A very early morning greeted us to begin our journey from London to Paris via the chunnel! I think I ended up sleeping through the time that we actually went through the chunnel, but really that's okay because it's not anything to see; it's pitch black because it's a tunnel through the land under the water. Yeah. It just sounds epic. Haha.
When we arrived in Paris, we went to get metro tickets and I got accosted by some girls trying to get me to sign something/get money. I didn't get it. Needless to say, after that I was advised to not talk to anyone haha. We to the metro to our hotel, Hotel Clauzel, which ended up being somewhat confusing to find, but we did it and hilariously, we were on the top floor at this place too! Lucky us. This place had an elevator, although it was tiny, so only one of us could fit in it with our stuff. Katie, the claustrophobic one, somehow got picked to be the one to ride in it. Oops. We went to find some food after that and the first thing we spotted were all sorts of little fruit stands...with amazing smelling and looking strawberries. So we naively bought some and totally got ripped off, but they were awesome strawberries! Ha. Then we stopped in a cute bakery for a baguette and Katie and I both got other things. I had a ham and cheese croissant. I wish bakery/pastry shops existed everywhere. Such a part of France, but they should share the greatness. I mean who wouldn't want a cheap, delicious bread place to go to everyday? After our little lunch we metroed over to the Louvre. Did you know that you actually pronounce the 'r'? I didn't. Ha. On our way through the metro, there was this band performing. They sounded kind of Russian, and they had CDs! What?! I really liked that about Paris...there were people playing music in the metro all the time! So yeah, we went to the Louvre and got a 2-day museum pass so we could go to all these other museums and cathedrals and such. At the Louvre we just sped through to see the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory because this other museum we wanted to go to wasn't open as late. My camera died right before we got to the Mona Lisa. Classic. So my mom let me borrow her camera, but I don't have any of those photos on my computer. Bummer, I know. We went to the Rodin Museum to see the gardens where the Thinker is and so were the Gates of Hell. Cool. After that we went to L'Orangerie to see Monet's water lilies. I really liked those. They were massive. If you've ever seen the movie "Midnight in Paris", there's a scene shot in that museum with the lilies. Following our little visit to those lovely lilies, we went to dinner at this cafe near the Rodin. I had a croque madame which is like a grilled ham&cheese but the cheese is on top and then there's an egg on top of that. It was quite delicious. I've taken to eating fried eggs for brunch every weekend in the dining hall at school so the egg on top was a nice addition. After dinner we went back to the Louvre. That was fun...ha. We were walking through the gardens in front of it to get there quicker, but then apparently they were closing the gardens and made us turn around and go out the way we came in even though we were nearly to the other side. LAME. So we had to walk all the way around the gardens to get to the Louvre. It was a hussle to get there before it stopped letting people in. We made it just in time and really had a quick spin through seeing the Code of Hammurabi and Venus de Milo as well as some other Chinese statue things that were actually replicas not the real deal. What?! Yeah. We left the Louvre through the pyramid so we could see it all lit up at night, too. How nice. We got horribly lost getting back to our hotel after the metro, ended up on the street you don't want to be on at night. Oops. But we got directions from a helpful young woman, so that was good or else who knows how long we would've been troubled. Ha. So that's the end of Paris Day 1.
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| view from our hotel. |
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| Winged Victory |
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| one of the first spottings of the Eiffel Tower. |
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