Once again the weekend started off way too early. We had to get to the Ramstein train station before 5:55am and the walk was soo cold. It even rained a bit during our walk. We caught our train and we were on our way to PARIS. First thing we did was check into our hostel. It was a nice, cute little place, better than the floor of a tent the smelled like b.o. We checked our stuff in then began exploring.
We wanted to find bikes because we heard you can rent bikes, but we didn’t know where to find them, so we just took the metro to our first stop – Arc de Triomphe. By the end of this trip we were all pros at navigating the metro system. When we got to the Arc, it was quite a site. We went up escalators to get out of the metro, and as you ascend, you see the Arc slowly growing right in front of you. Very cool. We did the whole picture thing, walked under it, and then decided not to go up to the top. We all agreed we would rather go up the Eiffel Tower instead. So after we saw the Arc, we walked down the 2 mile strip of streets known for shopping – Champs d’elysees. There were a lot of nice things to look at, but nothing affordable… not for me anyway. We walked down one side of the street, stopped at a little café for lunch with the outdoor dining area, it was really nice and quite relaxing. There were a bunch of guys selling/peddling stuff on the streets like fake name brand bags and stuff, and I don’t know much they were selling it for, but it was going FAST. Particularly one smart guy who set up his blanket of fake bags right next to a McDonalds, his bags sold really fast.
On our way back the other side of the street, it started to rain, so we decided it was a sign to go. We caught the metro back to our hostel to chill a bit and wait out the rain, which meant, the perfect time for a nap! Took a nice nap, and when we woke up, the rain had stopped! =) We decided to explore a bit near our hostel, and ended up finding a wine festival that was apparently going on that weekend. However, this wine festival was 10x smaller than the big wine festival at Bad Durkheim, and only 5x less the amount of people… so it was CRAMPED. Walked around, found a nice little restaurant for dinner, had a HUGE pasta bowl. Found our way to the MOULIN ROUGE and the red light district. Everything here seems to be sudden, like you’re walking down the street, you turn a corner and BAM! Red light district and a huge Moulin rouge building! We were going to go in, but apparently there was a dinner party thing going on that night and it cost about 80 something euro to go in… no thank you. Pictures outside were enough.
After the Moulin rouge, we decided to see the Eiffel Tower at night and meet up with our camp friends who are also in paris, but had a different agenda. The tower is AMAZING at night. It was all lit up, and it was beautiful. It wasn’t what I expected in the sense that it was lit up red and white, but it was still quite a sight. There also happened to be a big soccer game that day, and Turkey won, so there was a bunch of Turkish people with their country’s flag running around and just celebrating. Then on the hour, the lights on the tower started flashing and it was like a bunch of stars or something and the lights reflected off the windows of the buildings nearby and the water that was across the street and I’m glad I saw that cuz it totally upped the beauty of the Eiffel Tower. After all that we went back to our cute little hostel and we called it a night!
Sunday – woke up and got ready to see more sights. Started making our way to the Notre Dame and ran into a pretty fountain, which we climbed all over. We walked through a couple of stores, and I found my AMAZINGLY BADASS leather jacket! I was really happy. It fits really nicely and I just fell in love with it. Plus I was cold, so it helped to have it! Got to the Notre Dame, and walked around inside. Since it was a Sunday, there was a service going on inside, but we just walked around it. It was pretty big, and there was a lot of statues and stuff, but I don’t really know much about it, it was just pretty to walk through. After we walked around that, we found “point zero” which is supposedly the “location from which distances are measured” according to wiki. =P
I wanted to go to the catacombs, which is a like an underground cemetery/tomb, but unfortunately it was closed for “renovations”. I found out later it was closed because it had been really badly vandalized. =( That was probably the sad point of the trip cuz I was really looking forward to it. But oh well, I got over it. We went to the Eiffel Tower since it was daytime and got baguettes and had a bread swordfight in front of the Eiffel Tower. We also went up the tower, and the view was amazing. I saw the tops of all the buildings and even found the twin of our statue of liberty! I’m not really sure what it’s called in France, but to me, it’s our lady liberty’s twin. Haha.
After the Eiffel Tower we made our way to a cemetery to find James Morrison’s grave. I have no clue who that is, but Cat, the girl we travel with wanted to go, so we did. RIGHT after I took a picture of the grave, my camera battery died -.-
At night, Julley and I decided we wanted to have our first glass of wine as 21 yr olds. So we went to this cute little place down the street from our hostel, and told the waiter guy that we’ve never had wine before and asked what he recommended. He got his favorite wine for Julley. It was a sweet wine and Julley liked it. I got a rose wine, and it was ok, something that needs to be sipped on slowly.
Monday – spent the whole day at the Louvre. It was beautiful and big and a lot more… WOW than I thought. Saw a lot of famous stuff, but it was so big that of course we didn’t get to the whole museum. We just focused on one corridor area. Then went outside and took pictures and walked down this beautiful park street and it was a beautiful relaxing weekend.
Finally, the longest overdue blog! I would've added pictures... but the blog is long enough already...
Soon I will get Amsterdam, Belgium, and Austria… I’m so behind =(
