J'aime Paris!

After a long day of traveling from Norderney, we finally arrived in my favorite place, but sadly, we were missing our sixth member (Jules) who had left us to go to Amsterdam. I missed her all weekend. I had long anticipated my return to Paris, as it was my favorite place I visited last time I was here. It was already well into the night by the time our train got there, so we didn’t have much time for exploring on Thursday. Obviously, that didn’t prevent us from staying up until 3 am though because why would we want to get a good night’s sleep? Seems ridiculous. Might as well continue the trend of sleep deprivation from this point forward.

And that we did. Luckily, we were allowed to sleep in past 8 am which was nice. Our first adventure of the day was the Louvre. Gabe and I had been before, but it’s almost impossible to see everything in one trip, so it was nice to go back. The Mona Lisa was just as small, if not smaller, and maybe more disappointing than I remembered it. We also saw Venus, because it’s just one of those things you have to do when you go to the Louvre. I also went in search of my favorite painting that I had seen last time I was there. I knew precisely where it was and how to get there, and then I got there, and…It. Wasn’t. There. It was a huge painting of Napolean’s coronation that was oddly beautiful to me, and in its place was something much smaller and less grandeur. I searched up and down the hallways, hoping that maybe I was wrong and it was somewhere else (which was a stretch because my directional skills are amazing ;)), but alas, I never found it. All in all though, I covered a lot more ground than I did the last time I was there, so I was satisfied with what I got to see. After we got done, we headed out to find somewhere to eat. We ended up at this little restaurant not too far from the Louvre, and it was awesome. Our waitress was an angel. She spoke perfect English, and she immediately brought us English menus. She didn’t charge us for the water, and continually refilled our glasses. She even offered to fill up Carter’s Nalgene for him, which is ridiculous because that thing is huge. The lovely woman also brought us numerous baskets of bread for which she did not charge us. Praise the Lord. It was like Olive Garden’s endless breadsticks, except not because we were in Paris, so it was better. On top of that, the food was amazing. I had savory crepes, and they were so satisfying. There’s just something about eating a crepe in France that makes it a million times better. Before we set off to continue our adventure, our waitress gave us a few final tips on how to watch out for pickpockets and just stay safe in general in Paris. This woman was so sweet. Don’t worry, we tipped her well. ;)

The next thing on the list was Notre Dame. I have to admit, after having just been at the Cologne Cathedral about a week prior to that, it seemed less WOW than I remember. Don’t get me wrong, it’s beautiful, and I still think the inside of Notre Dame, especially the stained glass, is much prettier than the Cologne Cathedral, but on the outside, it was just a little eh. Side note: that right there is how I know I’ve seen far too many beautiful things in the past few weeks because nobody says Notre Dame is eh. Notre Dame is amazing. The stained glass seriously is beautiful though. The intricate flower patterns are so detailed, and there’s more elements of blue in Notre Dame, which I quite enjoy. It was worth the return visit for me. I did notice that there definitely was a heightened police presence at Notre Dame, somewhat more so than other places, which makes sense since there had been an incident just days before. The police were everywhere in Paris though, and I’m not going to lie, it was somewhat unsettling because when there that many people walking around with machine guns, you feel like you have something to be afraid of. Nonetheless, we never let it bother us. After Notre Dame, we wanted to go see Saint Chapelle because none of us had ever been, and it’s quite close to Notre Dame. I was the one navigating, and I got very confused once we reached the Palace of Justice because you could see the top of the church, but I couldn’t figure out where the entrance was. Therefore, we walked all the way around the entire perimeter of the Palace of Justice, which doesn’t sound like much, but it took like 20 minutes when all was said and done. Ultimately, we found the entrance and then realized it was going to cost 10 euros to get in. Why is Notre Dame free and not Saint Chapelle? One may never know. The consensus of the group though, much to my chagrin, was that it wasn’t worth the 10 euros, so we didn’t go in. Oh well though.

When Gabe and I were there last time, our tour guide had taken us to a coffee shop on an alley that branched off from the Fontaine de St. Michel called Malongo, and we decided to go back. We took the whole group with us and all grabbed coffee. It was just as good as I remembered it was. This time, I even bought some coffee to take back to my dad since I didn’t think to last time! We hung out there for quite a while which was nice since we don’t always take time to just stop and enjoy where we are when we travel. After we finished our coffee, we went to find a market to buy fruits, cheeses, bread, and wine for a picnic by the Eiffel tower. This was probably one of the best ideas we’ve ever had. That picnic was one of the highlights of the trip for me. It was so cool to eat and drink and hang out with everyone with the Eiffel tower as your scenic view in the background. That was a unique experience, and I’m really glad we did that. We did actually try to go up the Eiffel tower that night, but we had kind of lost track of time, so after waiting in line for forever, the lift to the very top was closed, and we were only able to go to the 2^nd level. We then proceeded to take the stairs down, and wow, all I have to say is there are so many stairs. Gabe and Carter took the stairs up instead of taking the lift, and I have so much respect for them. Even more so, I respect Paul J and Gabe because when we came my junior year, they RAN ALL THE WAY UP, to the very top. I have no idea how they didn’t pass out. I probably would have died. But good for them. In classic fashion, we got home really late, and then proceeded to stay up until 3 am again. Shout out to Nick though for playing some Enya to calm the mood down in the room and soothe us to sleep. Just kidding, all it did was confuse Hailey as to what on Earth that music was, but it was quite entertaining!!!

The next morning, we got up and went to have breakfast at a café across from our hostel and decided what we wanted to do. First, we headed to Sacré Couer or however the heck you spell those very French words. It’s the basilica on the hill. We took the stairs, as any young group of 20 something-year-olds should, and we were all a little winded when we got to the top. I do have to admit, last time I was there, it was at night, and the view at night is far prettier than it is during the day. For that Gabe and I apologized, because we had really kind of hyped it up…oh well. I wandered off at one point to go see if this art shop was still there which I had visited 3 ½ years prior. To my surprise, it actually was, and his business had grown! He had probably twice the amount of paintings in there with lots of other color schemes and such. It was very cool to see that his business was thriving after all these years. I bought paintings from him again, just as I had before, and that was my souvenir from Paris. The one I bought years ago is still hanging in my room at home! After spending a lot of time there, the girls ended up not being able to get into the basilica because they were in shorts, so everyone took one last look at the lackluster view of the city and headed back down. Our next stop was the Musee D’Orsay. I was actually really excited to go here because it was on my list of things to visit that I hadn’t seen last time. This museum kind of blew my expectations out of the water too. For some reason, I figured it was just going to be eh because I’ve seen the Louvre, and the Louvre is like the mother of all art museums. The Musee D’Orsay was awesome though. Their collection was actually pretty extensive. They had a gallery dedicated to Van Goghs that was really cool. In one of their big main exhibits, they had Renoirs and practically every painting Monet ever painted. It was incredible to be in a room with so many beautiful pieces of art. It seemed neverending. I was walking along like, “oh, wow a Monet, oh wow another Monet, and another, and another, good Lord they have so many Monets.” It was insane. I was never sure if I was a fan of Impressionistic art, but after visiting this museum, I know I definitely am. After we finished at the museum, we went to walk the Champs Elysees and see the Arc de Triomphe. I quite enjoyed this because last time I was there, the freaking Arc was being restored, so it had scaffolding all over it, and it made for a terrible picture. I got a good one this time though that was scaffold-free. Our plan for the evening had been to go to dinner at a nice restaurant and then go to the Eiffel tower again, so we headed back to the hotel to change clothes. Someone from the hostel gave us a dinner recommendation that was walking distance, so we thought perfect, let’s do it. Turns out, this place was in the sketchiest part of Paris I have ever witnessed. The whole time I just kept thinking nobody stop, just keep walking and we’ll be fine. And we were. But we didn’t eat there. After we spent about 45 minutes walking around, we decided it would be better to just go to the Eiffel tower and find somewhere to eat there. But by the time we got there and saw the line, we decided to forego dinner and just go do the Eiffel tower. This ended up being a really good idea because we were some of the last people to go all the way to the top. It took us like 2 hours to get all the way up there between travel time and actually standing in all the lines everywhere. We got lucky though and we got to see the sunset, which was beautiful. At this point though, we were all starving. We didn’t get to a restaurant until about 11:30 pm. I thought I was going to shrivel up and die. It made our food that much better though since we were super hungry. We ordered some escargot, and it was probably the best escargot I’ve ever had. I could have eaten those things as my meal they were so delicious. Once again, we got back to the hostel in the middle of the night, and stayed up way too late.

Our last day consisted of purely waking up and heading to the bus station. Our ride home was 8 hours, but it didn’t feel like it. We all talked the whole time, and Hailey asked us questions about life that revealed everyone’s deep inner core, so that was fun. It actually was really enjoyable though. Some of my favorite moments from this trip have just been spending time with friends, hanging out and talking. These people have become my best friends just over the course of four weeks, and that’s pretty awesome to me. You don’t always get lucky enough that you find this many people that you click with, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.