Tuesday 13 November 2012

The City of Lights: Parieee!

Having dreamed of visiting Paris since, well, forever... or at least since the age of 8 when I saw the beauty of the Eiffel Tower in a magazine, I finally got to visit the city. I never thought by the age of 21 I would actually visit the city filled with fashion, art, and love. Pictures of Paris make it seem like it's the best city in the world, and I would agree, it definitely is just that. As someone who loves fashion and art, having been an art major for 2 years, I was more than excited to visit Paris. 

Before leaving Wednesday afternoon on the Eurostar, we made a bucket list of all we wanted to experience in Paris. Some of the items included going to the sommet of the Eiffel Tower (the very, very top), cruise on the River Seine, visiting the Louvre, going to Notre Dame, climbing to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, visiting Chateau de Versailles, drinking wine in the Champ de Mars, visiting the Eiffel Tower at night to witness the light show, having a French style picnic with wine, eat street Crepes, and see the Moulin Rouge. I can say we checked off almost all of them off our bucket list.



Once we arrived in Paris late Wednesday night, we realized we had not looked up directions to get to our hotel, which turned out to be no where near we had thought it was located. With no wi-fi connection, of course, we decided to start walking and hopefully run into someone who could speak English. We took a metro line, which we thought sounded like our street name, and luckily it was! The metro station workers were not the nicest people in the world, so we thought we would have better luck trying to find it ourselves, and we did. We stayed in a part of town known as Voltaire, which was quiet and had a few cafes to eat at. And this part of town had no where near as many beggars, homeless people, and merchants forcing you to buy their one euro Eiffel Towers ( and when I say forcing, I mean in your face and following you and attempting to compliment you in English- and saying you have HOT eyes.. I still don't know what that even means....)

On Thursday, we decided to take a double-decker bus tour of Paris, where we ended up going to the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. Then, that night, we went to the top of the Eiffel Tower- the BEST IDEA we ever made. We went up at 4pm and left at 7pm. While we were at the top, the sun began to set.. and by 6pm it was completely dark. It was one of the prettiest sights I've seen.


   The next day, we visited the Louvre, where we saw the Mona Lisa. We had to push our way to the front to see her. After walking around for a couple of hours, we explored the city some more.

The Louvre
Arc de Triomphe

The Lock Bridge in Paris

On Saturday, we decided to make our way to Versailles to see the Chateau de Versailles, or the Palace of Versailles. We decided to travel on our own, by train, which turned out to be the cheapest way. We ended up spending less than 10 euros each, as opposed to the tour by coach bus, which would have been 42 euros. It only took about 40 minutes to get there. We only saw the outside of the palace, which was beautiful.



Later that day, we decided to visit the Moulin Rouge, but only the outside of course. Actually seeing a show would have been awesome, but it was out of our price range. We then decided to make our way back to the Eiffel Tower for our last night in Paris. Mackenzie and I ate at a cafe in Trocadero, right in front of the Eiffel Tower. So beautiful.


No comments:

Post a Comment