Merci. Fromage. Bourré. Mouchoirs...Bonjour, Paris! ;)

Paris was just a dream. The best kind of dream. The kind that makes you force yourself back to sleep in hopes that if you fall asleep quickly enough the dream will resume. Or the kind that if you fail to fall back asleep, you just lay there for 30 minutes reliving each moment over and over again. AH. So enamored. I’m going back.

WELLLLLLLLLLL. I arrived at Paris de Gaulle airport around 13:00 Thursday…scratch that, I arrived at 12:30 because for once in my life my plane was AHEAD of schedule. Good thing I had to wait til 17:30 anyway for Alex and Kelsey to arrive, thanks for nothing EasyJet Airlines!!! Hahaha really though, I coulda waited there all day long, listening to people around me speak French. It is absurd how much I enjoy the French language. Anyway, Alex and Kelsey arrived, I spotted lil’ ol’ Alexaaaa and got so so so SO elated and ran up to her for a massive hug! I could not believe I was about to explore such a beautiful city with my favorite person in the world c:

Alex, Kelsey, and I embarked on this journey via Couch Surfing…a network that allows you to connect with people who will let you stay at their place for free. Sounds shady, ya? (That’s why I didn’t tell you, Parents!!!) But in all honestly I don’t think the experience could have possibly gone any better, and I don’t think our experience of the city itself would have been the same without our hosts. It was a group of 4 French guys in their 20s who shared a HUGE flat. We met them Thursday evening and then they took us to a local place for dinner (12 euro was the cheapest meal…quite the change up from 2 euro drinks with tapas in Granada!) but it was DELICIOUSSSS. I hadn’t had a proper meal with real pasta in awhile!! They also showed us how to use the subway and took us to the area in Paris with a lot of cool pubs. We didn’t stay out too late the first night but it was a good little intro to the city.

The next day, Friday, we girls woke up around 10 because we were gonna catch the free walking tour of Paris at 11! [SIDENOTE: Alex claims that she heard me talk in my sleep IN SPANISH!! Look at how good at it I’m getting!...The words I was saying are irrelevant, the fact that I’m subconsciously speaking Spanish is what counts…] But we couldn't embark on the tour without a cute ass breakfast of coffee (or in my case, hot chocolate) with pastries! Walking the streets of Paris was quite the site. When I got to Granada I had thought THOSE streets were cute but these were just as narrow and cozy but also with a touch of...sophistication? I dunno, you decide:

 

The tour started at fontaine Saint-Michel (Please ask me to pronounce this in French one day and I will gladly oblige. Repeatedly.) which was a pretty fountain whose purpose was apparently to distract the peasants from other atrocities going on in the city. We continued past Notre Dame, saw the prison where Marie Antoinette was held captive, walked through the ENORMOUS Louvre, walked across a precious bridge with a bunch of love locks (couples bring locks with their names on it, lock it onto the bridge fencing, then throw the key into the river...CUTE!), the Eiffel Tower, a million and a half statues of Napoleon all erected by Napoleon, and all this we saw along the Seine River. It was such a good tour and so interesting and our guide was the besssssst. We ended the tour near the Eiffel tower, where we 3 girls had a picnic which included wine and cheese.  Here are some photo memories:

Fontaine Saint-Michel

The Louvre

View of the Seine River

Love locks!

Le Petit Palais

Can never get enough Eiffel Pictures c:

That evening the guys whipped out a crepe machine and proceeded to make up crepes for dinner. Oh my goshhhhhhhhhhh I could have continued eating those all night...but I obviously didn't wanna immediately come off as a fattie...so I held myself back at 5 crepes, HA. OOH we got introduced to a spread called speculoos, its basically shortbread in a spreadable form and its SCRUMPTIOUS AS F (Kevinito take note, because Alex and I have decided it will become a staple for baking this summer!). Also, I am sorry to say that there exists no photo evidence of these crepes, because Alex and I did not stop to even breathe when we were doing work on those crepes. YUM. Later that night we bought the guys some beer and proceeded to teach them some American drinking games and they taught us a French one. Ahahaha how's that for learning the essential parts of a culture? We also wandered the city a bit, only to return back to the flat because we had been enjoying the drinking games so much. It was a hilarious night and it was crazy to realize how lucky we got to stay with a group of such awesome guys :)

The next morning we packed up, hugged our friends goodbye, then went out into the city for a bit more site-seeing before our flight back to London. We walked by Moulin Rouge which was cool to see (I had wanted to go see a show but apparently they start at 80 euro…) and continued on to le Sacré-Cœur which was beauuuuuuutiful. I stopped by a souvenir shop to get everyone in my fam fam a lil sumpin sumpin, :), and then we went to catch our flight to Londonnnnn.

Man, what a trip. I learned some French!!! I could probably feign a conversation with a French citizen… but only if it involved saying “please”, “thank you”, “I’m sorry”, “tissue”, “you’re welcome”, “toilet”, “exit”, or “cheese”…and no other words. But it can be done!!!! Haha I took advantage of our French hosts by asking them every 3 seconds how something is said in French, but they were very patient with me, and dare I say, were also appreciative/greatly entertained by my attempt to learn the language and mimic their accent. I am absolutely planning on taking the Intro French class once I get back to Grinnell! Ahhhhhh. My host mom always makes a joke about how she too had the best time in Paris with her daughter and they tell each other “we’ll always have Paris” a la Casablanca. I can now empathize with the statement. c: 

And just because I don’t think the quantity of smileys in this post exemplifies how much I enjoyed Paris, here are some more!

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