Paris!
Trip Start
Sep 23, 2008
1
22
65
Trip End
Jul 09, 2009
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Sunday, December 21, 2008
So I'm up at like 4am and get ready to go to Paris and go home. I make the train and head to Paris. I meet Becka at the train station and we find our hotel. It's actually quite easy to find, so that's good. Very close to a metro stop. We get there and it's way too early to check in but we have huge bags so the receptionist lets us put our bags in the back somewhere. Then we get some coffee and go to the Père Lachaise cemetery. We'd both been there before but there were some graves we hadn't seen. We looked at Edith Piaf's grave, then Oscar Wilde, and Georges Seurat. It was pretty cool. Apparently everyone kisses Wilde's grave, so we did too. I'm not sure why they do that. After that it was time to check in so we went back. We climb up the stairs with our huge bags to this hallway that reminds me of the movie The Shining. It was so scary. Then our room turns out to be extremely tiny. We open the door and there's this little not quite full size bed for the both of us. We also have a little sink and a bidet in our room. Oh and there's some smell we can't quite identify too. Then after we settle our stuff in we go to meet Becka's friend Jules. He's from Paris and so he was going to meet us for lunch. He was awesome and pretty much France's Next Top Model. He knew how to speak English but didn't speak it the whole time, which was great because we got a lot of practice. After lunch he took us to his parent's apartment and gave us 3 bottles of really expensive wine. We couldn't believe it. One of the bottles had this painting on it that his mom had painted. It was really cool so of course I took it home with me. Then he decided that he had a couple hours so he took us on a tour of Paris. He took us to his favorite places and had a story for everything. We basically learned all about France's history in two hours. It was so much fun. After he left us Becka and I were in such a French mood that we spoke French to each other for a good hour or so after he left. It was really good practice. Then we had dinner at KFC (we'd been seeing signs everywhere and it looked great) and then went back to our hotel. I know it was Saturday night in Paris, but we were tired and just ready to come home, so we chilled out in the hotel room.
12/21/08
Today we slept in late and decided what we wanted to do for the day. We really didn't have much of a plan, so that was nice. We could just walk around and do what we wanted. I knew I wanted to see Defensive Arch, so we went to that first. It's also the farthest away from the city center so we figured we'd get that out of the way first. When we get there, it's like we've left Paris altogether. It looked like we were suddenly in Chicago or something. There were huge modern skyscrapers everywhere, instead of the beautiful old Parisian buildings. I immediately felt at home actually. It was weird. Apparently they were trying to make Paris more business oriented, so they built this part of the city. The Parisians didn't like it though because it wasn't pretty or something, so now it's just a small part of the city that not a lot of people hear about. The Arch was pretty cool, and there was a huge Christmas market right by it. I actually really really liked this part of the city. I definitely want to come back and look around more. We walked up to this big Christmas tree type thing that had been made by Ferraro Rocher, the fancy chocolate candies. We walk in and are given free chocolates, it was really cool. Then, the girl at the counter tells us to stick our heads into these little holes with TVs in them. So we do and there's like chocolate air being blown at you, it was odd but kind of fun. Then we took some pictures of the Arc de Triomphe, because there was a great view of it and the Champs Elysees from where we were. Also, for some reason (I really need to look it up) there was a huge statue of a thumb. A human thumb. It was really really weird, but we're used to that in France so we went to it and took pictures with it. Fun times. Finally we get to the Christmas markets. I say markets because there were two huge markets put together. That's one thing I love about France (and I'm sure they do it in all of Europe). These Christmas markets are great. There's great seasonal food, hot wine, tons of random stuff you wouldn't think to buy but they're cool so now you have to. We hung out there for a long while and then headed back to the city centre. I really wanted to see the Pompidou Centre, so we went looking for that. It took us forever to find it, it was so annoying. We kept looking at the map backwards, so we were wandering around forever. Oh well. We eventually found it and it was pretty cool. It's a modern art museum. I honestly didn't care about going in to see the art, but I wanted to see the building and the fountains right beside it. So I was happy. After that we got hungry and we went to this restaurant called Flunch. It was awful. It was basically like a cafeteria where you grab a bunch of stuff and then pay at the end. I did not enjoy it. Plus there was this guy next to us that kept glaring at me. Then when I got up to leave he clears his throat and says (in English) "You're gonna die". That was comforting to hear. The only good thing about Flunch is that we could complain about it all day. When we were climbing up hills or something we were burning off that Flunch, if I had an upset stomach it was because of the Flunch. It's just a really funny name and it was fun to say it all the time. Although my upset stomach probably was from Flunch because my steak that I had was so raw it was purple. I'm not exaggerating I swear. Ugh. After Flunch we took a look at Notre Dame, which is always fun to see. There was a huge tree in front of it so it looked very Christmas-y. Then we met up with a friend of Becka's (I feel really bad that I can't remember her name) and we went for coffee and walked around to look at the lights. We passed by a famous café though, called Les Deux Magots (The two maggots). Samantha Brown ate their in her show Passport to Europe. So I took a picture. It was really expensive but I'm sure it'd be worth eating at. Then we went home early to repack our bags and get ready to go home.
