Starting Eurotrip 2008 in Paris

  Paris, Île-de-France, France
Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Paris, France

Day 1 and 2: August 20 and 21, 2008

We left at 6:30 in the morning so we had to get to the airport at 4:30! Garrett and Sara slept over at my house the night before and we got up and went together off of about 4 hours of sleep. We found out that we had to go to the domestic terminal to fly Delta not the international and Bobby was a little worried. He called me and said he was "freakin' screwed." I assured him if he kept walking he would make it fine J Our flights were not too bad. We got our own TV's and I slept a little on each of them. The Air France flight felt gourmet compared to the Delta flight. I think this shows a lot about the state of the American economy because they charged you for food and movies and bags while Air France gave you all of these things for free.

I later found out that this isnt the real one

We finally arrived in Paris at 5:45 in the morning Paris time and had some trouble. Since our flight was a connecting flight to Dublin, all of the boys' bags were scheduled to be on that plane. Somehow Sara and I got lucky and ours were sent to Paris, except Sara's computer charger was stolen out of her bag. Fortunately Devin talked to the right people and after about two hours the bags were taken off the plane and brought to us and we were ready to go. We then had to take three trains with our bags to get to our hostel. This was quite a feat especially with the huge staircase we had to climb at the end! Unfortunately, Garrett was pick-pocketed when we were changing trains. It all happened so fast, they blocked him as he was trying to get off the train and there was nothing that he could do- it was so scary! Fortunately he did not have all of his money in his wallet but it definitely shook all of us up.

Our Tiny But Quaint Hostel

Once we got to our hostel we were lucky because they let us check in at 12:30 instead of 4! We then got to take naps after we ate and walked around a little bit. We stayed at the Caluincourt Hostel that is located in the Sacre Cours district which is a quaint area in Paris. The people at our hostel were friendly but the rooms were very squished. There was barley enough room for three bunk beds. After our naps we headed had dinner at a cute Italian place and then headed to the Eifel Tower.

Such a Romantic City

It was lit up at night and was beautiful. We walked around and Sara and Bobby had crepes. It was a very long day but we were happy to finally be there. Although I was having bad heart burn I was happy to be in Paris with Brandon and my friends.

Day 3: August 22, 2008

We woke up in time for the free breakfast and enjoyed some croissants in our hostel. Then we went to wait for our Bus and ran into a French woman. Bobby made a comment about how French people probably don't like Americans because he does not know how to pay for things. She then left the bus stop and said that's not the only reason we don't like you! We took the bus back to the Eiffel tower and Sara and I bought really cute Paris Eiffel tower umbrellas. Unfortunately it rained the whole day but we did have our umbrellas. From there we paid 12 euro for a ticket on an on and off boat and took it on the seine river to all of our destinations for the day.

At the Louvre

We started with the Louvre. We saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo statue and many other paintings.

Me and Venus

We had lunch their too and it felt like we walked through the entire building. Bobby and Devin ran into some friends at the Louvre which was pretty surprising and it reminded me of the time that Robby ran into Vick Esposto at the Louvre and my parents had just told him that he should not worry about the stain on his shirt because he would never see any of these people again! Luckily none of us got lost this time which is again surprising because there were six of us to keep track of. We then took the cruise to the Notre Dame cathedral. Before we went into the cathedral we sat down to eat some more food at a quaint little French restaurant. The waitress was very nice and taught us how to pronounce the food. I had my first crepe that was filled with cheese and it was delicious. The cathedral was beautiful and we saw part of a service being performed. It felt nice to be in such a spiritual place and it reminded me of how lucky I was to be there.
Our last destination for the day was the Champs Elysee and the Arch de Triumphe. It was nice to walk down the street that I had stayed with my family before and the Arche de Triumphe was definitely a sight to see once we finally reached it. We did not get back to the hostel until 9 pm and we took naps because we were exhausted. I was happy to lie down because had again had heart burn all day. We finally got up and ready to go out at about 11 pm. We went to this really good Japanese restaurant and Garrett had sushi for the first time. Garrett kept saying Grazie to people and we finally got him to say merci (or as Brandon would say mercy) instead. Sara, Brandon, Garrett and I went to our first bar and Bobby and Devin went to a discoteca. We made it back to our hostel a few minutes after curfew (2 am) and the nice guy at the desk let us in. We are always surprised at how laid back the hostel workers are because they don't ever really demand that we pay and aren't really aware of how much we owe. No worries, I still paid full price for both rooms! We then went to sleep.

Day 4: August 23, 2008

We woke up and went on a walk to the train station to reserve our tickets for Berlin. We got to see a section of Paris that we had never seen before. It was quite the opposite from the upscale champs elysee that we had seen the day before.

Fountain

We were planning to take a night train that night to Berlin but we got their and found out it was already booked. Fortunately we were able to book a train for the next morning. We then went back to the hostel and were able to reserve the rooms for another night. We had to get two rooms of three and found that they were a little more spacious which was nice.
We had lunch in the little court outside our hotel. We had really good cheese bread (au fromage) and some baguette sandwiches for 5 euro. We ate it on the steps outside our hostel and admired the view. Brandon, Sara and I went on a little day trip to St. Michel while the boys slept for six hours! We took the metro, it cost only 1 euro 60 for however far we needed to go. We got to St. Michel and were surprised to find that there was a beautiful fountain. The fountain was filled with soap so we took pictures with the foam J The fountain was also right by Notre Dame, which we had not noticed the day before when we went there. Then walked along the streets and looked at the many shops. We found a little park and a medieval building. We continued walking around the area and found a church that was like a smaller version of the Notre Dame. It had gargoyles on the outside and beautiful stained glass windows on the inside. By then it was getting late so we took the metro back.
Once we got back to our hostel we took a nap at 7 o'clock and did not wake up until 10. By around 11 we were finally ready to go out for dinner and clubbing. A lot of the restaurants were already closed but we found a cute Italian Restaurant that had tables outside. Somehow the restaurants always seemed to have six person tables ready for us when we arrived.

I love flat pizza and him!

We had a good dinner of Margharita pizza and Brandon had Lasagna. By then it was about 12:30 and we were off to our first French club. We had a lot of fun dancing to American music and French music. Some French people came and danced with us and recognized us because of the movie American Pie. Later one of the guys told us that he wanted to move to Chicago to be with his girlfriend because his heart was starting to ache. The people in the French club were really nice and the atmosphere was a lot more relaxed than American dance clubs. We left the club after a couple hours and packed to leave for our train in the morning. Although we had wanted to leave for Berlin that night we were happy that we were able to have such a fun night in Paris.

Reflection of Paris:
Paris was a little difficult because it was our first country. We learned so much about traveling every day that we were there. We learned to be VERY careful with our stuff especially in crowded areas. We also learned that sometimes it is better to just split a taxi when traveling with all of our stuff because it is safer and not too expensive. It was a little difficult recovering from the jet lag and I was not feeling well for the first two days but by the third day I was doing a lot better. Paris is a lot more diverse that I expected. There seemed to be all types of people almost like San Francisco. We also saw a lot of people in African dress which I did not expect. The streets were a lot cleaner and the Parisians upheld their reputation of not being very polite. Paris is a beautiful city and there are so many different areas to explore that we could not imagine doing it in three days. I loved that there is a river going through the city and enjoyed traveling on the on and off boat to the many sites.