For the second free weekend during the Germany program, Sarah, Sierra, Lindsey, and I went to Paris. Our train departed from Hannover very early in the morning so I stayed with Sierra’s host student, Anna, the night before we left. My hosts lived about a half hour outside of town so we would have had to wake up even earlier if I had stayed with them and they were pretty exhausted from the work week anyway. Anna drove us to the station and even walked us to our platform and then we all tried desperately to sleep away the hours on the train.
When we arrived, my friend, Cassandra, who has been living in France for almost a year met us at the station and helped us navigate to our hotel. Cassandra moved to France to perfect her French so she was an excellent translator for us during our stay. Once we checked in to the hotel, Cassandra lead us through the metro stations (up and down about a thousand stairs) to arrive at Notre Dam. We decided the line wasn’t worth it to go up to the top, but took a ton of pictures from every angle on the outside. Next, we headed for the Sacre Coeur or Sacred Heart. We weren’t planning to visit this site, but Cassandra highly recommended we go and it turned out to be one of our favorite areas of Paris. We browsed the square with all the painters selling their art behind the Sacre Coeur and each bought a scarf in the tourist trap shops nearby. We also visited the “I Love You Wall” where “I Love You” is written out in every language you can imagine which was fun.
After a crepe and coffee in Montmartre, we hopped back on the metro to get to the Eiffel Tower area. We watched the street performers (some of whom were friends with Cassandra!) and spent some time gazing at the Eiffel tower from the far side of the fountain before walking down for a closer look. We again decided the line was too long to go to the top of the tower and instead headed for a nearby restaurant. The food was delicious.
After dinner, we headed back to the Eiffel tower to watch it twinkle. The tower is lit at night and it twinkles once an hour for about 10 minutes. It wasn’t quite dark when we arrived so Sierra, Cassandra, and I decided to stay another hour to watch the next twinkle in the true dark. Laying on the grass in the dim light from the tower seemed like a dream.
The next morning, we headed for the Louvre before it opened to try to avoid a long line. The whole area was beautiful and we took lots of pictures before the museum even opened. Inside, we headed straight for the “Mona Lisa” (again to avoid crowds) which I found much more impressive than I was expecting. Everyone talks about how small the “Mona Lisa” is when you see the real thing, but I had heard this so many times that I was expecting something much smaller than the actual painting. The look in the woman’s eyes truly is amazing and can’t be appreciated from a print. Also in the Louvre, we visited “Cupid and Psyche,” “Venus de Milo,” “Sphinx,” “Winged Victory,” and quickly browsed through most of the museum.
After the Louvre, we headed through the surrounding gardens to reach the Champs Elysees. Most of the shops were closed because it was Sunday, but I doubt we would have bought much in Gucci anyway… The plan was to meet Cassandra at the Arc de Triomph, but this proved to be somewhat difficult with no cell phones and about a million tourists crowding the area. When we finally met up, we went to a park where cute little boys were using sticks to push their sail boats in the fountain, a stereotype come true!
We returned to the Eiffel tower area for dinner and again had an amazing meal. My crème brule was the best I have ever had and definitely the best thing I’ve put in my mouth since arriving in Europe. We lay by the Eiffel tower again after dinner and watching the twinkling will be my last memory of Paris. The next morning we had a fairly early train and arrived in Basel ready to check out the tick colony at Novartis!
No comments:
Post a Comment