Paris!

Hello there! So, as you probably gathered from the title of this post, I went to Paris this past weekend.

Shannon, Jacque and I left on Eurostar at 8pm Thursday evening and arrived in Paris 2 hours later. After about 45 minutes of attempting to navigate the confusing streets of an unfamiliar European city, we finally made it to our hotel and crashed. Friday morning, we made our way to Notre Dame Cathedral. We toured inside the beautiful church then got in line to climb the 387 steps to the top of the tower where we could get a panoramic view of the city and say hello to those famous gargoyles. :)

It was a cold, foggy day so photos were not the most beautiful; only the bottom third of the Eiffel Tower could be seen from the top of the cathedral towers! After lunch, we did some souvenir shopping and walked to tour another big and gorgeous church. Next on the agenda was the famous Louvre museum. We had been told by other students in our programme that the Louvre would be free after 6pm on Friday nights if you were under 26 years old, so we headed that way around 5pm, but discovered that it was a bank holiday and so the museum would be closing at 6. No free tour for us! :( Instead, we got some delicious coffee and went back to our hotel to re-plan.

The three of us decided to get up early Saturday morning to go back to the Louvre and explore the galleries even though we had to pay the 10 Euro charge. It was still very much worth it--I mean, it is the Louvre! We spent about an hour or so looking around the Ancient Egyptian gallery, which was my favourite. We of course saw the Mona Lisa, and many other paintings and sculptures, then saw how Napoleon's apartments looked--not to shabby! We finished about 3 hours later so that we could head to the Catacombs, which required standing in line for 2 hours before we could make our way down deep into the earth, below the metro trains, and walk through the tunnels of old stone mines where the remains of about 6 million people have been buried. The bones of all these people have been stacked and arranged into walls in a sort of decorative way. It was interesting to see, but still creepy. After this tour, plus a stop for some Nutella crepes, we went over to the Eiffel Tower and took all our wonderful touristy photos like the one I have added to this post. We had dinner nearby so that when we finished, it was dark and the tower was lit up all beautifully. Before heading back to our hotel on our final night in Paris, we stopped at the Arc de Triomphe which was also all lit up and magical.

Paris was much more beautiful on a nice day like Saturday, but I still can't believe how dirty other European cities seem compared to London. There is so much more trash and the metro stations reek of urine!! It made me happy that I chose London to be the city to stay for three and half months! Three and a half months which are coming to an end quite quickly! Only 4 and a half weeks left! I have made a short list of all the things I need to see and do in London before I leave, and I will be gone the next two weekends with more travelling (Germany and my Host UK stay) so hopefully I can accomplish it all with the time I have left. Today, I went to yoga and then explored Covent Garden a bit in all its Christmas splendor. I also walked through Green Park this afternoon which is no longer very green. :) The ground is blanketed with leaves which I thoroughly enjoyed walking through. Back to my internship tomorrow which will hopefully go better this week; last week I was told by one of the social workers there that I need to talk more because it makes her think I don't like it there. She is one of those people who has a loud and shrill voice, so it is usually hard to determine whether she is angry or if it is just how she always talks. I tried not to let the comment get to me, as I do enjoy it there for the most part, when they give me decent work to do, and I do talk more when I am one-on-one with people, I am just a quiet person otherwise. Anyways, it just made me think about how I behave there and how I come across to other people I work with.

But anyway, I hope all is well back in the States. I will be back before we all know it! Then I will need to do more thinking about where to go after graduation! I just wish it was more clear what I wanted to do. But that is a discussion for another time...