Weekend #4: Paris

I just got back from Paris a few hours ago. It was not exactly what I expected, but it was a very cool city. There is SO much to do in Paris, so I'm definitely going to have to go back another weekend to hit up Versailles and some of the museums we missed.

So we got to Paris Thursday late afternoon, found our hotel pretty easily, dropped off our stuff, and walked around the city the rest of the night. We saw Sacre Coeur, which had an amazing view, and inside was incredible. There was a service going on, so we got to see some of that and hear them all singing/humming, and it was really cool. Friday we went on a tour (by the same group that did the Berlin tour - they have free walking tours in a bunch of different cities) which was good. On the tour we saw Pont Neuf, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower (from a distance), Arc de Triomphe, and a bunch of other stuff. Later, we went back to the Arc and went shopping (but I didn't buy anything).

Friday night we went on a pub crawl (run by the same group of people that did the walking tour). We went to four different bars, but the last one was more of a club. It was a lot of fun, and we met some cool people. I mostly talked to some Brazilians/Venezuelans and an Australian guy.

Saturday we went to the Louvre. This was probably the weirdest painting I saw:

So the Louvre was neat. By the time we got out, we were pretty exhausted from all the walking we had been doing all weekend. We still had to see the Eiffel Tower, so we metro-ed over there, had dinner at a cool little place where we all ate steak and ice cream, and headed to the tower. I never actually saw it up close during the day time, but I heard it wasn't as cool as at night. And it was very cool at night.

Half of us went all the way to the top and the other half only went partway. I went up to the top, and it was incredible. Actually, as soon as we got to the top, we saw a guy propose to his girlfriend! (She said yes.) The view was amazing -

They have free ice skating on the first floor of the tower, but we didn't get there until they were closing, so we missed out. I bought some mini Eiffel Towers though!

Sunday we got up early to go see Notre Dame before our train left at 10:39am. And we stumbled across some kind of bird market. It was weird, there were just a bunch of people selling cages/bird feed/birds. And one booth was selling fish, rabbits, and hamsters.

On the train we all passed out, and I took a four hour nap when I got back, and I'm still exhausted. It was a fun weekend! J'aime Paris.