So we walked through and toured the palace and then made our way outside where the best part was. The gardens. The huge landscape with gardens, tons of trees, and fountains! We walked through this area for hours. And we got lucky they had a water fountain display show that started so we got to walk around and see all the fountains and hear music, it was beautiful. The only down fall was that the weather was spotty. We could be hot and sunny then in 5 minutes we needed an umbrella and 5 more layers of cloths and then it would go back again!

From here we made plans to meet Anna Johnson for the evening! Neither of us could remember how long it had been since we had saw each other, but it has been forever! So it was super good to meet up with her! She is studying French in Paris for a few months and we had been in contact to try and meet up. So we met and walked to find a place to eat, we ended up going back to the same place where we had ate the night before, she had never been there and we had loved it so we ate again J we talked for ever, she said to tell everyone HI J she and her family are all doing good!

She then took us to the Eiffel tower at night, we wanted to see it and hadn’t got to see in in the night time yet so we did and it was AWESOME! Every hour on the hour they have a flashing light display which was crazy; I got a video of it to show everyone too!

Then We all bought a bottle of French wine and walked up to a church that was on the highest point of the city called Sacre-Coeur Basilica, it was a gorgeous church we had been spotting from everywhere we went, we just didn’t know how to get there. So Anna took us there and we hung out till one am!

It was super nice to get to see her and we all had a blast!!

The final day was the Louvre! The largest and richest Museum in the world! We only spent one afternoon there and we really could have spent about 5. We barely got to see anything and what we did see was just briefly. We got to see Mona Lisa and lots of other famous Paintings and sculptures! It was really cool. I was just super tired and since we had not showered or properly hygiene ourselves the entire trip I was ready to go home so I didn’t enjoy this museum as much as I should have. I was ready to go home.

But little did we know it was going to be harder to get home than we thought…. We took the train to Luxembourg City and from there we hopped on a train we thought was the right one just an hour sooner since our train was ahead of schedule, well it wasn’t. We rode it for an hour then the train stopped at a town and shut off and made us get off. We were scared. We had no idea where we were and the guy in charge did not speak English. Finally we were told that this train had gone south into France and we needed to go the other way from Luxembourg. So we had to get back on that train and go back to Luxembourg where we were told we would have to wait till 5:30 am to catch the next train to trier. This all happened at 11pm. So we were upset and scared. Thankfully we have a friend, Sunday who has a car and works in Luxembourg but Lives in Trier, so we called him and he came and picked us up in Luxembourg and took us home. We defiantly owe him big time!!!

So over the entire trip was super eventful and a lot of fun!! Paris is interesting and different! But it’s a beautiful place and the Eiffel Tower was just flat out amazing!!!!  Our next trip is already booked, we will be going to Amsterdam, Netherlands. That trip will be May 4^th through the 7^th! Then after than Berlin!!!!