Paris...3 full incredible days

So this post will be rather long to tell all my stories but we spent 3 full days in Paris so there are many to tell! :) (and I took over 300 pictures lol..which are being posted as I type this, ps it was foggy the whole time we were there incase you notice no sunshine in the pics)

Friday: We left for the airport at 6:10am. We got to Paris by 1 and had a really long drive into the city. We checked into our hotel and then were finally allowed to get food. That sucked because we had not eaten since 5:30 that morning and it was around 3:30 in the afternoon. But me Suzanne, Allison, and Stephanie went to a little cafe down the street and got some amazing food. We attempted to order in french...and ended up paying a fortune for bottled water lol even though we wanted tap water. But I got a ham and cheese sandwich thinking i knew how to say that in french but they had it listed as totally diff words...which made it difficult. But once we ate we went back to the hotel to get on the bus that took us to the Louvre. We got a tour around the museum which was amazing but a little rushed. We saw the major things like the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. It was pretty impressive but they say if you just spend one minute at each thing it will take you over 3 months to get through the whole place. So we hardly saw any of it in reality. After we had seen what we wanted we were on our own to do what we pleased. We went outside and it was dark by then and we took pics of the Louvre all lit up. And walked a bit and saw the Eiffel tour(Tour Eiffel) all lit up which was incredible. After that we walked home but stopped in a little cafe to get crepes which were pretty good but really expensive compared to ones we had later in the trip. Then we decided to call it a night and walked home...but had one more adventure. We ended up walking home through the red light district(sex shops etc) on our way haha oh boy. But we got to take pics in front of the Moulin Rouge which was pretty frikin awesome. The tickets to get in were 50 euro!(not that we were going to go in we just found out). Then we went back I took a bath...since my room didn't have a shower? odd I know. end day one!

Saturday: We got up and had breakfast at the hotel. They had mini baguettes, ham, cheese, cereal, hot chocolate, tea, etc....so once we got done eating we went back up got more and snuck some sandwiches out for lunch haha...can you blame us it was free! Then we had a bus tour at 11 that took us around to see all the major sites of paris like the Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomph, Champs-elysees, the opera house, places where famous people like Marie Antoinette were killed. They let us out at the Tour Eiffel and the Arc de Triomph to take pictures and walk around. There were guys trying to sell souvenirs at the place we stopped to see the Tour Eiffel and they were very annoying. They didnt go away even when you told them to in multiple languages lol. After trying in french and getting frustrated English seemed just as effective..meaning not haha. They chased Suzanne around and would leave her alone which was pretty funny for us but annoying for her. It was pretty impressive and it dropped us off at Notre Dame. At first I didn't like that idea because we were so far from home. But it turned out great because we were closer to everything and got to do more and walk less! We went in and walked around Notre Dame for a bit then went out back in the park behind it me, suzanne, allison, and stephanie sat on a bench and ate our free lunches while feeding pigeons lol we named two of them, stump and flo stump only had one leg poor thing and flo was huge but i have no idea where we go the name haha. Then we walked around some shops by Notre Dam and I got a pretty scarf. Then we got crepes from a street vendor who made them right in front of us. They were sooooooo good yum I want one everyday. I just got ones with nutella in them which is like a hazelnut chocolate spread. After that we atempted to find Saint Chappell but could not for the life of us figure out how to get in it so we gave up. After that we made the very long walk to the Musee D'Orsay. along the way there were tons of street vendors everywhere. There were so many incredible paintings that I gave in and got 3. The first two were under 3 euro each but the last was very large and it was 35 but I got to haggle with my first street vendor and got him down to 20 euro which I felt was a great price. I was also proud of myself for doing it at all so I decided it was a good purchase.(I took pics of all of them so you all can see what they look like!:) I will need to frame them when I get home.) The museum had tonnnnns of famous paintings it was surreal being that close to some of the paintings I grew up seeing posters of but now it was the real deal. They had most of the paintings by Monet and Degas just to name a couple. Then it was getting late so we decided to look for food. We ended up coming across a little italian place. We thought it looked good and was decently priced considering we were in Paris. I got a lasagne that was incredible and I don't even like lasagne, but it was the cheapest thing and one of the only things without mushrooms(champignons). When we left we had a bit of trouble figuring out how to get back to the hotel but we did just fine. We chilled in our rooms for a bit then went to a cafe down the street to get wine and sit and people watch. I didn't get any wine since I don't like it and felt the money would be better spent elsewhere. But sitting with the girls and watching the cops take a smoke break while blocking traffic was tons of fun. We decided french cops take smoke breaks the way American cops take donut breaks. We stayed out till around midnight then went back to the hotel for the night. Very busy but incredible experience.

Sunday: We got up and again had breakfast and stole some for lunch...we are rebels oh yes. Then Stephanie and I took the metro down to Notre Dame again. She wanted to stop in some other stores we didn't get to go in on sat. After that we tried to find Saite Chapelle again and we did! It is the most amazing cathedral ever. I remember loving it when we studied it in my art history class but those pictures(and mine) just do not do it justice. There are floor to ceiling stained glass windows for almost the entire building. It takes your breath away when you walk in. I took some choppy videos on my camera to try and capture it. They will be posted with the pictures. It was one of the highlights of the trip. Then we took the metro to the Tour Eiffel and walked under it around it etc and sat in the park just next to it and ate our lunch with the best view we could have asked for straight up at the Tour Eiffel. We got hit on by a french guy who spoke no english, even though we were pretending not to speak french lol. He seemed to think he could figure it out anyways. He asked our point of origin and nationality, both of which I played stupid too pretending I didn't understand wanting him to leave. But then I told him USA and he asked if we were from NY or Chicago..prolly every large city he knew how to say. When i said Kansas he looked confused. So I made a hand gesture to imply small and said very small in english even though it almost came out in french since we were speaking french every where else. Then he said "I don't speak little english" lol so after that we just laughed. Then he asked our names and we said we didn't have any and that got rid of him haha. It was entertaining. After that we caught the train to Versaille. It was about a 45 minute ride. There was a couple sittin on the train with us and the literally made out the ENTIRE time Stephanie and I were cracking up because it didn't even seem like they came up for air. Once we got to Versaille I was not impressed. It cost way to much for what you got. But I'm glad I can say we went. We walked around there for about 2-3 hours. Then we came home on the train and metro. We stopped at a cafe and got cheese burgers because we were sick of sandwiches. Then we tried to find Sacre-Coeur but we had trouble finding it so we met up with Suzanne and Allison to get one more crepe before we went home. Then it was time to get back on the bus for the airport. We got back to Cork around 2am monday!!

Hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures. I included lots of details because this is serving as my journal while I'm here so I want to be able to remember all the details and funny things that happened.:)

Paris Expenses for 3 days:
food/crepes:36 euro
Souvenirs:34 euro
Entrance to sites:24 euro
hotel deposit and converter:20 euro (got 15 back when we checked out of the hotel)
total for 3 days in paris: 99 euro..not bad if you ask me :)