July 30 - August 1, 2019
It's Saturday, August 10th and 11pm right now and I should be doing my blog post for my class, but instead I'm writing this blog post lol. Well, what I really should be doing is sleeping because we leave Portugal tomorrow at 7:10am ha, but priorities...
I went to Paris over a week ago following my short trip to Barcelona. I took a super early flight from Barcelona to Paris (CDG) and arrived at around 10am. I met Melissa, my new roommate for the month and new friend I met at the program orientation back in May. We took an Uber to her uncle's apartment where we got to stay at for FREE which was amazing. He lived just outside central Paris, so commuting with the metro lines was a breeeeze.
Since we only had about 3 full days there, we had no time to waste. We first headed to the Latin Quarter. It was about a 15 minute subway ride I wanna say. We got to see Notre Dame (what's left of its anyways), along with Saint Chapelle and the Shakespeare & Company book store. We were super dumb at first and also consistently tired from our long/early flights and didn't realize we were looking at THE Notre Dame. I literally said "Oh the construction is so unfortunate, I don't even want to take any pictures because the crane," not knowing what I was looking at until about an hour later when we looped back around the island 😂. We obviously couldn't go into the Notre Dame, but we could go into Saint Chapelle, which was absolutely stunning. I had never seen anything like it. The stained glass, colors and every single detail was amazing. I just will never understand how humans make such amazing structures and things like that. It really doesn't make sense, you can try and explain it to me and my brain just won't accept it as real.
The Shakespeare and Company Book store was definitely Top 3 on the list of best book stores I've been to. It would've been my first, but the library/book store that I went to today in Porto, definitely takes first place. We couldn't take any pictures within the bookstore which I understand, but also I don't really understand because it's a book store, not like a church... But it's definitely worth looking up pictures of. It was apparently a location for many great writers of the lost generation to come and get inspired and hang out. Some include F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. So, especially if you are really into history and old English literature, you would be obsessed. We ended the day by going out to dinner with Melissa's uncle, Simon, at a restaurant right near his apartment. We had beef tartar, a LOT of bread, some fish dish and strawberry "soup" for dessert.
Our second day, we started pretty early, because we knew there was a lot we wanted to do. We were gonna try and hit all the main "must-see" monuments and places in Paris. We headed to the Eiffel Tower first, then to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees. We had a free walking tour of Montmartre at 4pm because we had bought the Saint Chapelle tickets the day before and there was a special going on; we had a lot to get done before our tour. The Eiffel Tower was pretty great. There were SO many tourists including myself but, they were photobombing all my pictures, which I didn't appreciate. There were also so many people trying to sell stuff and get you to sign petitions and donate money to stuff, etc. We would constantly get approached and the worst part was that they could usually speak multiple languages, so you couldn't pretend that you didn't understand.
**Okay this is a side note but we are now on the bus heading back to Oviedo from Porto and it smells like a fish market in here 🤢**
The Arc and Champs Elysees are in the same place basically so it was easy to go to the Arc and then walk around and look at all the shops. The Arc de Triomphe was way bigger than I imagined it to be. The road around it also made absolutely no sense. Cars were merging into the roundabout and changing lanes in it too, while there were also people trying to cross the street illegally. It was just really chaotic and I loved it. This boomerang (below) doesn't do it justice but I also posted a short video of it on my instagram story!
We got crepes from a crepe stand near the arc and sat at a bench watching all the cars and the chaos, before we went to lunch at Laduree. They are known for their macarons, which are amazing, but of course they are high key expensive. After lunch we headed over to Montmartre for our tour. I had obviously never been over there before and didn't know the history of the area so the tour was definitely a good idea. Montmartre is the home to the famous Moulin Rouge and was historically known as the place men would visit late at night after work for "female entertainment." The Moulin Rouge was also built for the world fair (along with the Eiffel Tower) to attract people to Paris. Montmartre was also where Van Gogh lived and produced most of his work. The town and the architecture was per usual, beautiful.
Just when you thought that was the end of our second day, we ended up gong to the Louvre! When I say we did the most, I wasn't kidding. I got to see the Mona Lisa for about two seconds. You wait in line for about 45 minutes or more, then when you finally get to the room where the Mona Lisa is there's another line to wait in, woo! I didn't even realize we were about to see the Mona Lisa because I was more focused on the security guards that were yelling "avance!" at everyone, because of course everyone was trying to get their pictures of it. I also got trapped behind this family that were attempting to take pictures so I barely saw it, but I did see it! If you are a student in Europe you can actually get in for free but because I wasn't studying for more than 90 days in Europe, I was ineligible because I didn't have a visa :/
After seeing the Mona Lisa we were so tired and didn't want to be walking around for even longer, so we decided to go on a night tour of the city, on a classic double decker bus. I actually loved it. The bus even stopped right at 10pm in front of the Eiffel Tower just in time for the lights to twinkle!
That finallyyyy concluded our long but amazing second day in Paris 😌
Our last full day, we visited Versailles. Versailles is definitely not a place that you can do in a day. To truly see it, you need to go at least a few days in a row, but it was beautiful regardless. It's difficult to really understand just how huge Versailles in its totality really is until you're there and it feels like it is never-ending. We spent several hours there, before realizing we needed to leave if we wanted to do other things! We took the bus back to the metro station, then to Champs Elysees. We didn't really have much time the day before to truly explore and I wanted to continue my Nike store world tour so we went to the Nike Paris store of course. We visited a few more shops before heading to the waterfront near the Eiffel Tower for a final mini night cruise on the Seine River. It was so cool to see Paris at night, first from land, then from the water. There were so many people out, dancing, hanging out, etc. We also passed by the Musée d'Orsay, which was actually the train station that was made for the Paris World fair in the 1890's; the same world fair where the Eiffel Tower was unveiled. (The Musee d'Orsay is below!)
Throughout my three days in Paris I was consistently impressed and in awe at the stunning architecture that was everywhere. Every single place we visited was just gorgeous. It was like what I thought Barcelona would be like, based off of what everyone was telling me before I went, but 1000x better; not hating on Barcelona but I wasn't as impressed as I wanted to be lol. I definitely wish that I had more time in Paris because there is so so much to see, and if you really want to take your time at each place, there is no way to do it all in three days.
After being in Europe and traveling around Europe for a little over a month now, I have noticed that I really do feel safer here. Even in Paris and Barcelona, I felt safer than I do at home in Eugene and Portland, which is sad. I feel like over here I don't have to be constantly worried about people being armed and racist. I also feel like the color of my skin isn't a deciding factor on whether or not I will get discriminated against. I wouldn't really want to live anywhere else other than the United States, but at the same time we need to get our shit together ASAP. Overall, I am really thankful that I got the opportunity to visit Paris and I am getting the privilege to see other parts of the world. Thanks mom and dad! 😉❤️
Photo Package Details:
1. Hall of Mirrors, Versailles
2. Versailles ceiling
3. One of the gardens in Versailles
4. Montmartre House
5. The Louvre and me
6. Mona Lisa!
7. Eiffel Tower by day...
8. Eiffel Tower by night :)
Other Embedded Media Details:
1. Boomerang; Arc de Triomphe
2. Video; Eiffel Tower at night
3. Boomerang; Musee d'Orsay from the Seine River
**More content from my trip can be found on my instagram highlights! Click the Instagram icon on my homepage, or refer to my contact page for links!**
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