Paris: The City of Love

I have studied French for four years, but I never had a real desire to travel to France.  The pictures are beautiful, and the food sounds good, but I am more interested in travelling to the Middle East.  Therefore, Morocco is the perfect intermediary.  I can speak both English and French and still be in the Arab world! But after my 4 days in Paris, I’ve already begun to look into prices of Parisian real estate (a little out of my budget at this point).

From the moment I got off the plane in Beauvais, about an hour outside of the city, I knew I would love France. The weather was perfect. A little gray, but still it felt perfect. The country houses were the stereotypical adorable French cottages, and of course hearing (and speaking!) French is so much more beautiful than Spanish. 

I was travelling with two, relatively amateur travellers, so I ended up being translator and navigator for the weekend.  We stayed at a hostel in the 18^th arrondisment, which is in the northern part of the city, a 10-minute walk from the Sacre Coeur Cathedral (if that puts it in perspective for anybody).  The hostel was as good as a hostel could be, but the best thing about it was that it was right near a metro stop.  Actually there were two good things about it. The other was the breakfast buffet of baguettes and croissants.  They made for good snacks while on the go.

On Friday night, we went to the Louvre Museum because it is free for students under 26. We stopped at the supermarket to buy a late lunch before we went, and my friend Alex and I bought shampoo and conditioner to share for the weekend since we don’t have 3 oz bottles.  Security at the Louvre stopped us because of our water bottles, but we got away with the two bottles of Garnier shampoo and conditioner! 

Since I am not a museum person, I really only wanted to see the Mona Lisa (how small it is!) and the Venus de Milo.  The other paintings and sculptures were nice, but it’s all the same to me.  I wanted to make a beeline for the Mona Lisa, but my companions were not as eager to pass by everything else.  Therefore, we stayed until the closing announcement.  Yay.

Anyways, the next morning, after a 2 croissants and 2 mini baguettes (and more for the road!), we were determined to cross off more of our sights-to-see.  We went to a flea market at Clingnacourt, where my best purchase was a 2.50 euro nutela crepe!  Then we headed to the Notre Dame, which was gorgeous. Since there was no tour as we had hoped, we relied on my Lonely Planet iPhone app, which served us well throughout the weekend.  After the Notre Dame we walked through the Latin Quarter, to see the Sorbonne (why did I not choose to study there?!), the Pantheon (where my new apartment will be located…ideally), and the Luxembourg Gardens (which would probably be beautiful in the spring) and the Sacre Coeur.  It was a full afternoon of walking, but as Europe does, it started misting and got a lot colder than it had been.  We decided to metro back to the hotel before going to see the Eiffel Tower by night.

Oh, the Eiffel Tower.  What a beauty.  Every half hour, the tower “sparkles” for five minutes as 20,000 light bulbs shimmer against the black night sky.  As if right on queue, the tower started sparkling right when we arrived.  We debated whether we should go up the tower in the day or at night, but we chose night.  Alex and I waited for the lift, while Rianne waked up the stairs to the second tier since the top was closed.  What a sight, Paris by night. 

Day three started off well when I met 3 girls from Tampa, who were also staying at our hostel, by pure coincidence! They told us how they had gotten into Versailles for free with their student visa and school id, so we decided to go explore the Palace of Versailles.  Since Versailles is technically another city, we had to take a 45-minute commuter train, but it was well worth the ride.  The Palace is a gold-plated monstrosity!  Like the Luxembourg Gardens, the Palace Gardens would have been much prettier in the spring, but it was still quite a sight.

After spending the morning at Versailles, we metro-ed to the Eiffel Tower to see it during the day.  We then walked to the Hotel des Invalides, the Champs Elysees and the Arc du Triomphe, which was one of my favorite things to see.  By that point, we were exhausted with all the walking and went back to the hotel to sleep before our flight the next morning.

Of course a trip to Paris would be incomplete without pastries.  Leave it to me to taste all of them.  I was quite satisfied with my two pain de chocolates, two éclairs, one sweet crepe and one savory, one macaroon, and of course the many croissants.  I think the macaroon and the pain du chocolate were my favorites, although the nutela crepe comes in at a close second.

I was very sad to leave Paris, but I know it will not be my last visit.  I am thinking of all the ways I could move there, although I am having trouble coming up with ideas.  Somehow studying Arabic and Spanish don’t have much to offer a job in France. And, as cliché as the title may be, it is true.  I fell in love when I was in Paris; I fell in love with Paris.