Paris

Friday, February 24, 2012
Tesla, Amy and I took the city bus at 7 pm to the bus station, then at 8:30 pm we took a 4.5 hour bus rode to Madrid, arriving to the bus station in Madrid at 1 am.

Saturday, February 25, 2012
A train, metro, and bus took us to the airport where we spent 4 hours attempting to sleep on the benches, but what we really did was talk and watch a drunk, homeless man wander the airport in search of his missing shoe and search various people who were sleeping. Thank goodness we were awake because I would have freaked out to find that drunk man hovering over me in the middle of the night.

Finally at 5:30 am we checking in with Vueling Airlines, passed through security, and found our terminal and awaited our flight to Paris. The flight went quick because we all ended up napping a bit, then we arrived in Paris!! A train, metro, and our feet took us to our hostel, St. Christopher's Inn. We ate lunch, checked in, and left our things in a lockable metal crate in our room. Now the fun was about to begin...

The metro was our main form of transportation around the city. Without the metro we would not have been able to see half the sites we saw and we probably would have been lost for half the trip. We navigated the metro to the Paris Opera house. This site was where the movie The Phantom of the Opera was filmed. It is so gorgeous! We did not end up going in because we didn't want to have to pay for the entry fee.

Next, we traveled to the Moulin Rouge. If you don't know what this site is it is going to be difficult to explain. It also has a famous movie made after it, called Moulin Rouge (how ironic?!). It is famous for being a place for prostitution and having illicit dance shows. Like it said it is difficult to explain, if you don't understand watch the movie.  We also just saw the outside of the building. In the few blocks preceding the Moulin Rouge was sex shop after sex shop. It was funny because we knew when we turned on to that street that we were on the correct street.

Our third stop took us to the Arc de Triomphe. This is a famous arch in France, but why it is famous I am not sure. We took pictures and then left for the Eiffel Tower. We would have tried to climb the arch, but it is situated in the center of a traffic heavy square. There were no cross-walks, that we saw that  would help us to go over to the arch, so we decided that we enjoyed our lives and didn't want to be suicidal today.

Like I said, our last site to see for the day was the Eiffel Tower. We got there around 6 pm, which we thought was the perfect time to go because it allowed us time to talk the required pictures in the daylight of the tower, but then we were also able to talk pictures of it during the night as well. Once the sun goes down the Eiffel Tower is lit up with white lights and every hour, on the hour it sparkles for 5 minutes. Being able to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle was one of my favorite things of the trip!

Neither Amy, Tesla or I could get over the fact that we were seeing the Eiffel Tower with our own eyes the entire time we were there. I almost had one of them pinch me, but thought better of it just in case it was a dream because I didn't want to wake up from this dream. We were going to climb the stairs of the tower, but we found out that the top of the tower was closed and you could only go to the2nd floor because the elevator was out of order, so we decided to come back on Monday in hopes that the top would be open.

Supper consisted of Subway, a few blocks away from the tower. I know that Subway is American and we should have eaten something French, but I was craving it very badly and it was close. After supper we returned to the hostel and met our wonderful roommates.

The three of us had to be separated room-wise, so Tesla and I were in the same room and Amy was in a different room. We locked our stuff in a crate in mine and Tesla's room. The first night we were there, mine and Tesla's roommates consisted of an Australian couple, an American entrepreneur, and 3 American guys studying in Sevilla. Since it was Saturday night they all went out and got drunk. Tesla and I being exhausted went to sleep. At 1 am the came back and were all talking at full volume with the light on. Let's just say Tesla and I did not sleep till 4 am and we learned too many things about these people that we would rather have not learned.

Sunday, February 26, 2012
We woke up at 7 am, had breakfast at the hostel at 7:30 am (it consisted of cereal, French bread, jelly, and nutella--delicious!). We left the hostel and were on a metro train by 8:15 am headed to the Louvre Museum. The Louvre opened at 9:30 am and when we got in we "bought" tickets (we showed our passports and got in for free because we currently live in the European Union).

We dashed straight to the Mona Lisa by Da Vinci so we might be able to view the famous painting  with as few people around as possible. I cannot believe I had the opportunity to see the Mona Lisa with my own eyes. It felt like another dream. The painting is even more enchanting in person. It is said that no matter which angle you view the painting from that it seems like she is always looking at you. This is so true! I wanted to test it out, so I viewed the painting from the center, the left side, and the right side, and she was always looking at me. It also seemed like when I was moving to a new angle that her eyes followed me as I moved. It was creepy, but very cool at the same time.

After the Mona Lisa, we wandered through other parts of the museum. We viewed mostly paintings, but also we saw Egyptian and Medieval sculptures as well. It was very interesting. We ended up running into 5 other people from our program, Alex, Taylor, Emma, Amber, and Becca. It was fun to run in to them. We spent 2.5 hours at the museum then left to go to Notre Dame.

At the metro stop we got off to walk to Norte Dame we ended up walking through an open-air market that was selling small pets, pet food, and accessories to go with the pets (i.e. cages, toys,etc.). I was not expecting that , but it was interesting to see.

Notre Dame Cathedral is just as beautiful as all the pictures. I could have sat and studied the architecture on the building all day long, it was that intricate. We also went in to the cathedral during Sunday mass. It was different to hear the mass in French, since I have only experienced English and Spanish masses. The cathedral is just as intricate design and architecture-wise on the inside as it is on the outside. I was especially mesmerized by the intricate stained-glass windows.

We departed Notre Dame and went to a French cafe down the road. I had a crepe with chocolate and bananas on the inside. It was delectable! Amy and Tesla both had spaghetti, which they were unable to finish because it was so large. French bread was also served with our meals.

Once our bellies were full we found the train that would take us to Versailles, the famous French palace where Marie Antoinette lived with her husband King Louis XVI before the French Revolution. Versailles had been used for many generations previously, but this king and queen were the last to use it. Many of you may not know that seeing Versailles was on my bucket list to see before I die and now I can check it off!

We showed our passports here again and were also able to get in for free. We wandered through the rooms of the palace. It was difficult at times to walk through the rooms because the majority of each room was blocked off for display and a small walkway was left open. With only the small walkway it became difficult to navigate because groups of people would be stopped in the middle of it listening to their guides.

All in all the palace is stunning. Everything in the palace is intricately designed, mostly in golden colors. We viewed the king's apartments, the dauphin's (prince/princess in line for the throne) apartments, the Hall of Mirrors, and other hallways in the palace. Outside the palace we walked through the perfectly manicured gardens, the Grand Treinon (a smaller palace used by the royal family as a vacation home, it is about a 15 minute walk away from the palace), and the Petit Treinon (Marie Antoinette's personal vacation home, even though it is ironically no more than a 15 minute walk away from the palace). All three things were beautiful to visit. I am very content now that I was able to visit Versailles and complete another thing off my bucket list.

For supper we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe (Amy's choice) where I had Spicy Mac, Chicken & Cheese. It was delicious! We returned to the hostel where we met our new roommates, mostly preppy, stuck-up girls. The same thing happen with the girls as with the guys this night, except I was pissed about not getting enough sleep for a third night in a row, so I opened my curtain and gave them the dirtiest look possible in order to shut them up. They were quite the rest of the night.

Monday, February 27
Monday morning came too quickly. We slept in till 8:30 am this morning, ate the same breakfast as the previous day, and departed the hostel by 9:30 am. We went to the Eiffel Tower this morning. Unfortunately, the top was still closed, but we climbed to the 2nd floor anyways, how could we not climb at least part of the Eiffel Tower? It took us 704 steps to the 2nd floor. What a work-out, but the view made it worth it! We took pictures, climbed down, and took more pictures, then walked over to the Statue of Liberty.

This Statue of Liberty is the sister to the one in New York. It stands about 35 feet high on a pedestal that is about 1.5 times the height of the actual statue. I believe this statue was given to the French by America as a gift of friendship.

After, we found a grocery store where I took my French bread picture for my mother. In 1979 my mom traveled to France for a trip to school and she took a picture with French bread, so I took one to copy her. It is actually really creepy how similar we look in the 2 pictures. I ended up buying 2 loaves thinking it would be nice to have the same number of loaves in the picture as she did, but I forgot that we were going to the Louvre again after this and you can't take food into the museum. Let's just say I was incredibly full after that.

Like I said we went to the Louvre again for 3 more hours for the rest of the day. The first time we went we felt that we had only seen about 25% of the artwork in the museum, after the second time we felt like we had seen about 60% of the artwork. We thought we did pretty good considering there are over 35,000 pieces of art in the museum.

We retired to the hostel for the night after the museum. Our roommates (the girls again) were very quite this night, it made me happy.

Tuesday, February 28
We woke up at 6 am in order to leave the hostel by 6:30 am. We took the metro and a train to the airport. Our flight to Madrid left at 10 am and arrived in Madrid at 12 pm. Another metro took us to the bus station where a bus leaving at 4 pm took us on a 5 hour journey to Granada.

Side notes:
During the whole trip Tesla had problems with her metro card. She bought the same type of pass that Amy and I had and ours worked perfectly. Amy and I thought it was the user who had the problems. :) This was a constant joke for us during the trip. We ended up having to let Tesla in the metro through the exits (this isn't frowned/enforced inFrance). For our memories we took pictures of Amy letting Tesla in through the exit. They are on Facebook for your viewing pleasure. :)

Also, you would think that since we traveled to France that we would encounter a language barrier. Even though there were time that we did not completely understand, overall we were able to get around and function fine. Most of the signs and intercom messages were multi lingual. When they weren't we were able to generally understand the the written messages because French and Spanish are Latin-based languages and they have similar words/roots of words. The part we had the most difficulty with was speaking. We were not able to understand intercom messages unless they were translated. When talking with the French people we found that most people knew a little or a lot of English.

Overall I enjoyed my trip to Paris immensely and would definitely go again. Amy and I are already planning our next trip over spring break to Ireland and London. We are very excited! We called Paris our "experimental trip" because now we know what to do and what not to do while traveling.

I hear the weather in the Midwest is not the most pleasant, you will all be happy to know that the past few days it has been about 17-18 degress Celsius, which is in the 60s in Fahrenheit. It is fantastic!! The weather is only expected to continue warming. :)