This past weekend Anne and I traveled to Paris to visit Dani and Kaitlin, who have been studying there since September. This is what our day of traveling looked like on Thursday:
Woke up at 6amàtook a city bus to the bus stationà5 hour bus ride to Madridàmetro to airportàhung out in the Madrid airport for 4 hoursà(delayed) flight to Parisàbus into cityàmet up w/ Dani and Kaitlin at 9pm
Meeting up with Dani and Kaitlin was awesome as usual, and seeing as it had been a whole 2 weeks since we had seen them we were starting to feel the withdrawal symptoms. They took us to their building and we finally got to see where they have been living all year. Needless to say, their rooms are small (lovingly called their “shoeboxes”). We had a pretty low-key night after such a long day of traveling.
Strolling through some Parisian gardens
Friday morning we got up and took a walk around the area in which D and K live (the 14th for those of you who know Paris). They took us through this cool cemetery (which was actually really pretty and not depressing and dark like cemeteries tend to be), through some gardens, past countless “French-looking” buildings, by there school and down their favorite street. I couldn’t get over the fact that everything looked just like what I imagined Paris to look like. I’ve realized since I’ve been in Europe that it is really hard to have an accurate picture in your mind of what a place is going to be like. It seems that everywhere we have been has been different in one way or another from how I pictured it to be, but this was not the case in Paris. Every apartment building had pretty balconies, the cafes had florescent signs and there was an abundance of wine.
Just your average street corner
The cemetery
After stopping for a light lunch (crepes, of course) the four of us headed back across town to meet some of D and K’s friends at an agricultural fair. Now, why would we go to an agricultural fair in one of Europe’s biggest cities? This fair is a big deal, apparently, for it only happens once a year and it is a chance for all the little Parisian children to see horses, cows and donkeys and for their parents to buy wine, cheese and honey from all different regions of France. We spent most of our time in the Provinces of France building of the fair wandering around and tasting local food and drinks from all over the country. It’s hard to convey how crowded and big this place was, but I’ll just say that I definitely would have gotten lost in the cheese section if it weren’t for my French-speaking friends. At one point we stopped to watch some bread-makers in action. As we watched them pull a fresh loaf of bread out of the over we realized that our lives would not be complete without it. I have never tasted better bread in my life.
Some of the colorful treats being sold
Just one of the many wine stands
This doesn't even capture how good that bread was
Every Friday night the Louvre is free for people under 26, so naturally we took advantage of that opportunity. We only had about an hour and half in the museum, but we figured that there was no possible way were going to see everything so we may as well just focus on the most famous pieces. Among other things, we saw the Venus de Milo, the Mona Lisa and my personal favorite, the Winged Victory. It was really breathtaking to stand at the bottom of a huge staircase and look up at this gorgeous sculpture. When I saw it I thought of a documentary that I watched with my dad last summer about the Nazi invasion of France and the scramble to save all the art. The Louvre employees had to evacuate as much of the art as they could, including this statue, and getting it safely down the stairs was one of their biggest challenges. Actually being in the Louvre really made me appreciate how difficult a job that was!
Outside of the Louvre–Picture courtesy of Kaitlin Bailey (Thanks Kaitlin!!)
The Winged Victory
Venus de Milo
Before going to Paris I had heard that the Mona Lisa was really a bit of a disappointment. While it was awesome to see such a famous piece of art in person, it does make you wonder why certain painting become famous and others do not. I think the Mona Lisa is one of the smallest paintings in the entire museum.
She has a whole wall to herself
The free museum night ended at 9:30 so we left to go to a really unique wine bar. The main part of the bar is in what looks like a tunnel–arched ceilings and walls made out of stone. We got there around 10:30 and it was already packed (so different from Spain!), but we fought our way in and found some standing space. This bar was the ultimate French experience: Edith Piaf playing, wine bottles everywhere, drunk French people singing and a strong b.o. stench! After hanging out there for a while we made out way to another bar where we ordered 6 beers (Paris is so expensive!) and eventually headed back home.
Saturday morning we got up and took a stroll through a weekend market. One vendor gave us a taste of these garlic olives and some tomato slices. The sunshine and the delicious food made for the perfect picnic conditions so we bought some olives, cheese, tomatoes, bread and headed up to the Sacre Cour. Still in the mindset of a small city, I asked Dani if we could walk since it was such a beautiful day. She just laughed and told me I could walk if I wanted to get there four hours later. So Paris is a big city…
Weekend market
After a few metro rides and walking up too many stairs to count, we arrived at the top of one of Paris’ only hills. It was truly and incredible day. The sun was shining, we had a great view of the city, and there were musicians everywhere.
Sacre Cour
Our lunch!
We decided to take advantage of the sunshine so we headed over to the Eiffel Tower. We climbed the steps to the middle level, which is as high as you can go by stairs, and had some pretty cool views of the city in the sunlight. You have to take and elevator up to the top level and by the time we got up there the sun was setting. I’m not sure you can beat seeing the sunset from the top of the Eiffel Tower. We finally tore ourselves away and headed down, just in time for the lights to come on! The whole Tower flashes all of it’s lights ever hour on the hour, and we still had a couple flights of stair to go when the lights stated flashing. Dani and I ran down the rest of the stairs and made it out in time to get a sweet view of the Tower. I don’t think we could have timed our trip any better: we go to see the ET in the sun, see the city at sunset, and see the ET again with all of it’s lights turned on and a really pretty deep blue sky behind it.
Eiffel Tower by day
Group picture!
Lots of sunset pictures–taken from the top of the Tower
Eiffel Tower by night
Saturday night D and K and two other GU girls took us to one the restaurants they get to eat at every week (I’m not even going to try to spell the French name). I had a peach kir to drink, a delicious bleu cheese appetizer, a lamb entrée and a creme brulee dessert. Needless to say, it was amazing.
After diner we headed back to D and K’s building armed with a couple of beers each. To make things interesting, we decided to bring out a little American college culture and play Edward 40 Hands (but not with 40s!). For those of you who are a little removed from college life (won’t name any names) or have yet to go to college, here is a brief description: you have a beer duct-tapped to each hand and are limited to doing only what you can do with beer can hands until you finish them. [Note to my younger audience: DON”T GET ANY IDEAS!]
Once we all regained the use of our hands, we headed to a so-called Disney bar that D and K had heard a lot about, but never been to. The idea is that you go to this bar, have to draw out your drink order (all named after Disney and cartoon characters) on a whiteboard, play trivia games and sign Disney songs. The kicker is that all the drinks are served in baby bottles. Creepy, I know. But anyway, the bar did not live up to expectations. Instead of having Disney trivia, the bar tenders played clips of children’s French songs and each table had to guess what they were. We were all useless. The idea of a Disney bar is great, but the execution just wasn’t quite right. We left in time to barely catch the last metro.
On Sunday we walked around the Latin Quarter and headed to a really cool bookstore across the street from Notre Dame called Shakespeare and Company. This bookstore was a little slice of heaven for me. The sell some new books, but they also sell tons of used books, and the whole upstairs is a library. While there are different sections (fiction, history, science, etc.), there were also just a ton of books stacked on every stair and in every little nook of the store available for purchase. The clutter was what made this bookstore so appealing. It’s the type of place you could spend hours in. You could go there with no idea of what you want to read and come out with a gem.
After leaving the bookstore, reluctantly, we walked across the river to Notre Dame. This church really is impressive. It’s amazing to think that such a large and intricate building was built in the 13th century.
Notre Dame
It took a lot of skill to stand on something that small
Lovely
We then made our way to another one of the restaurants that D and K eat at often. This time it was a crepe place and the meal was delicious, once again. I had an egg and steak crepe for lunch a nutella and walnut crepe for dessert. It made me very happy.
After lunch we walked along the Seine to the Musée d’Orsay and spent about an hour and half there before it closed. We got lucky because the first Sunday of every month is museum free day, so we didn’t have to pay! We saw a lot of Monet, Manet, and Van Gogh, among many others. I really liked this museum, for it was much more manageable than the Louvre (although there was still a ton to see) and it had some very interesting (and famous!) paintings.
Musée d'Orsay–the building is an old train station
Monet– Les Coquelicots a Agenteuil
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Van Gogh–Self Portrait
We then made our way down to see the Arc de Triumph, which is absolutely huge. After hanging around there for a bit we finally went back home. We got Moroccan food for dinner and then surprised Kaitlin with a birthday cake (courtesy of Mama Bailey) and some champagne (her birthday was 2 days after Anne and I left, so we decided to do an early b-day celebration). We went out and got here a birthday drink and after some serious birthday craziness (and some awesome videos!) we made it back home.
Arc de Triumph
Birthday celebration
Unfortunately on Monday morning all four of us woke up with food poisoning from our Moroccan dinner. That kept us holed up in the room for the better part of the morning and by the time we were feeling better Anne and I had to leave. We went out and got one last Parisian treat (croissants and pain et chocolat) and made our way back to Granada.
MetroàBusàairportàflight to Madridàmetro to bus stationà4 hour wait for the next busàbus to Granadaàback in our house at 5am
Granada greeted us with pouring rain. Everyone keeps telling us it has never rained this much in Granada. What luck.
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