Paris! Part Two

Paris Part Dos:

Ahh, where did I leave off? Paris! Well, I'll give you a summary of the rest of our trip!

Day Three: Since we had two busy days, we decided to take it easy and just take a day to really take in the city and hang out. We woke up late and had breakfast at our hostel (bread, bread, warm cereal and coffee! Yes!) and then went over to an outdoor market in the Latin Quarter. (Thank you, London amigas, for introducing me to this concept!) It was nowhere as big as anything in London and reminded me more of a little farmer's market than anything, but it was cultural! Lauren saw some raspberries she absolutely needed to buy (excellent choice, Lo) and we decided to buy lunch there and picnic in a park later.

We took turns buying things because we were scared of the language barrier! Buying cheese was an adventure. We walked into the store next to the market, and there were seriously like hundreds of cheeses, ranging from 8euros to 70! Well, I don't really know anything about cheese. I picked one that looked okay and sign-languaged my way through buying some. We kept trying to say we wanted less, but, eventually we just bought it because the guy had gone in the back twice to cut it in half! We had like, a month's worth of cheese! So funny.

Next we walked through the Latin Quarter, which is really pretty. We stumbled across this:

We're still not quite sure what it was. Pantheon? University? Something cool. I look like a hippie.

We got really lucky because the weather was absolutely gorgeous. Cold, as you can tell by my bundling up in pictures, but crystal-clear blue skies and it felt like FALL. After this, we went to this really cool park (I forget the name) but it used to be like, the royal park or something.

Lauren playing with leaves. We spent lots of time taking these pictures :)

Yeah, that's where we ate lunch. Beautiful, right? It was stunning.

My turn! Lauren and I have an on-going joke that we have exactly the same pictures, just switched people.

Here was our French picnic lunch. Cheap French wine, baguette, fruit, and cheese. We wanted to get meat of some sort but cheese was hard enough, we figured meat would be impossible!

Needless to say, we had a LOT of fun picnicking. We seriously spent like two hours here! We realized we forgot some important picnic materials, however, mainly cups, any sort of napkin, a knife.. Luckily, our wine-opener had a little knife and I borrowed some cups from a nearby cafe, so we were golden. Yum!

After topping off our bottle of cheap French wine, we decided it was a good idea to run around the park like silly Americans, and then head over to the Eiffel Tower because we hadn't seen it during the day.

Jumping for joy at the Torre Eiffel. Literally.

After this, it was extremely cold and we were extremely tired, but we dragged ourselves over to the D'Orsay Museum, which is said to be better than the Lourve. Its filled with a lot of Impressionist Art. If you don't know what that is, its the soft, fuzzy-looking art with lots of light and pastels. Like, all of those famous ballerina pictures are Impressionist and in the D'Orsay. Impressionism isn't totally my thing, but it was still cool to say that I've been there. After, we ran home, crawled into bed and promptly died of exhaustion.

Day Four: Our final full day in Paris! We attempted to wake up early, but, considering Lauren and I are the same person, we all know how that goes. (Not well). We decided to dedicate this day to visiting Versailles, the palace that King Henry the Whatever built outside of Paris in 15whatever to show how awesome he was. It's about an hour and a half train ride outside of Paris. Once we got there, though, it was absolutely FREEZING and RAINING on top of it! No bueno. Especially because we had to stand in line for almost another hour to buy our tickets. We should've listened to the lady who told us to buy them beforehand! We were also both extremely grumpy, cold and tired, so it was a little bit comical when you look back on it. It was a little bit like, "Great. More palaces. More kings. WhatEVER." :P However, it was still really cool to see all of these famous rooms and places. The ticket came with a free audio tour, so we got to listen to descriptions of everything. I might say that I liked the Palacio Real in Madrid better, though! However, the King had it goin' on with the Hall of Mirrors:

Also, more fun facts for you to learn: The king had a "sleeping ceremony" where they would kiss the royal forehead, rub the royal feet, change his shirt because he sweat a lot, make sure he was okay, etc. And his bed was so small and weird! Like, people could come and watch him while he was sleeping! So weird. Also, to ensure there was no fraud with heirs, the queen was forced to give birth in PUBLIC. Uh, no thanks. Don't want my lady hanging out all over for the world to see, thankyouverymuch! Also, Versailles is the famous place where they stormed during the French Revolution and Marie Antoinette lived and famously said, "Let them eat cake" (although its debated whether she actually said this). I saw her bedroom and apparently there's a secret door she escaped through when the peasants stormed the palace. I understand why they were so mad! As a starving, tired, cold, poor student standing at the foot of all of this gaudiness, I was infuriated, too. Luckily, there was a McDonalds nearby so Lauren and I didn't have to storm the castle.

Looking over the grounds of Versailles. I was eating my stolen bread from the hostel. I felt this was extremely ironic
.

The grounds of Versailles. This is only a small, small part of them.


Me, standing at the back of the Palace in the Gardens.


The grounds of Versailles. As far as you can see is still gardens! And they go further than that! Imagine! We didn't walk that far. We felt content just looking at it, haha. (Look at the sky! Storm!)


My favorite picture so far. :)

After this, we perked up a bit from the food, then hopped on the train back to Paris to go to the Lourve. We didn't really have much time, but we got to see the Mona Lisa (sortof whatever) and other cool stuff. I don't really know much about art history, but I felt really intelligent? Also, I didn't realize that the Lourve actually used to be a palace before Versailles was, so it is absolutely HUGE and gorgeous inside. We went into the basement and saw part of the original building. It was creepy because nobody else was down there! Very cool. We also saw some cool Toulose-Lotrec (I'm not spelling it right but I'm too lazy to look it up) stuff about the Moulin Rouge and Bohemian Life, etc. and we also saw a lot of cut-outs from the Chat Noir, which is actually a theatre! (I did not know this.) We saw Hammarabi's Code, too, which is the first original written code of law. That's where the phrase 'an eye for an eye' and many of the Biblical laws originate from. Very cool. I wish that I had more time to see it all.

THEN, (as if that was not enough), we signed up for a pub crawl. We had a mini-adventure involving being incredibly lost and late, but thankfully we ended up where the pub-crawl started. A pub-crawl is when you sign up with a company and they take you to a bunch of bars across the city and then a dance-club. They show you a bunch of cool places and you get in everywhere for free, so its worth your money. That was fun, because some of our other friends we made in Paris were there and then we made friends with other people, too. (Yes, we have other friends!! You couldn't tell by the pictures, I know!) Good way to end off the vacation.

Day 5: We were kicked out of our hostel at 10, but we didn't have to be at the bus to the airport until 2, so we went up to Montmartre one more time to see the Sacre Cour during the day.

Children of the Revolution.

Then of course, we took an hour long bus ride to the airport in the middle of nowhere. (There are three places for planes to take off. Not terminals. Plane spots. Three.) Hung out there for three and a half hours. Took the two hour plane ride home and then took another bus for an hour and a half to my house in Alicante. Whew!

Paris. City that stole my heart. I wasn't expecting it, but it did. I'll be back!