paris, france

bonjour! When we arrived in Paris, we realized that the city was a lot more complicated than Rome because it was full of metro lines unlike Rome since it is a lot older and only had 2 lines under the city. So we followed the directions we had printed off to get to our hotel and ended up taking lots of metro lines and going up and down plenty of stairs with our giant suitcases (why don't they believe in escalators??... oh yeah because they don't want to get fat like US). We finally got somewhat close to our destination but couldn't figure out the rest of the directions so we asked this nice little French woman who didn't speak much English but she helped us find our hotel by asking about 20 other people along the way. This hotel only cost us 25 euros a night and also served a nice breakfast. It was actually a building with 120 rooms for people with disorders such as down-syndrome but they rent out the rooms not being used to tourists which helps fund their organization. At night when we used the wi-fi in the lobby we had several of the people who lived there come up and try and talk to us but unfortunately we didn't know much French besides "Parlez-vous l'anglais?" (do you speak English?) and "Combien coûte-t-ceci?" (how much does this cost?) and luckily we had someone pronounce those for us beforehand or I would have had no idea how to say them. French was so over my head! Rome wasn't too bad since Italian sounds similar to Spanish but once we got to France we were like hmmm... this is going to be interesting!

The first day we got there we were exhausted from not getting much sleep at the airport in Rome so we headed straight to our beds and took a nap. I kept thinking 'the whole city of Paris is just outside my window and i'm sleeping in my hotel'... but it was a much needed rest. We then ventured out in the evening and headed straight for the Eiffel Tower and seeing it in front of me felt so surreal. We opted to take the stairs instead of the elevators and it was quite a work-out (as if we needed one... we had been walking on our feet 24/7 the past week) but it was worth it once we saw the view of Paris and watched the sunset. Unfortunately, pictures don't ever do something like that justice. We were told that the Eiffel Tower flashes a bunch of lights at night every hour on the hour for 5 minutes so we waited until 10pm and it did; it sparkled. It was magical. We ended up watching it about every night we were there after that.

'Arc de Triomphe'

'The Louvre Pyramid'

The Louvre Museum is the huge art museum in Paris which holds the famous 'Mona Lisa'. It was cool to see the mysterious painting in person but we wondered how it could be so famous? It was just funny to be in a museum filled with beautiful art pieces and paintings and then you come across a giant crowd and once you push your way through it you see a small painting hanging behind protective glass that isn't even very attractive. Made us laugh.

We also visited 'Montmartre' which is an older area of Paris placed on a hill. Many artists had studios in the area of Montmartre such as Picasso and Van Gogh.

We then went to find the 'Moulin Rouge'
since Carolyn and I both love that movie. It wasn't far from Montmartre but it was in Paris' red light district and we realized this once we noticed about every shop in that area was sex shops and strip clubs. We took a picture in front of the famous Moulin Rouge windmill and got out of there. We later were talking to some guys at a restaurant about where to visit in Paris next and they told us to make sure we didn't find ourselves in the red-light district but we told them we accidentally already had... luckily we had been there in the daytime though.

We visited the famous Notre Dame Cathedral but unfortunately didn't see the hunched back.

One story that I must share was when Carolyn and I were eating at a restaurant near our hotel. Two guys (the ones I mentioned above) who were seated at the table next to us realized we were speaking English and began talking with us because they had learned English but rarely got to use it. They were really nice and we began talking about why French people hate Americans. One of them asked "What do you think about Nicolas -----?" I couldn't really understand the last name. So we just responded "I don't know, who is he?" They immediately busted up laughing and then said "That is why French people hate Americans. He is the president of France. We know all about your president Obama and what is going on in the U.S. but all you Americans think the world revolves around you and don't care about anyone else because your country is so big." We then explained that learning all the presidents of Europe would be like them learning the governors of each state in the U.S. and they decided that is true. I also explained (as nicely as possible) that honestly one thing I had learned while living in Europe was that the world does somewhat revolve around the U.S. because there are always American songs on their top weekly music channels even if they don't understand the words, they watch many popular American TV shows even though they have different voices in their language, there was always something about the U.S. on the news each night, our poor economy is effecting their economy, and Obama seemed to be like the worlds president (people mentioned him to me all the time and told me how much they loved him... I even saw shirts with Obama's face on them often). They understood and agreed what we meant. It was fun to have a conversation with them and even though we were warned that a lot of French people might not be nice since we were American; we never had a problem, everyone seemed friendly enough.

Well this about sums up Paris. It definitely is really pretty but being the top tourist destination in the world, I thought it was a tad over-rated. I do think that everyone needs to see it sometime in their life though and I'm grateful to have experienced it.

[Just the feeling of being in Paris was wonderful]

Next and last stop... London!