Je t'aime

After our five hour train ride to Paris, we made our way to the hostel and booked it to the one and only Eiffel Tower. I took french in middle school and high school and have had a poster of the Eiffel Tower in my room so I have been looking to Paris for quite a few years and was actually trying to study abroad in Paris when I first looked into studying abroad so I was really excited to be there. Seeing the Eiffel Tower in person was breathtaking- it almost looked unreal. Its hard to imagine a steal structure being breathtaking, but I guess its one of those things you have to see in person to really understand. It probably could have also been due to the fact that I've been looking at a poster for so many years! Anyway that being said I took quite a lot of pictures there. Since we got there in the late afternoon we ended up hanging out at the Eiffel Tower for the rest of the evening and went back to see it light up at night. Unfortunately when we were leaving the first time my sandal completely broke- first one piece, then another piece broke and eventually it was no longer a sandal so that was interesting to get back to the hostel 25 minutes away on the metro! All my shoes have really gotten some miles this semester!

On Monday we took a three hour walking tour of the city which was awesome. Our tour guide was wonderful and I got to see and learn a ton about Paris. Paris was much more city-like than I was expecting it to be. I thought it would have more cute little french houses, artists, and musicians, but it was just really crowded with a lot of scammers. After the tour we went to the Louvre and saw Mona Lisa along with many other beautiful pieces of artwork. The Louvre is the biggest art museum in the world- bigger than the Vatican and I thought that was big. Probably wasn't the best idea to go to the Louvre after a three hour walking tour, but we got to see all the big things that we wanted to see.

The Mona Lisa is tiny, but she really draws in the crowds!! She has an entire wall dedicated to her and all the other walls surrounding the painting are massive and much more impressive, but no one even pays attention to them. Mona Lisa used to be a very insignificant painting in the Louvre high up on a wall somewhere that no one even looked at it. Someone stole the Mona Lisa I think around 1910 and no one even noticed for 3 days! Then when they finally realized that the painting was stolen, it was broadcasted all over the media "Where's Mona?" "Mona Lisa Missing" and so on so that it started becoming really well known and famous. When it was finally returned two years later everyone was so happy and since then the painting has grown in popularity and now is the most well known painting in the world although there is nothing remarkable about the painting itself!! Quite the story.

On Tuesday we went into Notre Dame and walked through the city to the Arc de Triumph which was actually wayyyy farther than we were expecting- definitely a lot of miles.

Notre Dame  ^

Arc de Triumph

View from the Arc

Wednesday we took a trip to Versailles - just an hour out of the city. Versailles is MASSIVE! We waited to get inside and then we walked around the gardens which looked liked it stretched for miles- one canal itself was a mile long and people can row boats in it.

 Front entrance

Hall of Mirrors

The Gardens

Once we made our way back from Versailles, Cody and I went up the Eiffel Tower! Normally the line is around 3 hours, but we went to the line to walk up instead of the elevator and we only had to wait in line for 10 minutes!  The top of the Eiffel Tower is way up there!

One night we stopped by the Moulin Rouge just to see it!

On our fifth and final day in Paris we went to the church Sacre-Coeur and the Montemarte district before we had our train to Barcelona that afternoon and boy was I happy we did!! Sacre-Coeur was really different than many of the churches we had already seen and Montemarte was the France I was always expecting- filled with little cute houses, crepes, artists, and flowers. I ended up getting a caricature (that doesn't look like me) but I was glad I got to go!! It was a perfect last day in France.

There is so much to do in Paris I probably could have stayed the whole week, but I think we did the perfect amount of time for our 12 days of travel. Au Revoir Paris!!