+47: Paris Recap!

Before you read any of this, hit "play" on the video below, and listen to it in the background.





Sparknotes: PARIS IS FANTASTIC!


Wednesday/Thursday:
We left for the bus station in Galway at around 11 on Wednesday night to catch the 12:15 bus to Dublin, which took about 3 hours.
We got to the airport at 3 for our 6:20 flight...waiting ensued. After arriving at 9:30 Paris time (an hour ahead of Ireland), we navigated the regional rail system and the metro to drop our bags off at our hotel in Montmarte, which is an adorable neighborhood.
From there, we saw:

Some really cool nerdy graffiti:



Le Sacré-Cœur, a 19th century basilica, which is amazing in its own right, but also offers AMAZING views of the city:





Le Tour Eiffel:








We ate baguettes in the park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower for dinner. Obviously. Then we went to the Musee D'Orsay, which has mostly Impressionist and post-Impressionist works in it. It was a great museum, built in an old train station. Even better, though, is the fact that we got in for FREE with our Garda registration cards. Basically, a lot of museums in Paris are free for EU residents (not citizens, residents), which includes us. Ace, right?
We headed back to Montmarte and sat at a cafe around the corner from our hotel....that's when we found out that Courtney ended up in Belgium, but that's a completely different story.


Friday:


(musical accompaniment:


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We saw le Arc du Triumphe, then went shopping on les Champs-Élysées:




Then we met up with Willy, my philosophy TA from freshman year, and his girlfriend Caitlin, who moved to Paris a few months ago. They took us to this amazing falafel place for lunch, and then Willy showed Colleen & I around the city for a bit. We went to the park behind the Louvre for a bit, then went back to our hotel for a little while...then Colleen and I went to the Louvre. THE LOUVRE. There are no words that could possibly describe it. It's fantastic and amazing and I got lost more than once, but I guess that's to be expected:









At one point, I went to ask a guard for directions, so I went up to him and said: "Pardon, parlez-vous Anglais?" ("Sorry, do you speak English?"), and he looks at me and says "Mais vous parlez français.." (but you speak French!). I got flustered and told him that I only spoke a little bit, and he switched to English and pointed me in the right direction. Hilarious, really.

[Just a note on language: I got by pretty well with very limited French all weekend. And by pretty limited, I mean "Bonjour/Bonsoir" "Excusez moi" "Pardon" "s'il vous plaît" "oui" "non, merci" and "cafe au lait"--basically, I was very polite and well-caffienated.]

After the Louvre, we met back up with Willy and Cait and went to a bar in their neighborhood. I had this fantastic beer called Desparados--it's basically Corona with tequila in it, served with lemon. Yum!


Saturday:




We went to Notre Dame, saw the Sorbonne, etc. in the Latin Quarter:







There was this adorable philosophy bookstore next to the Sorbonne--if I had a million euros/ could read French, I totally would have bought all of the books.




Later, we met Courtney and Rachel, who also goes to HWS, for dinner at this cute traditional French restaurant by Notre Dame. Then they took us to get crepes by their hotel, which were sooooo good!






Aaaand, that's about all she wrote. Our flight (which we almost missed, honestly) was at 10:15, and we got back to Galway around 3:30. All in all, an awesome weekend!