At this point into our trip, Katie and I had almost mastered the train systems throughout Europe. We easily got onto our metro train to take us to our hostel and got off at the right stop. However, we didn't take the right exit out of the station. Once again, there were a few Parisans that were very willing to help us out. I guess it was our lucky day with obtaining help!
The hostel in Paris, St. Christopher's, was the largest we stayed in. Our room had ten people in it. Throughout the time we were there we shared the room with people from Australia, Sweden, Austria, and Taiwan. The bathrooms here ended up being my least favorite; they smelled like wet dog. And there were some minor problems throughout are time at St. Christopher's but it ended up being my favorite place to stay.
I did get a sore throat in Paris during our time there. Luckily it turned into no more than a nasty cough. Today, it's still a little sore, and I have a small cough but it is much better than it was.
Day One in Paris
We went on another "free" walking tour in hopes that we'd be able to figure out where all the tourist places were throughout the city. I didn't like our tour guide as much as the one in Munich but the tour served purposeful enough to find the attractions. After our ended Katie and I went on to get a closer look of the Eiffel Tower. The structure is massive! While we were taking photos with the Eiffel Tower, it started to rain. And it went on to rain a little every day we were in Paris. Katie and I joked the whole time though about how we could sense it was coming and were always timely in running for cover. (I like to think it's a Midwestern talent.) When I was posing for one photo with the tower, a person in a gorilla outfit decided to hop into my picture. I figured whatever, he/she can join. After Katie took the photo, they asked for money. I denied them saying that they were the one to hop into my photo. We bickered a little, and then I saw a guy selling Eiffel Tower key chains waving his finger "No." The gorilla saw this and immediately turned to fight with him; Katie and I turned and quickly walked away. This was probably the closest we came to getting mugged in Paris.
After the Eiffel Tower we went and walked to the Arc de Triomphe. The Arc de Triomphe is in the middle of a massive roundabout that doesn't have any traffic lanes, signals, etc. in it, and it is VERY busy. The officials don't want to ruin the look of the star pattern the lanes have, I guess. Katie and I had no idea of how we were going to get onto this "island" but we were determined. Unintelligably, we ran across the lanes dodging motorcycles racing through the roundabout. Once we were on the island we realized that there was an underground passage to get onto it. We had a good laugh at ourselves, and it made for a memorable moment as we saw our life flash before our eyes.
In the evening we spent our time updating our blogs, Facebook, and chatting with friends/family... That is up until some drunk neighbors decided to walk the hostel's terrace and climb into our room through the window. Quickly, a drunk conversion began and an Italian-Asian picked me to be his new object of affection. He was funny and made the night very comical! These neighbors invited us over for drinks (2 windows down on the terrace) so Katie and I joined them. Besides the Italian-Asian, there were two Canadians, Tanya and Natalie, and another American that we got to know. We moved our gathering to the downstairs bar and met three gals from Poland. The Italian-Asian continued to pursue me down there along with one of these Polish girls (even though she was a lesbian, and her girlfriend was there.) As funny as this night was, the Italian-Asian did not remember me at all the next day, which we all found to be shocking. And yes, I was a little broken-hearted.
Day Two in Paris
I was very excited for day two in Paris because we had Versailles on our agenda! Katie and I saved a few Euros by doing this on our own versus through a tour group. We stopped at the Versailles tourist office instead of at the palace to buy our tickets. While in line, there were two ladies trying to figure out what pass to buy, and they thought the ones being offered were the wrong ones. I quickly informed them that indeed, these were the ones that they wanted, but these ones cost a mere 2 Euro difference from the ones being offered at the palace. They would spend a little more money, but save LOTS of time waiting in line. Needless to say, they were very thankful for my advice, and we started up a conversation. I found out that they were from a town north of Chicago and told them that I knew a lot of people in the Chicago area. We went on to discover that they've seen and know about my boyfriend's family's landscaping business. Small world!
The Palace of Versailles was very royal looking, obviously. Gold was everywhere and all of the ceilings were painted. As beautiful as the interior was, I didn't get to enjoy them as much as I would have liked because the whole time it felt like I was being herded through rooms, and there just was never an open area to sit or stand for a while. The rooms also began to feel very repetitive. I did really enjoy seeing the Hall of Mirrors and the Queen's quarters.
Katie and I went to Versailles on a special day where they were going to turn on the water for all of the fountains in the gardens for a certain period of time. We had some time to kill before this began so we went on a hunt to find the place where Marie Antoinette would stay and hide from people. This place, the Petit Trianon, is quite a distance away from the palace and is rather small. I thought it was pretty cool that Marie Antoinette had her initials placed in the Grand Staircase's railing.
The Gardens of Versailles were AMAZING! Definitely worth going on a day when they have the fountains going. There are numerous little gardens that make up the whole thing and each one of these gardens has some type of large sculpture piece or fountain in it. Unforunately, my camera had died by this time, so I'm going to have to steal pictures from Katie's camera. As we walked, Katie and I joked about how certain gardens would be a nice place to get married or proposed to. Ironically, on our way out we saw a bride and groom, along with a large group, going into the gardens (I assume). Made the idea become a little more realistic in my eyes for, of course, whenever that time comes.
On our second night, we took part in a pub crawl with the hostel mates we met the night before. The pub crawl was part of the tour company that we had used for our first day's tour. As our IDs were being checked in the beginning we were shocked to learn that our Italian-Asian friend was only 17! Drinking age is 18 in Paris, so he couldn't go but was so confused as to why he couldnt' come. Throughout the night we went to 5 different bars and at each one for every drink we bought, we'd get a shot! No worries, I didn't drink at every one. I met another person from Chicago. His little brother is a junior at Iowa State and is in Pi Kappa Alpha, which is the fraternity that my sorority was paired with for Greek Week this past spring. Once again, SMALL WORLD! At the second bar I met a couple from Finland. I also met two guys from California; one had just graduated from law school, so we had a nice time chit-chatting about that. The two had a nice system going on how to memorize names; one would write all the name in a little notebook and so when the other ended to know a name, the notebook would just get whipped out. I was "Kelly from Nebraska". A big group of us ended up leaving the last bar early (drinks were 15 Euros!) and headed back to our hostel to continue the night. Katie got slammed by the metro train's doors on the way back and another person in the group danced with a homeless man on the train. As you might have guessed, it was a good night!
Day Three in Paris
Churches were on the agenda for day three. The first one we went to was Sacre Coeur. This church was built on the largest hill overlooking Paris and was exhausting to get up to it. It takes commitment to get up to the top and attend church there. A cool fact about this church is that the stone it is made out of allows it to wash itself. Therefore the exterior of the church has never been cleaned, but yet it still looks as good as new! When we got inside, we discovered that mass was going on; it was a Catholic mass. Yet, even though mass was going on, they allow toursits to walk around the perimeters of the interior. It was rather cool to tour a church as mass was going on. However, at the same time, I felt like it was disrespectful, and that I shouldn't be in there.
The next church we went to was Notre Dame. It, too, had mass going on but it ended as we were in there. Such tall ceilings and pretty stained glass windows! Definitely worth seeing-- no wonder it is a tourist attraction! As we were sitting in a garden behind Notre Dame, Katie overheard two people talking about Sainte Chappelle. Katie really wanted to see it, so we asked for directions and were off to find it. We did find it and had to stand in a security line for about 20 minutes. This church was part of a former palace but now the whole area is a governmental. We had to pay 5 Euros to see the church, which is currently under restoration. The appeal of Sainte Chappelle is its large stained glass windows. My mouth dropped as we first walked in; it was beautiful!
Katie and I had McDonalds for dinner; I had more success with ordering my meal this time! After dinner we joined our Canadian friends, Tanya and Natalie, in the bar. Our time in the bar quickly moved to spending time in the "Chill Out Room" in the basement of our hostel. Tayna and Natalie wanted to play flippy cup (or flip cup as they call it) and were determined to teach other countries. The game grew throughout the night and by the end we had a good 20-25 people playing; Tayna and Natalie successfully taught the others and soon flippy cup will be dominating the world! We were even able to play by countries/continents; the North Americans were on one side while the Australians were on the other. The Australians took the English to play on their side, and we divided the two Swedish girls up onto both teams. I held my own quite well, but we had one Canadian guy that just blew it for our team almost every time. Oh well; it was, by far, the best night that I've had so far on my journey! By the end we must have gone through 30-40ish bottles of beer and wine. (And the beer bottles are a lot larger than back in the US.)
Day Four in Paris
Katie and I took an overnight train to Rome from Paris, giving us an extra day to spend in Paris. However, at this point we had spent about all of our money that we had in cash, so we had to keep our plans simple. The plan was to spend the day in the Jardin des Tuileries. This is a garden in front of the Louvre. It has a nice large fountain in it and a large amount of green lounge chairs for pedestrians to move around and sit in. The plan would have been perfect if the whether had remained nice; but as our luck goes, the day was quite cold. I think we only lasted at the park for a hour to 1 1/2 hours. While we were there we did get to see a little photo shoot happen. It was cool; the photographer was going to stand in the dirty fountain water to take the picturs but it ended up being too deep to stand in with his jeans on. We spent the rest of the day looking through souvenir shops and hanging out at our hostel before we said "Au revoir!" to Paris.
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