Paris the city of Love?

I don’t want to scare anyone so I think I will keep this blog about Paris brief. If you do go to Paris though make sure you know FRENCH!! That is my only advice. This isn’t Canada or Mexico they will not try to be bilingual for you. If they know English they will not speak it!!
The Eurostar left London speaking the safety instructions in English then French and when we arrived in Paris she spoke some words in French. Nope no English, and this is when I relieved it was going to be a long three days.
Ok I’ll give you one more piece of advice, try to go longer than 3 days. Trying to fit Paris into three days didn’t work. Instead of enjoying the Eiffel Tower and then enjoying some wonderful French cuisine, it was all about the time schedule. I should have stayed on the Eurostar to Paris Disneyland now that might have been more fun!

Thanks to the tight time schedule and not getting tickets in advance we didn’t actually get to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which I wanted to very badly. But seeing and standing under the amazing tower was an awesome experience. I was like I was in a movie or I was dreaming and any minute I was going to wake up. BUT I DIDN’T. I WAS REALLY THERE!

It was truly amazing to be standing under the Eiffel Tower; it was something I thought I was never going to do in my lifetime.

You can just see the excitement on my face huh!!

After visiting the Eiffel Tower we decided to see a glimpse of the city on the tour bus.

We saw 9 different tourist attractions in 2 hours. Wow that was a lot to see but it got me excited about what I was going to do the next day.
After our tour bus we went on a night boat cruise and go to see different sites in Paris from the water. We also learned some history about the bridge names and history about some statues that stood near the water.  My favorite part of the boat tour was when we were on our way back the Eiffel Tower light up and sparkled.

And I got this gorgeous picture of the Tower. This picture can’t be replicated!

The next morning was tough, I could have slept all day but I had to get up and experience more of Paris. By 9 am we were at the Musee du Louvre. Now I’m not a morning person so for me this was an accomplishment in itself!

My favorite part about the Musee de Louvre was the Roman Goddess statues and of course the Mona Lisa.

This was just one of the interesting statues I encountered.

The next thing to see in the Louvre was the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci the Mona Lisa. To my surprise the painting is actually kind of small and it is behind a thick sheet of glass and a rope so you can’t get very close.

I think this picture depicts how close I was but how small the painting actually is. And actually getting to the painting was an adventure in itself. It was like a mosh pit but at a museum. I had to slowly get closer and only doing this as one person left the front and pushing myself to the front. I got my picture and tried to get out only realizing I was kind of stuck. It took me a while to get out of the crazy and a bit angry mob of tourists but I got out eventually!!

By this time Jenna and I were ready to head out. It took us two hours to find the Mona Lisa and our feet were ready for a rest.
After a quick lunch Jenna, Stephanie, Clara, and I were off to see the Norte Dame.
This is an amazing cathedral and when I think of it I think of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame movie. I also learned that the Norte Dame was once called the Norte Dame de Paris, which means “Our Lady of Paris”.

This is the Notre Dame in all its beauty. We also got to tour inside the cathedral and no pictures were allowed inside, but I will tell you it was absolutely magnificent inside. From the artwork, to the stone work, and to the beautiful stained glass windows.

 
When traveling not everything goes as smoothly as you would like. When we went to get money out of an ATM the ATM took the card due to security reasons. Come to find out the ATM was actually broken. This isn’t like in America where you have diligent people and would have someone put a sign over the ATM saying it was out of order. This was Paris and that would be too much work. They would rather have Bank of America deal with calls all day due to the ATM eating every ones card. Oh the joys of traveling. The rest of our only full day in Paris consisted of calling Bank of America and trying to get emergency cash. Easier said than done!!
After the ATM chaos we decided to take our minds off it by trying some escargot. Eating snail will take your mind off anything I’m sure of it!

Yup that green slimy thing is escargot! After I got over the chewy, gum like, I am actually eating snail, something I would find in a garden thoughts, I actually enjoyed 4 pieces of escargot. For me eating snail was just a mental game. I really enjoyed escargot; Jenna on the other hand didn’t!  

After dinner we headed back to our lovely hotel in the dirty part of Paris to get ready to go out and enjoy some Paris night life. We decided we wanted to check out the night life on the Avenue Des Champs. Avenue Des Champs-Élysées is one of the most famous streets in the world. How famous you ask? Well rent can be up to 1 million pounds, that’s got to be pretty famous! No wonder it was 20 pounds to get into a club and all the clubs were super prestigious. The night life on Avenue Des Champs-Élysées was bit out of my price range but I did have fun exploring the night life with Clara and Jenna!
When going somewhere the night life can tell you all you need to know about a city. And in this case Paris, France definitely thinks there something special. I on the other hand I think Paris is just full of dirty streets, rude people, and over priced night life. Nothing special here, Paris is just lucky they have the Eiffel Tower and the Arch de Triumph because if not they probably wouldn’t even be on the map.

Arch of Triumph (pretty cool to see the crazy roundabout that surrounds the arch)

Over all I can official say I saw Paris so I never have to go back! I can say I experienced everything I wanted to in Paris. It wasn’t about seeing everything I could possible see in three days; it was about the pure experience of being in a new place. It was about trying the food, going out at night, and walking around exploring the not so famous parts of Paris. We also got to see the cops block off a whole intersection for a rollerblading group to encourage people to go out and do other things besides drinking on a Friday night. Now you don’t see that every day! I guess Paris isn’t all that bad, I would just recommend being very good at French and you will have a swell time!!