Paris Part 1

PARIS IS AMAZING! We left on Friday morning for Paris at the reasonable hour of 6 AM, after going to sleep at 2 AM, in our Mercedes bus, which is much cooler than it sounds. Thanks to all our luggage I was able to fit one leg on the seat and one not, so it was a pretty comfortable ride to Shannon. I thought I might sleep on the way there, but I was too excited to. So we got to Shannon airport and all had breakfast upstairs and then went to Paris. Just a typical weekend.

We arrived in Paris and took a bus from the airport that we flew into (not Charles DeGaulle) to our hotel. The hotel was pretty nice and was located in the red light district of Paris, about two blocks from the Moulin Rouge, and many other famous attractions such as "Porno Shop" and "Sexodrome" and who could forget the classic "SEX O!"(Don't worry, I took pictures.)? So we got checked in and went directly to the Lourve. The Lourve was awesome. The tour was a little boring, she focused too much on many things I don't care about, such as the fact that something about a moat was something with stones or something, I don't know I wasn't listening. The redeeming part of the tour was that we saw all the main works that I wanted to see from there. We saw tons of amazing art, including the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa. The whole time we were there we were all saying, "I can't believe I'm in Paris!" "I can't believe I'm in the Lourve!" "I can't believe I just saw the Mona Lisa!" It was amazing. I could have wandered in there for days sans tour guide (that was just a little French for you). My favorite thing about the Lourve though, was inventing the names for paintings and sculptures as we went along. After the tour the API leaders set us free to do what we wanted, and what we wanted to do was wander!

Nora, Shaina, Jess, Jaye and I went outside the Lourve and got our first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower at night. It was awesome. I think now is a good place to warn everyone that I can't keep everything we saw straight, so it will most likely be wrong, but I will use wikipedia to correct myself when I can. So we wandered around and decided to go to a cafe for deserts. It was called Cafe Pharon (or something close, I swear). The waitress didn't speak any English and I spoke un poquito French, but Nora was everyone's savior and through her minimal French skills and her excellent charades skills, we were able to order, ask for the bathrooms and pay the check. The waitress also tried to teach us some French, and despite the language barrier was very nice! We were all exhausted from the full day, so after we filled up we walked back to the hotel and stopped by the grocery store and got brie, baguettes, and the other girls got some wine and went back to the hotel and sat around and chatted in my room. It was really fun. Also, groceries were much cheaper there than they were in Ireland, so I will definitely miss that part of France!

The next morning we woke up to meet for breakfast (included at our hotel!) and then the bus tour. The bus tour took us all over Paris and we saw pretty much everything I could ever imagine. We started off the day visiting the Arc de Triomphe. This may be very ignorant of me, but I didn't really think it was such a big arch. But comparatively, it's definitely the biggest arch I've ever seen. Also, it had very intricate designs all over it and it was basically amazing. After that stop, we went to the Trocadero. That is where we saw the Eiffel Tower. It really blew my mind. I never thought I would ever be lucky enough to be in Paris at the Eiffel Tower! It was beautiful. I wish I could just pick everyone up and bring them to all these amazing places with me, because I want everyone to be able to see the things I'm seeing. After our stop at the Eiffel we went down to the Notre Dame Cathedral. I've been to lots of churches in my day...but this one was amazing. Really amazing. The stained glass and the detail on the outside of the church was just insane, there were tons of statues and things inside, it was just beautiful. It was also located alone the Seine which, although filled with lead and other pollutants, is beautiful. So after we walked through the Notre Dame, it was free time for the rest of the night!

The first executive decision we made was that we were hungry. We went to a little street across the river from the cathedral and had about the best Greek food this side of Greece, besides Daphne's Greek Express in SDSU's East Commons, obviously. After the Greek we went across the street for some gelato. So freakin' worldly and delicious! After that we decided it was time to go to the one place I really wanted to go in Paris, Jim Morrison's grave. Jim's grave is in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, which is the biggest cemetary in paris. There is nothing I can say to describe how huge this cemetary was...I guess except measurements, which I don't know, so you get nothing. But it was big. So we walked to the cemetary from Notre Dame, which was quite a ways, by way of the Bastille. The Bastille was cool, but not exactly what I expected I guess. So we finally got to the cemetary and set off to find the graves of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde (who there is a statue of on Galway's Shop Street), Proust and Chopin. We found Jim's first. It was the only grave you couldn't actually go up to, which is garbage if you ask me, but anyway they had it all fenced in and I took a whole bunch of pictures there. I can't believe I saw Jim Morrison's grave! We then wandered around to find Chopin's grave and never found it, saw some other writers and then found Oscar Wilde. His grave has kisses all over it for reasons that I don't know, but it was strange and cool. I don't think I'd ever kiss a grave though. After that we took a long walk back home. And when I say long I mean long. To quote Jaye, "I really didn't think I was going to make it." Apparently, some people think I walk fast. So we went back to the hotel and took a little break and we were going out that night for dinner with Jaye's friend from home who is studying in Paris. I took a little nap and we went down the street from our hotel, in the opposite direction of the red light district, and found a nice place to eat at. I had some roast chicken, and we laughed a lot. After that we decided to walk to the Moulin Rouge to see it lit up at night. Well, it was pretty awesome. The Moulin Rouge is very expensive to actually go to, but let's face it, it's in a pretty classy neighborhood. So we walked over there judging every person on the street for being in the red light district at night, and found the Moulin Rouge. Luckily around there there is more tourists than anything, unlike near the other stores in the area where the skeevey people hang out. So we checked it out and then walked back to the hotel about 12:30 to hang out in my room again. It was again a lot of fun, except on the walk home I got beer spit on me by a random person in the street, so that was annoying, but I guess it happens. I wasn't mad because it was just ridiculous, and beer is about 4 Euros so that person is an idiot for wasting it anyway.

The next morning we got up for breakfast again, and then headed up to mass at Sacre Coeur. It is an amazing church on the side of the hill near our hotel. There were a lot of stairs to get up to it. Mass was all in French, of course, but I could basically keep up with where we were in the mass judging by timing and things. It was pretty interesting, I just wish I could've understood what the sermon was about. After that we again had the day free and decided to go Versailles. We took the Metro over to the train, which is where Nora learned never to question me, and took the train to Versailles. Versailles was amazing. Another thing that pictures don't quite capture and words can't quite explain. It was so beautiful. There's nothing I can really say about it besides next time you find yourself in Paris you should go there. You'll see what I'm talking about in the pictures. So after we got back from Versailles, we didn't really have any time left for anything else, so we went and got some food and then waited for the bus. We got to the airport to the longest security line of all time and madly rushed to our flight. We got back to Galway and everyone was pretty much dead because it was around 1 AM, except Jaye and I who changed the lyrics to a number of popular songs to fit certain situations in people's lives. It was a pretty amazing trip. I think this is too much text so I will put the pictures in another post!