Paris, je t´aime

Well my friends, I am safely back from my weekend in Paris and I have lots and lots to say. I'll start off by saying it was easily one of the best weekends of my entire life...absolutely amazing. I was initially very skeptical because I paid more than I planned for the plane ticket after going through hell to get it, and someone who stayed at our hostel said it was horrible, and the weather was supposed to suck, and sooo many people have had horror stories about traveling, but it was better than anything I could have ever hoped for. I'm going to go into a lot of detail because I want to remember it all while it is still fresh so this will probably be pretty long. Sorry in advance! So let me start from the beginning...

We, (we being my friends Amber, Sarah, and Janelle—the girls I roomed with in Granada, and whom I love), left at 5:30pm on Thursday night, and everything went perfectly with the flight from Sevilla to Paris. We got to Paris around 8:00 and we flew over the entire city lit up and we all had the... “oh-my-god-we're-in-Paris” moment as we saw the 'city of lights' below us. From the airport we took a taxi to our hostel...and held our breath the whole way there. To our surprise, it wasn't too bad. We slept in a room that was constantly 100 degrees and smelled like feet with 6 other people who snored and made sounds in their sleep like they were dying, but it wasn't that bad haha. The only time we spent there was to sleep, (even though with the snoring kings we didn't do much of that either), and eat our free breakfast of which we ate countless croissants and rolls with jelly. Once we were settled in we roamed the streets looking for a good place to eat and landed in a French-Italian joint with no other customers. We hadn't been in France for more than 2 hours when we realized how lucky we were to have Obama as president. I mean, aside from everything else, the world loves him, sometimes without even knowing why, which puts us in a wonderful position while traveling because the first thing our waiter said when he found out we were from the US was, “I love Obama!” haha. And on our last night we got crepes and the crepe man told us that Obama was his personal hero, and also that he liked Micheal Buble and Frank Sinatra hahaa. Anyways! So the first night we each ate an entire pizza and walked to the Eiffel Tower. One of the reasons we chose our hostel was because it boasted being only a 10 minute walk from the Tower, so we knew we had to go our first night. When we saw it in its entirety for the first time it was one of those moments of realization, (of which I've been having a lot of during this journey), really affirming it....this isn't a picture in a book...I'm really in Paris. Then it started doing its shimmery light show and we all screamed with excitement.

The next day we got up bright and early for a (FREE) 3.5 hour walking tour we heard about through our hostel that said it would take us to all the major sites in Paris. We really didn't have anything planned out or know how to get to a lot of places, so we figured we didn't have much to lose on a free tour of the city. We hopped on the metro, which was super easy and convenient to navigate, and met our guides at Saint Michel square. Honestly, the tour was one of the best things about the entire trip and I can't possibly tell you everything I learned/saw because you just won't want to read it, but I learned so much!!! I never thought I could be so interested in history, but we had an amaazzzzing guide from New Zealand, Phillip, (yes he was adorable and yes he had an accent), who was hilarious and incredibly intelligent. For instance, did you know that a German general saved Paris from being destroyed in World War II? Hitler knew he wasn't going to get Paris and he didn't want anyone else to have it so he ordered the general to burn the entire city and the general was like screw that so he lit a very small section of it on fire so that the soldiers on the border could tell Hitler it was burning, but really it was fine. If not for him, nothing of what I saw would exist. Also, when Louis XVI was beheaded they dulled the blade of the guillotine and it took about 9 times before his head came off. And also, the Lourve has over 100,000 pieces of art and can only display 35,000 of them at one time and if you looked at every piece for only 30 seconds each and took no bathroom breaks, no food breaks, no sleeping, no nothing, it would take 64 days to go through the entire museum. The Eiffel Tower was built as an entrance to the World Fair and only one person died while it was being built which is unbelieveable. Except for the guy who convince the French government to let him try his flying machine from the top of it...and flew all the way to the ground and made a dent two inches into the pavement. Epic fail. I have tons and tons of stories and history but it is too hard to make it sound coherent, especially without the pictures in front of me. But on top of the history, the guide would throw in pop culture stuff like where Jason Bourne (from the Bourne Identity) was hiding in a certain scene, or where Anne Hathaway dropped her cellphone in a fountain in The Devil Wears Prada, or, my personal favorite, the bridge where Carrie and Big meet in Paris during the finale of Sex and the City :) So on the tour we saw Notre Dame, Pont Neuf (a famous bridge with a great story of its own), the river Seine, the French Academy (where they decide what words to put in the dictionary), the Louvre, the royal gardens, the champs d'elysees, the Arc de Triumphe, the Museum of Orsay (which has the biggest collection of Van Gogh in the world), the place of Napoleon's tomb, the French Opera house, the Hotel de Ville (where all the famous and rich people stay when they come to Paris), the Egyptian obelisk, and of course the Eiffel Tower. I'm sure I'm forgetting some but still that is a lot! A lot of the stuff we saw from a distance, but even still it was useful to know where things were in relation to us and above all, the history was mesmerizing.

We ended our tour near the Arc de Triomphe so we decided to walk down the most expensive street in Paris (and I think the second most expensive in the world), to go see the Arc up close. It was much bigger than I thought, I felt like a midget beneath it. The Arc is surrounded by the biggest roundabout in the world, and also the most dangerous, because the stubborn French people refuse to put any signs on it in order to preserve its history. So in exchange they get a crash every 30 minutes.

After the Arc we marched our way to the Notre Dame, the most famous church in Paris and one of the most well known around the world. But, back in the day it was home to prostitution, gambling, and murder. Whoo! And during the French Revolution when they were killing all of the royalty and artistocrats, they thought that the apostles were wearing crowns, not halos, so they cut off all of their heads and the heads were lost for years and years until one day, pretty recently (I can remember when exactly, within the last 10-20 years), a woman was gardening and found the stone heads of all the apostles in her back yard. What luck! Anyways, inside the Notre Dame was beautiful. When we went they were in the middle of mass and it was really interesting to see. The stained glass windows were really incredible. And the architecture on the outside was amazing as well—the Notre Dame is the first building to use the architectural tool of the flying buttress which allows the walls to be thin without falling apart. A staple in Gothic style architecture, if I'm not mistaken.

A small aside that is necessary for the understanding of the next stop in our journey. During our tour, Philip told us that a certain church, called Sainte Chappelle, is famous for holding ancient relics of Christ, including the Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was crucified. Louis XIV (I may be getting the numbers on these kings wrong), bought the crown and had the church built for it, and they supposedly show it every first Friday of each month. And what would you know, we were in Paris on the first Friday of the month, so we decided we'd probably never get another chance to see the supposed crown of Christ. We went to the church and waited in line, and even went up and asked the people in charge if the crown was there today, and multiple people told us that it was. However, after going through security, paying 5 euros, and exploring the whole church, we found no crown of thorns. And after some more research with other guides we saw, we found out that they showed the crown in the Notre Dame that day, while we were there, and all we had to do was go downstairs and see it. Of course, by the time we went back to Notre Dame, it was closed, and there was no Christly crown to be seen. We saw pictures of it though and it is encased in something and you can't really see it, and I'm not too sure I really believe that King Louis got a hold of the actual Crown of Thorns...seems a little improbable that some sticks could hold their form for a few thousand years. But that's probably my bitterness talking :)
But, on the upside, Friday nights at the Lourve are free, so we hauled our bitterness to the museum before sunset and enjoyed lots of art, including the famous Mona Lisa, which is much less impressive than you might think. Especially since they have solved the two biggest mysteries about it: it is a painting of a woman named Lisa, not Davinci himself as a woman, and her facial expression is 83% happy, according to German and Canadian scientists, respectively. Once you take the mystery out of art, it is much less interesting. The Lourve was really interesting and just enormous, but all of the art we looked at was mostly religious, and I'm more interested in the impressionist styles of art, which I got to see tons of on our second day at the Orsay Museum. Lots of Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Rodin, Seurat, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, and more. I could have stayed in that museum for hours.

After our full day of culture and history we went back to the hostel and had some wine and went over our plans for the following day before passing a few sleepless hours in the 100 degree bedroom. Saturday we got up early again and made our way to the Catacombs of Paris. These were created during the time of the Bubonic Plague and there was no more room in the cemetaries for bodies so they basically created underground cemetaries, and put in the bones in designs. It was definetely creepy, and we were glad to see daylight afterwards. Later on we went to the bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, which is where all of the artists and singers and dancers lived back in the day, and it still has its artistic charm, as well as Paris's red light district haha. We first climbed our way up to the highest point in Paris, (aside from the top of the Eiffel Tower), which is the hill where the Sacre Coeur is, another huge and gorgeous church, with quite distinct architecture. It was an amazzzzzing view of the entire city, absolutely beautiful. It was a cloudy day but as we sat on the steps and listened to a guy play his acoustic guitar and sing “Imagine”, the sun peaked out and lit up our faces...

When we had our fill of the Parisian jam session, we walked to the red light district, the home of the Moulin Rouge. We had a ton of fun going into “sex museums” and sex toy stores...unfortunately we didn't bring anything home hahaha. From the red light district we headed to the Museum of Orsay which boasts the most (or the second most, can't remember!), Van Gogh paintings in the world. It was so beautiful. I love all the work from those eras. I found a lot of artists I had forgotten about, and some I never knew. I also remembered how much I love art and art history, and how much I wish I could remember from my class in high school that I loved so much. Art history and religion are two classes I want to take when I get back to the states.

We breezed through the Orsay and headed back to our hostel to shower and get ready for the night...we were going to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower to view the City of Light from a place very few get to go in their lifetimes. On the walk there we bought baguettes and cheese and munched on our French dinner all the way there. We had planned on experiencing the Paris night life with a Pub Crawl through the same program that did our free tour, but when we got to the Eiffel we realized we would never make it there it time so we opted for the view of a lifetime rather than the hangover of a lifetime. I'm going to have to search for descriptive words again here, so I'm sorry if I repeat things I've said before....but the view of the city at night...there just aren't words honestly. My eyes were watering just taking in everything around me....the lights, the city, the wind, the stars. It was a feeling of euphoria which I've experienced before but not quite like this...there were so many feelings going through me, I just absolutely feel in love with the city in that moment.

After our romantic date with the city of Paris, we enjoyed our last French crepes and walked to a bar and watched (and participated in), some dancing at a French bar. Afterwards we made our way home and gave the city its last kiss goodnight :)


Sunday was a bit of an anxiety filled day, but we made it to the airport in time and got back to Sevilla without much trouble at all. And though I was sad to be leaving Paris, I wasn't upset about leaving 50 degrees for 80 and sunshine.

Other than Paris, everything else is going great, especially the weather. It is really hard to be sad or homesick when it is so beautiful out. Although, my birthday is coming up (tomorrow!), and it is a weird feeling to know that I won't have the people I love most here to celebrate. Aside from that, turning 21 in the states is a little different from turning 21 here, though I plan to enjoy it equally as much :) It does get me thinking about growing up and what I'm doing, what I'm going to do, what I truly want to do...what the future holds. In a matter of hours I will be a real adult, in every country of the world, and I'm not entirely sure I'm ready for it. I'm certainly not ready to get a “real” life or being an “adult”, and if I'm anything like my mother I'll never be one, which I wouldn't be too upset about :) But enough of that seriousness....I am very excited for my birthday and i've been informed by my friends here that I will be celebrating for the entire 24 hours of it, starting wednesday night at midnight. Thursday I'm going to have dinner at a good Italian place and then reeeeally celebrate :) I think when I order drinks i'm going to show them my ID anyways, just so I can have that bamf feeling haha.

As always, I miss and love you all very very much, and I hope things warm up soon for you. Also, upon my arrival in May, we will be having another, proper, United States of America, birthday party, so prepare yourselves :) I have midterms next week so I'm not sure if I'll have time to come online on Sunday but if I do I'll be on at 7pm my time, which I think is 1pm your time since you guys had daylight savings. Love youuu. Besos!