Parlez-Vous Francais?

Two words: Awesome weekend. Our program never has classes on Fridays and we had Monday (Feb. 1st) off school, so my friend and I decided to travel to someplace where we wanted to spend a lot of time at due to the extended vacation. And I'm sure you can guess from the title of this where we decided to go :-) Our first flight left Sevilla around 10:30 pm on Thursday night and we arrived at the Barcelona airport a little after midnight. Since our next flight to Paris wasn't until 6 in the morning, we definitely slept in the airport. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't too bad. I'm sure that I didn't get that much sleep, but we definitely weren't the only ones sleeping. It's kind of crazy, because I don't think that I would be doing weird things, like sleeping in the airport, in the States. But hey! It's all in the name of cheap travel, so it's worth it :-) When we finally got to Paris on Friday, we had about half the day to go sightseeing. We headed to see the Sacre-Coeur. I'm not sure what exactly it is, but it's gorgeous. It is set on a hill, so there is a great view of the city too. Then we headed over to see some of the art and artifacts at the Louvre. It is a little overwhelming because the museum is so HUGE and there are like a bizillion things there to see, but we didn't stay very long. We were able to see some really cool things like the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Code of Hammurabi, which are all things that we learn about in school, but you never know how cool they are until you see them in person. After, we found a cute little place to eat dinner. Lucky for us, the waiter spoke English, so we had no trouble ordering. I even tried Escargot (sp?)! My friend ordered it, but I tried it too. It wasn't bad tasting, but it has kind of a rubbery texture to it.

The next morning we woke up REALLY early to head to Versaille for the day. The weather was gorgeous, so we were able to walk around the massive palace at Versaille all day. You can seriously spend forever touring the multiple buildings of the palace and discovering the many fountains in the expansive gardens. Let's just say that I want to live there because it's so pretty. When we got back to Paris, we went out to eat at another cute restaurant. This time, I made a complete fool of myself because I was talking to the waiter (in English) and he gave me change, and I meant to say, "It's fine," to let him know that I didn't need my change, but instead, I started speaking to him in Spanish! Oh goodness! What was funnier was that he started speaking back to us in Spanish. What a contradiction we were: Americans...speaking Spanish..in France. Hahaha!

We had another early morning the next day so that we could see more of the city. Our first stop of the day was the Museum de Orsay, which houses a lot of contemporary art. Here we saw many works by Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas. This style of art is more my style, so I really enjoyed this museum. From there, we walked to the Centre Pompidou, which is called the inside-out building because all of the pipes and such are on the outside. From there, we found this bakery that had the most delicious-looking pastries, so of course, we HAD to buy something. We both ate beignet nutellas, which were fabulous. Unfortunately, it rained most of the day and it was cold and windy, but we still walked around to see more sights. We made our way to the Arc de Triomphe, and from there went to the most touristy thing to see in Paris...the Eiffel Tower!!! It was awesome because the weather cleared a bit, so we were able to get some really great pics of it. We went up to the second floor, which was plenty high enough in my opinion. You hear about the Eiffel Tower, but it is really so much prettier and cooler when you see it in person, and it was absolutely gorgeous to see it at night, which was when we went.

Waking up on Monday was a little sad because we knew that we would be leaving soon, but we still had some things that we wanted to see. First on the list was the Pantheon, followed by a tour of Notre Dame, which was breathtakingly beautiful. It's really moving to have the chance to visit and pray in such a majestic and historic cathedral, just like people have been doing for decades. The next tour of the day was of the super cool Opera house. How pretty the building is! And of course, now I want to watch "The Phantom of the Opera" because I will appreciate it so much more now. That basically concludes our tour of Paris. Though we were constantly on the go and my feet were perpetually sore, I wouldn't have it any other way, because we were able to visit so many cool and beautiful buildings/things in Paris. The city is absolutely amazing.

Getting home from Paris was quite a complicated task, though! I won't go into details, but let's just say that it involved a metro ride, 4 bus rides, a taxi ride, two flights, and switching airports in Barcelona! Hahaha!

Lesson #16: I have never really considered them before, but I learned about the fabulousness of student discounts! For example, a ticket to get into all of the buildings at the Palace of Versaille and the audio tour costs 18 euro, but because we are students of the European Union, we got in for FREE!!! How awesome!

Lesson #17: Eating crepes, though they taste delicious, is a SERIOUSLY messy task! The last day I bought a Nutella crepe from a little place on the street. It was so good, but the Nutella oozes everywhere! I'm pretty sure some of the people that passed us were laughing becuase I had Nutella all over my faces and hands :-)

Lesson #18: It's true. French people really do eat baguettes :-) We would know, we basically ate fresh baguettes and fruit for lunch every day too.

Lesson #19: Always keep your metro ticket handy! Paris is a big city, so we took the metro a lot, and I was in the bad habit of stuffing the used metro tikets in my back pocket of my jeans, in my coat pocket, or in my purse, so I had a lot of used tickets. One day, the metro "cops" came around asking random people for their tickets and they happened to get on our metro, in our car, to ask us! And here I am, scrambling to find which ticket that I had just used. I gave the lady 2 wrong tickets before I found the right one. How embarassing! I was seriously freaking out too because I knew I had it and I was like, "I don't want to go to French jail!" Hahahaha! But I would never overreact or be dramatic :-)