Ah Paris. After waiting for you for 3 months, you finally arrived this past weekend, and what a trip it was.
So I have this nasty little habit of buying my flight tickets for SUPER EARLY IN THE MORNING...like 7 am early....never fully realizing that that means I have to get up at 4 am to make said super early flight. Smart one Amanda. Smart one.
Anyways this time it actually turned out to be lucky I chose the SUPER EARLY flight because had my flight been about 4 or 5 hours later, I would have been Barcelona bound for the weekend due to a mass strike that left hundreds of thousands of people stranded. So needless to say I wasn't that bothered by waking up at 4 when I heard that. haha
I got to Paris around 9 and by the time I figured out how to get to my hotel (all the while attempting to use broken French spoken with a truly terrible accent) I checked in and went exploring for a little bit before Nora and Emily's train arrived.
First stop: The Louvre. For just 9 euro you get to enter this truly ENORMOUS museum and see some of the most famous works of arts in the history of man kind. Pretty good deal eh? So I get in and of course join the mob of people on their way to go see the Mona Lisa because I know that's where I'm going to want to end up anyways so why not cut to the chase and do that first, right? They have all of their galleries set up by theme (Italian and Spanish Painters) and then in chronological order, so on the way I got to see some other extremely beautiful and famous works including frescos by Boticelli, a Velazquez (although that was technically placed after Mona but whatevs) and some famous portraits by Goya. It's a pretty dec collection I guess haha. Then came the main attraction: MONAAAAAA. She is quite small as everyone says and it's behind like bullet and missile proof glass or something and you can't get within 30 feet of it, but it's still really cool to just stand there and say "I'm looking at the Mona Lisa. This is SO EFFING COOL!" Which is exactly what I did for about 15 minutes.
I wandered around the museum for a little while longer when the girls called me (mom don't hate me haha didn't want you to be worried) and said their trains were delayed a few hours...sooo with time to kill I got a sandwich and ate it in the courtyard with a beautiful view of the eiffel tower in the background and the famous glass pyramids in front of me. Really couldn't get any better than that.
Then I headed over to Saint Chappell which is supposed to have one of the most spectacular stained glass window displays ever. They were really beautiful but half of them were under renovation so I couldn't see the full effect which was a bummer, but it was still really beautiful!
After that I decided to take a little walk back to the Tulerie which was unfortunately mostly dead (the flowers I mean) but the statues were still cool and the Ferris Wheel at the end was all lit up and super pretty. I could see the Eiffel Tower so I was just like "Oh it can't be that far, I'm just going to walk over there. It's a beautiful day, I'll walk down the Seine and be truly Parisian and just meander on down. Shouldn't take too long."
WRONG. Longest walk of my life. Yeah, the Tulerie and the Eiffle Tower? SO NOT CLOSE. haha but it was still a nice walk and I got to see the Eiffel Tower which is truly one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen in my entire life. Really it is a must see like Sagrada Familia, you will be awestruck.
The girls finally got in and we met for dinner at this cute place near the hotel for some traditional French foods: French onion soup (which is officially amazing) escargot (surprisingly good) and they got duck confit. Then we headed back to the hotel for a nice night of catching up and laughs :-)
I'm going to break Paris up into a few different posts since we did so much, so enjoy Day #1!!
~Amanda
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