A few friends and I finally embarked on our first out-of-London adventure to Paris. We booked through the same tour company that we went to the Isle of Wight with, however, I don’t think for this type of out-of-town trip it was fully worth it. Anyway, we knew we would have the majority time in Paris free, so I diligently prepared a list of stuff, with Metro stops, of must-see things to do. Besides that, not much preparation went into the trip besides a large amount of excitement.
I requested Friday off, so we left our London flat before dawn and hopped on the Tube to go to St. Pancras International. The Eurostar was very cool. Everyone always wants to know about the underwater tunnel that goes under the English Channel. Honestly, it was very anti-climatic, because it just goes black and you wouldn’t really know that you were under water.
Anyway, we got to Paris, where I was exhausted because I had not slept at all, until the last 10 minutes, on the train. We immediately went on the only touristy thing provided to us by our tour, which was a bus tour around Paris. We saw the must-sees, but in all honesty, I was asleep for a few moments of it. After we checked into our very quaint hotel, we immediately wanted to get to the center of the city.
Our hotel was very nice, and especially interesting because it was very, very hot in the rooms. English places are always cold; Paris was hot. It was evident then that we were on different territory. Our shower in the hotel was nothing less than Magnifique! It had good water pressure, plenty of room, and was hot!
Anyway, we were set to meet my friend, Alena, at the Louvre (the ‘r’ in pronounced). So we went about tackling the Paris Metro system, which Alena claims to be the best she’s ever seen. Their Metro system is a lot more reasonably priced than London’s, so we bought 10 single stop Metro passes for 12 euros, and we ended up using 11 total throughout the weekend. The Metro was my first and only experience with culture shock. Let me say firstly that their Metro is much different than our Tube—it’s not as nice in terms of cleanliness, the insides of the stations were heavily graffitied (to my surprise), and, the biggest difference, the doors did not automatically open: you have to lift a lever to open it or press a button. Mostly just the lever. We got used to it after the first few times, but being on a crowded Metro, different than anything I’d seen, with nothing but French all around you gave me temporary shock for a few moments.
It was also a bit of a shock to be in an environment, for the first time I realized, where English was not the predominant language. Knowing little French was difficult, but fortunately for us, and unfortunately to society as a whole, most of France has adapted to the fact that many English-speaking tourists visit their city, therefore many of the menus were in French and most people spoke English. So, we were okay language-wise, however it did make me sad about the world in general.
Anyway, we met Alena and went for dinner at a cute little café that was the cheapest we could find around the Louvre. I got a ham and cheese omelet (that came with nothing else) for 10 euros. The omelet was good. The price made me cringe a bit. We headed to the Louvre, which was free for students on Friday nights. It was pretty packed but we managed to make our way in. Because of our varying tastes in art, we all split up except for me, Alena and, one of my friends, Maddie. We immediately went to the Mona Lisa, which we had been warned by other friends was much less impressive in person because all the hype surrounding it builds expectations. However, Maddie and I loved it. The hype was true. Mona Lisa was haunting and gorgeous. We didn’t get super close because there were a ton of people, not to mention a barricade and glass put in front of the painting. But from what I saw, I can see why the hype was true. The rest of the museum was obviously huge and we obviously could not see everything, so we wandered a bit and were content to do that. Besides that Mona Lisa and one very famous statue that was there, the rest of the Louvre’s contents were not particularly memorable.
Exhausted, we headed back to our hotel where we immediately passed out and got a good night’s sleep.
Determined to conquer the city like the tourists we were, we awoke early and headed down to our complimentary breakfast. Although I do enjoy a big, hearty breakfast, the simplicity of the French breakfast was enjoyable to me. Especially because all it consisted of was bread—baguettes, croissants, pastries, cereal, and that was about it. All bread items. Delicious!
After filling up on breakfast, we decided to take the Metro to the famous statue garden near the Louvre. We walked through the garden where we stumbled across the first of many gorgeous, old-fashioned carousels, all abandoned in the winter. We continued our stroll through Paris by walking down the famous shopping street where we stopped by a few of the world’s most expensive shops. When we went into Louie Vuitton (just to look, as most of the stuff there more expensive than our entire weekend), not only were the doors held open for us as we walked in, but we also some good and nasty glares from the sales people walking in. My other friend, Lauren, touched one of the key chains on a little keychain rack, when immediately a salesperson sweeped in to put the keychain back into its place.
We continued walking on the street until we got to the Arc de Triomph, which was more gorgeous than it looks in all the pictures. The detail in all the architecture is really amazing. There was also a tomb for an unknown soldier, which was nice to see.
Let me take a moment to discuss the magnificent architecture in Paris. Everything just looked so stereotypically French, but it was so supremely gorgeous. London buildings are also very beautiful, but there was something about Paris that was just so breathtaking. It was beautiful.
After our long walk, we hopped back on the Metro and went to the island where Notre Dam sits. We spotted our first of many glimpses of the Seine River and walked to the cathedral. It was pretty for a church. It looked kind of like Westminster’s design, with statues all around it of notable people and everything. It wasn’t my favorite part of the weekend, but it was good to see. There was also a really cute flower market right near there, so we walked through that, which was enjoyable. Starving by this point, we fulfilled a life-long desire of mine and ate crepes on the side of a street in Paris. They tasted different than all the crepes I had had in the States. They were delicious though, with strawberry jam and everything. Yum! We also stopped by St. Chappelle for a moment, and that was also pretty.
I know it sounds like we’ve done a lot today already, however, by this point it was really only like 2:00 in the afternoon, so there was much more sightseeing to be done. One of the places we wanted to go to was this cemetery that had many famous people buried in it. So we got back on the Metro and headed towards it. It was huge and hilly and very difficult to walk on because of all the cobbled and uneven roads. Still, we had passed away stars to see, and were on a mission, so after finding our way we made our way across the entire cemetery to find the stars we wanted to see. Oscar Wilde’s grave was by far the most unique. It was a huge memorial and was marked because it had red and pink lipstick outlines of lips all over it. Seriously, the tomb had been “kissed” by hundreds of people, all wishing Mr. Wilde well. I do not know why this tradition is. I suppose I will Google it later, but it was very cool to see.
We made our way through the very non-traditional looking cemetery. All the tombs were large with family names engraved upon them. My theory is that anybody in there is either famous, or very, very wealthy, as it was no surprise to see such elaborate and non-plain-looking tombs. It was so interesting, and definitely something worth visiting. We visited Edith Piaf’s tomb (my pick), which was surprising simple, but had loads of roses on it, which was nice to see. We stopped by to pay our condolences to Jim Morrison and some other famous French artists and made our way out.
Surprising, still eager to see Paris, we did not stop and made our way to the Musee d’Orsee, which was something even a non-art-museum person, like me, was eager to see. We split up once again and explored for a few hours. I loved the Monet’s that were there and many famous Van Gogh’s as well. Every French painter you’d ever heard of was in that museum and it was wonderful to see.
Getting somewhat tired at this point, we decided it was time for the fancy dinner we planned on having that night. We were very picky about the place, but we eventually found one that sought our needs and went on into a cute little café and restaurant. It was a little expensive, but we were splurging. The waiter came to our table and we asked for dinner menus. The waiter looked surprised, but pleased. Not sure what to order (since I am a picky eater), I went with something not so safe. I ordered curry chicken with pasta. It was actually quite good. Aunt Donna and Uncle Jeff would be proud of me. We ate our hearts out and were happy to do so. Then dessert came, and instead of shying away because of price and fullness, like we usually do, we ordered dessert. No splitting, one for each.
I ordered another very untraditional-Hayley dessert. Chocolate cake was how the menu described it, but it was really chocolate soufflé, over loaded with fudge. It was pretty delicious, although it got too chocolaty and rich for me at one point. My chocolate-loving family would be proud. Now full, we paid for dinner and walked across the Seine at night and along the river to go on our River Boat Cruise. We saw the Eiffel Tower sparkle, as it does every hour, and went on the Boat and saw the City of Lights at night. It was a lot of fun. Exhausted, we went back to our hotel and took relaxing showers and fell asleep immediately.
Sunday we awoke to another carb-filled breakfast and went to the Royal Opera House, which Alena had told us was one of her favorite places in London. We had to pay to get in, but it was well worth it. It was so regal and was incredible. They had a little museum that was interesting, with little miniatures of sets from operas. It was also the place that The Phantom of the Opera was supposedly based on, and I can see why. So the opera house was very cool.
We then went to the place on the top of my to do list—the Moulin Rouge, which is a strip club in reality, but still something I wanted to see. I was imaging it to look like the way it was in the movie. It was not. I was very disappointed. It was touristy and fake looking. Almost tacky, like it was made of paper mache. It was pretty disappointing, but I was glad to have seen it.
We then went to the one place we had been waiting to go: the top of the Eiffel Tower. We waited until we couldn’t wait any more, and even though it was a bit cloudy and drizzly (it was nice on Friday and Saturday), we went up anyway. The view was breathtaking. There were a ton of lines, it took us a good 3 hours for the whole process to be done. We had to wait in a long line for tickets; then to take the lift to the second floor; then the lift to go to the top; then the lift back down to the second floor; then the lift to the bottom. It was a lot of waiting. The second floor view was probably better than the top (and half the price). Because it was so foggy, we didn’t see much more from the top that we hadn’t seen on the second floor, so I’m not sure that was entirely worth it, however I’m glad we went to the top. It was a lot of fun. It was great to see the city we had just spent 3 days exploring from up high, where we could really appreciate the architecture and French-ness of the place. We saw the beautiful Seine in all its glory.
Exhausted, we found a café for our last Paris meal and French pastry and went back to the hotel for our return journey to London. Our Paris weekend was a lot of fun, as you can probably tell by this blog. Although now I am out of pockets to hold three different currencies I now possess (dollars, pounds, euros). Sorry, again, that it is so lengthy. I want to keep you all as informed as possible. Just think about how long my week in Italy blog will be. This trip was a good test run for our Italian journey, which begins this Saturday for eight days.
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