I have figured out the secret to why the French walk with their noses up in the air. Its not cause of their snobby high-end living style (though they are) but its because they, like everyone else, are being suffocated by their own body odor. I mean is it so hard to ask the French to invest a little more in deodorant. In French terms all I'm asking is the money spent on one shoe can easily supply the average Frenchmen with enough deodorant for at least 5 years. Okay okay enough with this ranting. Now to update my blog readers, aka my mom, with what I've done this past week in France.
Lets start with the beginning.
A long, long time ago in the land of Berlin, we naive little students boarded a bus to Paris. Little did we know this 10+ hour bus ride would make me go crazy, like literally. How? you might ask. Well its easy. A combination of
CRAZY German bus drivers, Avatar in German, too much candy, oh and more than 10 hours in a bus really knows how to suck the soul out of you. Regardless of our several near encounters with death on that bus we finally made it to Paris. We stayed at the St. Christopher's Inn which was a pretty cool hostel, but sharing a room with 8 girls did get overwhelming at times.
On our first real day in Paris we went on a boat tour on the
Seine River. The tour was really pretty but since every building we passed was being translated into like 3 languages I stopped paying attention and just took pictures of random buildings.
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| Notre Dame |
After the boat tour we went walking around on the
Champs-Élysées which a very famous street in Paris cause its the street most people can't afford. At the top of the street was the
Arc de Triomphe. Pictures below:
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| Arc de Triomphe |
After that we walked around some more. Here are some pictures of me napping on the grass outside the
Musée de l'Armée which is where Napoleons tomb is and me at a cool place to view the
Eiffel Tower:
The next day we went to
Montmartre in the north of Paris to see
Sacré-Cœur which means Sacred Heart. This cathedral was really pretty mostly because it had a great view of Paris.
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| Sacré-Cœur |
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| view from Sacré-Cœur | | |
On Tuesday we went to Chartres as a group. Chartres is right outside of Paris and its famous because it has one of the first Cathedrals built in France in the 13th century (built after the Notre Dame). The Cathedral is also famous for its stained glass windows.
The city of Chartres was really cute and not gonna lie but the reason I really liked it was cause it was where I ate the BEST chocolate mousse I have EVER eaten. Sometimes I still dream about its creamy goodness. YUM! :)
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| the Cathedral at Chartres |
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| the city of Chartres |
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| me at lunch |
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| the BEST MOUSSE EVER. like no joke. |
We then went to Versailles. Versailles was Louis the XIV castle and like most kings from that period he built an unnecessarily huge castle that was so elaborate that it was kind of ugly. The gardens around the castle on the other hand were absolutely gorgeous. The weirdest thing about the castle was that inside the rooms there was an art exhibit of Japanese artwork. I'll post some pictures of the Japanese sculptures that completely ruin the overall experience of being inside a luxurious palace.
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| Versailles |
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| just an example of the random Japanese artwork |
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| the gardens |
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| some more garden |
After Versailles we had a free day so we put our tourist caps on and hit the city. We went to
Père Lachaise which is a famous cemetery where people like Chopin, James Morrison, and Oscar Wilde are buried. I also went to the Bastille area which is a good place to get ethnic food in Paris. After that we fought off massive food comas and forced ourselves to actually go inside the museum where Napoleon's tomb was instead of taking a nap in front of it again. Napoleon's tomb was huge and very intricate which I thought was surprising cause he was ONLY 21 years old when he died.
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| the cemetery |
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| Chopin |
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| James Morrison |
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| Napoleon's tomb |
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| view from the tippity top :) |
On our last night in Paris I did the touristy of tourist things, I climbed the Eiffel Tower and I'm not ashamed to say it. Instead of writing about it let my pictures do the talking.
