There have been a lot of problems in France while we've been here, and lots of flights have ended up being canceled. The people in France want the retirement age to be lowered and they are going on transportation strikes to try and get this to change. Soo, basically flights get canceled about once a week. All flights on Thursday were canceled, but we had luckily booked ours for Friday!
On Friday, our flight was scheduled to leave at 2, but due to an air traffic control advisory in Paris, we didn't end up leaving until about 4:30. Also, because we flew into an airport about 80 minutes outside of the city, we didn't end up getting to Paris until about 8. When we got out of our shuttle, we were exhausted, and decided to take a taxi to Daniela's friend, Juliet's, apartment. It was so cool to see the city during the taxi drive. We saw the Eiffel tower glittering (it does this for 5 minutes of every hour) and we got to see the Arc de Triomphe, right at the base of the Champs-Elysees. When we arrived at the apartment, everyone was ready for dinner, so we quickly dropped our bags and headed to a local restaurant. We wanted to have a somewhat traditional dinner, and ended up getting French Onion Soup, steak with pepper sauce, and chocolate mousse. It was all very delicious! After dinner, we got some French wine and headed out for the night!
The next day, we woke up early so we could see all the sights! Juliet's apartment is within walking distance of Notre Dame, so this was our first stop. The outside of the church was gorgeous...and the area around it was also really pretty. I loved all of the French architecture and how the Seine runs through the city. It was so hard to believe that we were really there!
Next, we decided to buy tickets for one of the tourist buses. This way, we would be able to see everything that we could in one day. The bus took us all throughout the city and told us interesting facts about a lot of the places. We passed the Ritz where Princess Diana was staying the night of her accident.
Our first stop that we exited the bus was the Arc de Triomphe. It was so pretty! We then had lunch on the Champs Elysees, a quiche and chocolate eclair...so good!
Next, was my favorite site of the trip, and the most obvious..the Eiffel tower. Its really impressive and I took tonss of pictures of it to remember. We even got to see a bride and groom taking their wedding pictures with the tower in the back.so pretty!
We then headed for the Louvre. Again, the building was gorgeous and I loved the glass pyramids out front. Daniela and I noticed some other tourists taking pictures touching the tip of the pyramid, so we tried it out and the pictures turned out really cute! I loved the museum itself as well...I took pictures of all the works that I have studied in my art history courses. It was so interesting to see them in person. And, of course, we saw the Mona Lisa too.
Also, one of my favorite exhibits in the museum was the Napoleon apartments. I loved seeing how extravagantly royalty lived.
After this, we started to make our way back to the apartment, stopping in the Luxembourg gardens. I loved seeing the changing of the leaves, because my favorite season is fall and I haven't really seen much leaf-changing in Barcelona.
We took a short nap when we got back because we were exhausted. We then got ready to go to dinner. We went to the best restaurant. It was called the Academy of Beer, so of course, we all ordered a beer. The restaurant was also famous for its mussels and french fries. We all got mussels a la creme, so they were combined into one big bowl and they were delicious! After dinner, we met up with some more people from Juliet's program at a local bar.
The next day we headed to Versailles. There were soooooo many people there, put we were happy to learn that our student visas got us into the palace for free, so the lines weren't that bad keeping that in mind. I love this palace as well, I've wanted to come here ever since seeing the movie. One thing that I found really interesting was that Versailles chooses to sponsor an artist every so often, and the artist that they had chosen this time didn't exactly go with the French royalty. It was Japanese art...a lot of hello kitty type things...kind of took away from a lot of the beauty of the palace in my opinion.
We also took a tour of the gardens and Marie Antoinette's house. It was incredible how big the property is. We walked forever through the gardens and still didn't even see half of it!
When we got back to the apartment, we took another quick nap and got ready for dinner at a local sushi place. The sushi was really good and the first that I have had while being in Europe. After dinner, we headed over to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures while it was lit up. We then headed back to the apartment to get some sleep before waking up for our early flight. It was so sad to leave!
Overall, the weekend was amazing!! I loved the city and everything we did, and hope to return one day in the future!
Au revoir!
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