Ahh Paris...
When I planned this trip I knew that it would be jampacked into 3 and a half weeks and it would be struggle, but man, after a week and a half I'm almost regretting this hectic schedule; almost.
Paris was a blast! And at other times it was not so great.
The first night in the city, Alex and I were so intimidated we didn't want to leave the hotel room. What had looked like a nice neighborhood from the internet, didn't look so nice during the day. To top it off, my mother had rented a room at a different hotel on the whole other side of the city and wouldn't answer her phone. I had no idea where we were meeting for the morning, didn't know how to use the metro to get to her, and was starting to have a slight meltdown thinking this was only day one of the trip. Our hotel was a little scary at first:
In the pictures you can't hear how the plumbing sounds like its going to fall through the ceiling and you don't know how it took us a half an hour to open the door.
We decided to venture out when we were starving to a little mini mart on the corner (which almost burnt down two days later, i think from faulty wiring). There wasn't much selection. Most the shelf were empty or contained expired french food we couldn't pronounce so we went with what we could recognize:
The next day my mom showed up at 8 o clock yelling at me for not calling her. Apparently we both couldn't figure out our european phones and had been calling each other the entire night, me worrying she had gotten in a terrible paris car crash with her american driving skills and her thinking we had gotten mugged and killed on our way home from venturing out.
We had an early start on the day and went to St. Chapelle:
It was easy to understand how the religion rate was so much higher in the past when these were the churches you attended. Here we also bought the Paris Museum pass. For about 75 dollars it lets you into most tourist attractions for four days, and the best part? You get to cut almost all the lines. Next we walked over to Notre Dame. It was almost surreal to see after seeing it in so many movies.
We stood in the line that reached across the courtyard and later into the street (unfortunately the museum pass doesn't work on churches that are free to enter). After we got through the church we decided to hurry to the Louvre and skip climbing the steps to the top of the towers. But Alex and I went two days later and did it, and it was so so worth it.
The Louvre was an exprerience to say the least. When we arrived around 1 o clock, the line was literally hundreds on people long. I had the fam hop in line while i went to go check out the situation at the entrance. Low and behold....with the Paris Museum Pass we got to skip the entire line! It took us longer to walk past everyone than to wait in line behind the two other Paris Museum Pass holders and have our bags checked. And we were in!
We went to the largest gallery that contained the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. While the Mona Lisa was generally unimpressive, Venus de Milo was quite a site to see. And there was some other interesting art as well:
After 3 hours in the one gallery....we decided to call it quits and go home. Alex and I finished the Louvre another day.
We got back to hotel room and rested for about 5 minutes, and I made my only ambition of the night to find Harry Potter in english. And I did!
We got on the metro (that I had completely mastered that morning) and made our way to a beautiful square full of people and music. We were a little early for the movie so we walked around and came across one of the things I had been dying to see: The Moulin Rouge:
Yeah it was okay.....but I couldn't find Nicole Kidman anywhere and Ewan Macgregor apparantly didn't hang around to sing to you.
After the movie we went home and fell into a much needed deep sleep to start early once again in the city of lights! (through we didn't see very many lights with all the bad weather blocking everything).
Paris was a blast! And at other times it was not so great.
The first night in the city, Alex and I were so intimidated we didn't want to leave the hotel room. What had looked like a nice neighborhood from the internet, didn't look so nice during the day. To top it off, my mother had rented a room at a different hotel on the whole other side of the city and wouldn't answer her phone. I had no idea where we were meeting for the morning, didn't know how to use the metro to get to her, and was starting to have a slight meltdown thinking this was only day one of the trip. Our hotel was a little scary at first:
In the pictures you can't hear how the plumbing sounds like its going to fall through the ceiling and you don't know how it took us a half an hour to open the door.
We decided to venture out when we were starving to a little mini mart on the corner (which almost burnt down two days later, i think from faulty wiring). There wasn't much selection. Most the shelf were empty or contained expired french food we couldn't pronounce so we went with what we could recognize:
We had an early start on the day and went to St. Chapelle:
It was easy to understand how the religion rate was so much higher in the past when these were the churches you attended. Here we also bought the Paris Museum pass. For about 75 dollars it lets you into most tourist attractions for four days, and the best part? You get to cut almost all the lines. Next we walked over to Notre Dame. It was almost surreal to see after seeing it in so many movies.
We stood in the line that reached across the courtyard and later into the street (unfortunately the museum pass doesn't work on churches that are free to enter). After we got through the church we decided to hurry to the Louvre and skip climbing the steps to the top of the towers. But Alex and I went two days later and did it, and it was so so worth it.
The Louvre was an exprerience to say the least. When we arrived around 1 o clock, the line was literally hundreds on people long. I had the fam hop in line while i went to go check out the situation at the entrance. Low and behold....with the Paris Museum Pass we got to skip the entire line! It took us longer to walk past everyone than to wait in line behind the two other Paris Museum Pass holders and have our bags checked. And we were in!
We went to the largest gallery that contained the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. While the Mona Lisa was generally unimpressive, Venus de Milo was quite a site to see. And there was some other interesting art as well:
After 3 hours in the one gallery....we decided to call it quits and go home. Alex and I finished the Louvre another day.
We got back to hotel room and rested for about 5 minutes, and I made my only ambition of the night to find Harry Potter in english. And I did!
We got on the metro (that I had completely mastered that morning) and made our way to a beautiful square full of people and music. We were a little early for the movie so we walked around and came across one of the things I had been dying to see: The Moulin Rouge:
Yeah it was okay.....but I couldn't find Nicole Kidman anywhere and Ewan Macgregor apparantly didn't hang around to sing to you.
After the movie we went home and fell into a much needed deep sleep to start early once again in the city of lights! (through we didn't see very many lights with all the bad weather blocking everything).
The Mona Lisa is such a buzz kill. Why is it so small?!?!?!?!? I hate to say it, but I TOLD YOU SO! The higher the aronidssement, the crappier the neighborhood. I think that's a part of the Paris experience. Crappy hotels in crappy neighborhoods. Just like San Francisco. Great news about the museum pass!
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