*Paris*

Paris

3/17/10

Today is day 1 of our spring break vacation! We left the house right after our health class this morning, so about 10:30am, and took the bus into Edinburgh. From there, we got a train to Glasgow central station and then switched trains to Prestwick to get on ryan air and fly to Paris! The flight wasn’t too bad at all really. We made pretty good time, but when we landed the bus was the only way to get into town and it was like 14 euro. It took us about an hour and half to get into town, and then we had to take the metro to our hostel. We found our way ok, and for this being the first time actually traveling and flying on our own we faired pretty well. Our room was a small 2 bed with a shower and sink in it. It was nice that we had the room to ourselves though. After settling in Megan and I went to get some groceries and hitting the hay early tonight!

3/18/10

We woke up around 8:30 (7:30 Scotland time) and went down for breakfast. They actually had a really decent breakfast too! They had real croissants, rolls, and a good selection of cereal. I wanted to really fill myself up at breakfast since it was free and so I could last a little longer before I needed to eat again. I met an Aussie guy this morning at the breakfast. He saw Griffith on the back of my shirt and apparently he has the same last name too, except he has an s at the end, but it was still cool. He was very nice, and we chatted for a bit. He’s been staying here a while already and in a few weeks he is off to tour more of Europe!

I did really well today with my budget and am keeping on track nicely for that. I also used some French as well, very limited French I might add, but hey it’s better than nothing! Megan and I first went to Notre Dame and wow! It was amazing! We took a few pics of the outside when we first got there and then this lady came up to me asking if I spoke English. Confused, I said yeah and then she proceeded to give me this postcard that was supposed to have been written in English, but it might as well have been another language, cuz I couldn’t understand hardly any of it. The lady kept pointing to the card and at first I thought she wanted me to translate so I handed it back to her saying I can’t. But then it finally hit me she was asking for money; she was a gypsy. So I gave the card back and said no and just kept walking. Then Megan got hungry so we sat down while she got out her sandwich and started eating it. Then some gypsy lady came up and started asking for food. These gypsies were all over the place! Megan was real good at sticking to her guns and kept telling her no. So after a while the gypsy left and then less then 5 min. later was back again still asking for more food. So Megan after saying no again, asked her if she had a job! And the gypsy said no, so Megan continued to say no until the gypsy eventually gave up and walked away pouting and saying “oh! Your bad! Your so bad!” I know I shouldn’t have laughed but, she reminded me so much of a little kid it was pretty funny. Megan was not very happy either, cuz all she wanted to do was just sit down and eat her sandwich.

So after our gypsy encounters we walked around the inside of Notre Dame and it was the coolest thing! I kept singing The Hunchback of Notre Dame songs in my head and I really really wanted to watch the movie super bad! I still want to watch it!

Anywho, after that we walked along the river, sat in the sun for a while and daydreamed about the beaches in Spain, and enjoyed the feeling of not being on a timed schedule. We walked on to the Jardin Des Tuileries, and the Obelisque, and then on to the Arc de Triomphe where we saw the whole front end of a car being hosed down. It had been on fire and there was sooooo much smoke! It stunk really bad. I think the person was ok though. After that we walked to the Eiffel Tower! We are going to climb it at night instead of during the day, so we just took a few pics outside of it. Then we hit Ecole Militare, Hotel Des Invalides and then we power walked/ran back to Notre Dame so we could make it to the 6:15 mass. That’s right Dad….your little girl went to church all on her own! It was exactly the same as our mass back home except that it was all in French so we didn’t understand a word of it, but other than that it was exactly the same. After that we hopped on the metro back to our hostel and I ate some supper and then Megan and I talked for a bit before heading to bed.

3/20/10

So yesterday we got up for breakfast around 9. This guy from America and his friend from Ireland ended up sitting next to us and they were really cool. He was a grad student studying abroad in Dublin for a full year and he says he absolutely loves it! He also said it was a lot cheaper than in the states too. The Irish girl and I talked for a bit about Ireland and when I asked her about the West side she said that it was the best part of Ireland! Yes! Totally called that one. Anyways, they were a lot of fun and I wish we could have hung out with them more. After we said goodbye and finished our breakfast, Megan and I went back to our room to change, pack, and check our e-mail. Right before we left around noon someone came in to clean our room. We didn’t know that they did that in hostels and it made us a little wary because we thought it we were the only ones who came in the room. Last night I had also noticed 10 pounds was missing but I figured I had just lost it. We looked all over the room and searched my stuff but it wasn’t there. I had about 100 euros in cash and I usually only brought 10 or 20 with me cuz I was trying to stick with my budget and not spend too much. Plus it’s cheaper to take out more money so my card doesn’t get charged every time for the exchange fee.

We started off the day with the catacombs! I was really excited to see this, but it was way more creepy than I had thought originally. There were tons and tons of bones! The bones actually made up the walls, and passageways of these underground tunnels. They were so neatly put together and organized, it was super weird to see. These were the actual bones of real live people! I think there were supposed to be like 6 million dead Parisians down there. There were sooo many tunnels too, we didn’t even walk through them all.

After that, we stopped by a little park and treated ourselves to some French crepes! They were pretty good too. Then we wandered aimlessly around town, heading towards the Eiffel tower. Once we got to the tower we got in line to climb it, and it started to sprinkle a wee bit. It cost about 7 euro to get to the top and wow what a view! We could only take stairs to the second level and then from their you have to take an elevator. It was dark by the time we got to the top and personally I think Paris is much more pretty at night. You could see everything! There was even a soccer pitch just below us and you could just make out the players and watch a little of their game. We tried to take lots of pics but both our cameras were dying. So after chilling up top for a while we made it back down and across the river just in time to take more pics and see the Tower light up and sparkle! It was gorgeous! We walked to another viewing spot and saw a couple taking their wedding pics there. The lady’s dress was so beautiful too! Props to her, she’s got good taste. It was super romantic! Those are going to be some awesome wedding pictures. After that, we started walking towards the Arc de Triomphe again, though we must have looked a little lost, cuz this French guy came up to us and asked us if we needed directions. We told him where we wanted to get to and he led us part of the way there telling us this whole big story about when he went to Vegas and California looking for cute women at the beaches but only finding heavier set women and gay guys. Then how he lost like 3,000 euro in 2 hours at the casinos in vegas! He was pretty funny and very friendly. He told us to look him up if we were ever in Paris again. Then we said goodbye and parted ways. We got to the Arc de Triomphe just fine and from there we walked all the way to the Lourve in the rain to take more pictures. By this time we were completely soaked, so we decided what the heck, let’s jump in some puddles! We had to take pictures of this too obviously. I could have filled up a few glasses with all the water in my shoes. Since we were soaking wet and tired we found a metro by Notre Dame so we could look at that one more time and then went back to our hostel.

We showered and changed and I noticed that 20 more euro was missing from my bag, so somebody must have stolen it. We talked to the desk worker and wrote a letter to the manager. The worker said that I would get it back no problem, that they take these things seriously cuz they want to keep a good rep. I haven’t heard anything from them since, and I’ve already sent them a few e-mails. He was probably just telling me that to shut me up. Oh well, lesson learned I guess. We got 4 hours of sleep that night, and left for the metro at 5 am. However, the one we went to didn’t open til 6 so we had to book it to another one and waited for the late metro to arrive. Finally it came and we took it to 2 stops short of where we needed to go to switch to a different one to get there. We met another girl there from Connecticut and she was studying in France. She was also trying to catch the same bus to the Beauvais airport too, and had to catch a flight 15 min. to Rome after ours. We were worried we were going to miss the bus at 6:30 to the airport and the next one didn’t go until 7:30 and it takes an hour and a half to get there. We had 15 min. to make it in time and the metro was ten stops away and running late, so we ran! This was the worst time ever to wear flip flops! So much for sun and relaxation, it was raining and I was hauling my big rolling suitcase along with my big backpack trying to run in freaking flip flops. We just barely made it! I was so worried we would miss it while we were running, cuz it was a lot further away that I had thought it was. We were all sweating when we finally made it on. It was funny though, cuz people saw us leave the metro station with our luggage and they came with too trying to get to the same place. So we had a whole little group of us, all around the same age, running through the streets trying to catch this darn bus.

Well we made it to the airport okay and onto our flight to Barcelona just fine. It was quite the trip and I’m not sure I’m the biggest fan of Paris, but it was a definite learning experience.