Two weekends ago, my friends and I took our final weekend trip (we tried to ignore this fact)…to Paris! I had been looking forward to this trip for almost the whole semester, considering it was the first thing we booked in February! Friday was a Danish holiday, so we flew out early in the morning to have three full days in the city. The trains don’t run at four in the morning, so Lexi’s host sister kindly volunteered to drive us to the airport, so we didn’t have to sleep in the airport like homeless people like we had originally planned!
After finding our hotel (yes, I
said hotel. We decided to go classy for our last trip and squeeze five girls
into a four person hotel room. Did I mention that we also got a
“Congratulations, you have booked the cheapest room this hotel has to offer!” message
after booking the room?), I split off from my friends and met up with two good
friends from home, Ali and Amanda who have been studying abroad in Paris for
the past year! It was totally crazy to casually meet up in Paris…but so
awesome! My first thought when I was navigating the metros to get to our
meeting spot was how big Paris is. There are so many lines and the metro ride itself
took a good half hour. Copenhagen has one line that branches off at one stop,
and most of the time you can just walk to wherever you want to go. It really
put it the size of Copenhagen into perspective for me. Anyways, my friends know
me too well and took me to a really cute crepe place, where we got ham and
cheese crepes for lunch and chocolate ones for dessert, which were amazing! I
wish I had the chance to spend more time with them, but it was so nice to see a
face from back home.
We decided to be typical tourists and headed right to the major tourist destinations. After a quick visit to see Napoleon’s tomb on our way, we first stopped at the Eiffel Tower. To be honest, I expected it to be a lot more impressive. It’s actually pretty ugly the closer you get to it, and it’s not nearly as tall as I thought it was. I still liked it though and the park surrounding it was a great place to hang out. The view from behind is also pretty incredible as well. If you have seen my pictures already, you probably couldn’t help but notice the gigantic rain cloud lingering above us in every picture taken at the tower. (I tried to do some fancy photo editing to make it look sunny, but it was to no avail). Unlike our spring break packing fiasco, we decided to actually pack according to the weather forecast this time, which was rainy and cool, all weekend. We figured a 90% chance of rain every day would probably make the trip a pretty miserable experience if we followed our Spain philosophy. In case you are wondering, that rain cloud exploded just as we were about to get in line to climb up the tower.
We headed to the Louve as our next stop, partially because we were so excited to look at and interpret thousands of pieces of artwork, but mostly because we didn’t feel like being in the rain. If you’re not very art-saavy like any of us, there is a simple trick to mastering the Louve in ten minutes while still being able to boast about going to the Louve. The key is to follow the crowds. They’ll take you right to the two most important pieces in the museum: the Venus de Milo sculpture and the Mona Lisa. As far as the Mona Lisa goes, I’m really not sure what the craze is about. It’s probably because I’m not really into artwork yet, but it is surrounded by so many huge, beautiful paintings with really vibrant colors, and this little tiny painting is what everyone wants to take a picture with (myself included). She’s not even pretty (no offense) and she’s a little bit of an attention-hog if you ask me! I think the outside of the Louvre is the most impressive. Not only is this place huge, but the architecture is amazing. It’s beautiful and the pyramids in the center are really neat, especially when you go inside of it. When you’re standing at the Louvre, and look straight ahead, you can see a whole stretch of Paris, all the way down to the famous Arch de Triumph. That was my favorite view of the whole city. It’s such a pretty area, and when I ran to it the next morning, I loved it even more!
The next day we took a trip to Versaille, to see the palace and gardens that King Louis XIV built. I was really excited to go because I remember spending so much time learning about it during European History in high school. Of course, getting there turned out to be an adventure in itself! We were waiting for our train and didn’t notice that they switched the track it would be arriving on. By the time we realized it, it was too late and we watched the train speed away. Luckily, the next train coming also had a stop with “Versaille” on it. Even though it wasn’t exactly the same name, we figured it had to be close enough! Once we got there, we thought that we would have to make one transfer at that station. We were about to get on a train that took us in the complete opposite direction of where we were headed (which was actually just a few blocks away) when a nice man kindly informed us that we were completely wrong. We literally jumped off the train before it closed its doors, skipping all steps and coming dangerously close to landing in the gap between the train and the platform. We weren’t about to get off that easy though. On our way out, one of the train workers stopped us to check our tickets. I don’t understand much French besides “Merci” and “Bonjour” but it wasn’t too hard to figure out that we were busted. Apparently, our “three day pass that will allow you to travel all over Paris” did not cover the zone we traveled to. Luckily, the guy was feeling nice and gave us a group rate on the fine, but after that, it was a grocery store lunch for us!
Besides our minor mishap, Versaille was awesome! The palace that was built is incredible! If the King was trying to show off (which I’m pretty sure he was), then he certainly succeeded in it. The entire façade seemed to be made of gold, as well as the whole interior. Every room was lavishly decorated and the hall of mirrors is pretty awesome. It bothered me that I couldn’t remember everything I had learned a couple of years ago about Louis XIV and Marie Antionette. I meant to look up some information after we got back, but not surprisingly, Paris managed to sidetrack me a bit. We went around back to the gardens after we toured the inside. We didn’t even see all of them, but they were beautiful as well. I love how all of the palaces always have these incredible backyards (I’m not sure backyard is the right word…park is probably more fitting), and we even managed to catch some of the fountain shows!
On our way back from Versaille, we followed through with our plan and paid a trip to the grocery store for our next meal, to try to make up for the ticket we had to pay. Maybe everything does happen for a reason, because this “grocery store lunch” was the best lunch I had in Paris! Kelly, Caroline and I bought some French baguettes, a carton of grape tomatoes, and ball of mozzarella each and made our own sandwiches. They could have come from the best restaurant in France and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. Maybe it’s because I am addicted bread and French bread is amazing, so I was in heaven. We probably looked ridiculous because we didn’t have any utensils so we had to drain the cheese on the street and rip it apart with our fingers, but it was well worth it!
When we got back into the main city, the weather was still nice enough (somehow we really lucked out with the weather!) to climb the Eiffel Tower. Considering that one flight of stairs somehow always manages to make me feel completely out of shape, I thought that we were going to have to take a lot of breaks. Once we got into a rhythm though, we climbed right on up, no problem! Unfortunately, you can only take an overpriced elevator all the way up to the top, so we stopped at the highest platform you could go to walking. Either way, it was a really pretty view of the city. I forgot to mention, but Paris actually looked a lot different than I thought it would. From that height, it looked a lot more industrial and “city like.” My favorite parts are the stereotypical “Paris-in-the-movies, cobblestone streets” areas. Each quarter of the city seemed to have its very own feel though, which is pretty cool since the city is so large.
After dinner (and my second consecutive
night of ordering French onion soup…delicious!), we headed back to the Eiffel
Tower area to see it lit up at night. It is lit up the entire night but
sparkles on the hour. It is so pretty and looks ten times better at night…Paris
in general is just a totally different city at night! Most of the pictures came out
blurry, but I’m sure you get the point.
Later on that night, we wandered the streets to explore more of the city at night. The most memorable event though was the discovery of the greatest food I have ever tasted in my entire life (no exaggeration): banana nutella crepes. I thought the banana nutella crepes in Denmark were good –I was wrong. Denmark’s crepes are like comparing a box of Barilla rigatoni to Grandma’s ravioli. These crepes were a little on the thicker side (but not thick or fluffy enough to be pancake) so they aren’t overwhelmed and toppled over by the added ingredients and you can experience all three delicacies together at once, instead of having just crepe or just the banana (which is a full banana in France!) and nutella. Pure bliss. This is kind of disgusting, but I finished mine so quickly and bought a second one five minutes later because I couldn’t stop thinking about how delicious it was! I have to stop writing about it, because it is making me very jealous that I can’t get one right now!
On our final day in Paris, we hit a few more touristy destinations. First, we stopped at the Notre Dame Church. Like all European churches, this one was beautiful as well. I wish it had been better weather so I could have really seen the stained glass, but I guess I’ll just have to Google it to see what it looks like during prime conditions. We also went to the Sacre Coeur church, which is on a little hilltop and gives you another view of the city. Then we walked down Champs-Elysees, which is a really famous and beautiful street that starts at the Arch de Triumph (like everything else, this Arch is huge!) with lots of high end shops that you can only let yourself window-shop in. We had some free time at the end of the day and all bought a few things at some cute little boutiques in Bastille, another section of Paris. I bought myself my first non-running watch, which I think will make my sister and Mom very happy! When I took off my Ironman to put my new watch on, the shopkeeper told me to tell it goodbye! I guess she didn’t think it was too stylish. Oh well. We also tried the Paris version of a hotdog, which are hotdogs on baguettes that are covered in cheese. I’m sure your mouth is watering just reading that. Fun fact: the hotdogs in Copenhagen are way better!
I didn’t want to leave Paris because there is so much you could do there that three days is not nearly enough. I also didn’t want to leave because I knew that it was our last trip together and that meant the semester would be coming to a close before we knew it. We were all pretty exhausted by the end though. I think the past few weeks of non-stop traveling really caught up with us…actually, I think it all caught up to me in class the next morning (we left Monday morning pretty early so that we were back in Copenhagen in time for our first class). Anyways, that basically wraps it up for my whirl-wind tour of Europe. We had one more week of classes and this week is finals week. I’ll save all the goodbyes and end of the semester shenanigans for my final post though, which you can expect within the next few days since I have a good amount of free time before my flight home! Au revoir !
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