I've thought about how to go about describing my time in Paris, and I think that chronological will be best.
We met in our lobby at 6:30 am on Saturday morning to catch our train to Paris. The train ride is about 2.5 hours, in which we slept most. The ride closest to London can be a bit uncomfortable only because of the air pressure in your ears. You are going up and down so quickly that your ears go crazy. Imagine what you feel on an air plane and magnify that feeling by about 2. It would really freak me out when I would go to pop my ears by swallowing, but I couldn't even swallow..
After the first bit in London the train ride was pretty quiet and dark which made it a lot easier to sleep.
Once arriving at the Paris train train station Robyn and I went to use the restroom and you have to pay to enter. I hear that's common in some areas, but that's just crazy. Denying people of this basic need.
Getting back to the group we find a very distracted looking Aurelie. She and Fredrik are a couple and they are the founders of Absolute Internship. We were intended to meet them both at the train station where they would take us to the hostile and then show us around Paris for our weekend. Unfortunately, that morning Fredrik's mother was in a bad accident and they both needed to fly to Sweden to see her. Aurelie was rather rushed, crying, really unable to provide much clear direction but had to leave. We got the address of our hostel and a bus number that could get us there. We walked around for a while and weren't able to find the bus number we needed. We ended up just taking taxis to the hostel. Luckily the cab driven spoke some English and knew where to go. All this alone was pretty stressful because most people didn't speak English and we didn't know where to go.
Once arriving to the hostel we were to meet Aurelie's best friend there who was going to help us out during our stay. We waited for about half an hour and eventually had to pay to call her to see what was going on. She said that it would be about 40 minutes before she would be able to come. Our check in for our room wasn't until 3 pm so we were just in the lobby and didn't want to wait any longer. We decided that we would meet Aurelie's friend, Amera, at the Eiffel Tower. We figured, how hard could it be to get to the Eiffel tower in Paris? We bought our tube tickets and got on the tube. We knew that we needed to get off and connect to a different line to get to where we wanted to go. We saw a worker and asked her pointing if the train was the right one to get us to the Eiffel Tower. She shrugged like she didn't know, saying she didn't know what we were saying. So we are like making hand gestures to imitated the Eiffel Tower and saying it and she preceded to pretend she didn't know what we were saying. She lives and works in Paris, there is no way she didn't know where the Eiffel Tower was or what we were saying. She was just being rude.
We decided to get on the train anyway, unsure of where to get off. Luckily there was a nice Spanish family by us and Angie asked them in Spanish where to go.
Whenever you leave or arrive to a tube station (here and in Paris) you have to scan your ticket. The two day tickets were a little smaller than a piece of gum. Leaving the tube we all got out fine except for Dagney. None of the things would read her ticket to let her out. We went to find an attendant to get help but we couldn't find one and it took about 15 minutes to get one to let her out.
Once out we finallllly made it to the Eiffel Tower and met Amera and everything went smoothly from this point. Amera was really nice and had been living in France for 5 years. She spent plenty of time in the states and was raised speaking French and English. So luckily she spoke perfect English.
So we got our pictures of:
The Eiffel Tower (yes, I photoshopped this one)
ate some crepes
then headed off walking along the river toward the Louvre.
All the buildings were really cool and Amera knew a lot of history and what they were. It was a nice walk. Warmer in Paris too than it has been in London.
We eventually made it to the Louvre, it was really pretty, and (of course) a ton of tourists.
After the Louvre we walked to the Notre Dame
The detail was incredible. The one on the right is around the doorway.
From there we got some coffee and headed to find a pub. France and Spain were playing that night so we wanted to watch the game. The food was good and we got a really got seats to see the game.
All the waiters and waitresses we came across were all really nice even though they didn't speak much English. The other people and workers however, we're quite rude.
Sunday we didn't really have anything planned and just explored. We saw:
The Moulin Rouge
Walked along The Champs Elysées where all the designer stores are
and saw the Arc de Triomphe
In all it was a cool experience to see Paris and walk around and I'm glad that I got to go, but I was oh so glad to be back in London. I really do like London.
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