Day Two: Perfect!

Today was our first full day in Paris and after a good nights rest we were ready to go!

The hotel we stayed out was really nice and even had free breakfast! I think chocolate spread is popular in France, it was right there with the jam and honey next to the croissants. I have no problem with chocolate for breakfast. Our schedule for today was Saint Chappelle, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, Montmartre and the Moulin Rouge. The metro system in Paris was great; it really made things so easy! As soon as we walked up the stairs from the metro stop we were surrounded by beautiful buildings and cute little café’s on every corner. Right in front of us was Saint Chappelle, so that’s where we started. I didn’t know what it looked like; it was just one of the suggested places to go. When we walked in side my breath was literally taken away and almost brought tears to my eyes, I feel a little weird saying that, but that’s really how beautiful it was. A cathedral completely covered in stain glass windows. This was only the first stop; we walked outside and found the Palace de Justice with the words Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite written on the outside of it. I thought about how perfect it was that I was in Paris after just finishing my paper about democratization and using the French revolution as an example.

We went off to Notre Dame and ended up getting there right in time for mass. We walked around and we completely amazed, once again, by how beautiful it was. We decided to sit while mass was going on, the choir and organ were beautiful. How cool is it to be able to go to mass in Notre Dame? I didn’t really know what was going on because it was all in French and I’m not catholic…but it was still a great experience.

It ended up raining most of the day, but thankfully for us, coming from Scotland we were used to it! Everywhere we went people kept saying, oh, it’s really too bad that the weather is so bad this weekend. But the past two weeks in Scotland had been pretty absolutely miserable, wind that could literally knock an old man down, rainy, cold, oh and now it gets dark by 5, great…so a little drizzle in Paris was nothing!

We found a little café to get lunch in. The café was empty which didn’t seem like a good sign, but it was also cheap! I think every little café and restaurant I saw in Paris was nicely decorated and really cute, even this one that didn’t look like it should be particularly nice. We got ham and cheese sandwiches, but they melted the cheese on the outside of the bread. It was probably a heart attack waiting to happen, but it was really good. Our motto for the weekend was, “hey, how many times are you in Paris?” Meaning we ate a lot of cheesy things and a lot of chocolate things.

In the afternoon we went to check into our new hostel, Friends Hostel. It was definitely not as nice as the stayed the night before, as soon as we stepped off at the Metro stop I clutched onto my purse extra hard, tried to look a little intimidating and walked through a swarm of people speaking all different languages past an open air market and made it to the hostel. From there we walked about twenty minutes to Montmartre to find the Sacre Coeur. Walking through this part of Paris was definitely different than where we had been before, but I liked it, it was kind of run down, and kind of shady, kind of felt a little like home :-) wherever that is. When we got to the Sacre Coeur something else happened that I think was a little unnerving to Katie, but for me, again…possibly made me feel a little at home. We walked up the steps to the grassy area to begin our hike up to the Sacre Coeur and there were all of these men selling necklaces. We were ignoring them, but they kept talking to us and when we didn’t respond, one of them, who was apparently Jamaican started yelling at us about Jamaica and black power and telling us that Jesus was a black man. Then he said something about stupid Americans, we hadn’t even said a word, how did he know we were American?

The Sacre Coure was, just like everything else, beautiful. The view from the top of the hill, from the Sacre Coure was great; we could see what seemed like all of Paris, except I still hadn’t actually seen the Eiffel Tower yet. We went from there to the streets of Montmartre. According to Wikipedia many artists had studios or worked around the community of Montmartre such as Salvador Dalí, Modigliani, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. There are still artists who paint and will draw sketches of tourists on the street. There were lots of little shops, cafes and art museums, and crepes! We stopped and bought crepes with nutella (chocolate spread) and looked through all the shops.

When we were walking though Montmartre we passed a Mime on the street, but he wasn’t a very good mime, or a very nice mime. Obviously, I like to take pictures, so I wanted a picture of the mime. I thought 10 cents would be enough to donate to his cause; he didn’t look like he was too desperate for money. He was not happy with my 10 cents and made an ugly face, but that made me mad, so I didn’t give him any more money!

My friend Cole, who spent last spring in France told me that I had to go find the Moulin Rouge, so that was our next stop. We walked through a pretty…interesting…part of town to get to the Moulin Rouge, but I think it was worth it, its part of the history of Paris, right?

I had been in Paris for almost two days and I still hadn’t seen the Eiffel Tower or the real Arc de Triomphe, so after dinner we went to find them! I would say they were both more impressive in person than in photographs. At night the Eiffel Tower is lit up with blue lights and on the hour it twinkles like a Christmas tree!

After walking around for a long time and feeling very tired from our full day we headed back to our hostel. We were staying in a four person room, which meant we would have two roommates. When we got back to the room it turned out a guy from Pennsylvania teaching English in France was staying in our room. It was fun to hear about France from an American who had been spending time with French high schoolers in a different part of the country. He told us two days was definitely not long enough to be in Paris and that we had to come back again, it was a nice idea, but I lack the funds and time. He also told us that we were very brave to be travelling around Europe on our own, he said, “you’re really brave, even to be here right now.”(Referring to our hostel in the slightly sketchy part of town.) Our fourth roommate still hadn’t appeared, and as the three of us got ready to go to sleep we joked about being annoying and snoring, but all assured each other we were quiet sleepers. Well, at about 3:30 in the morning, the fourth roommate made himself known! His snoring sounded like a chainsaw, it took a lot of prayer and self restraint not to throw something at him! After at least an hour I finally fell asleep. So, reminder for the next hostel I say in, bring earplugs!