Since my blog about Dublin was extremely long, I decided to split my Paris trip into three blogs. Hopefully this will make it a little easier to read and easier for me to write. :-)
I was so excited to be going to Paris over the weekend. Really I had wanted to go to Paris since I was probably 7 or 8 years old, but after leaving Africa I didn’t really think I would ever get to go. Even when I was planning on going to Scotland, Paris wasn’t on my “list of things to do.”
The week leading up to my trip to Paris was definitely the hardest and probably worst week of the semester. I had a comparative politics paper about democratization due on Thursday before I left, which would have been bad enough, on its own. But, I woke up Monday morning to work on my paper and found out I had an anthropology paper due the week BEFORE. Not OK! In my whole college career I have never missed a major assignment or test. I might do poorly on weekly assignments, I may not always do well on tests, but I pride myself in doing well on papers(partially through the grace of easy paper grading at Baylor and the editing skills of my mom, but still….) So, after a slight freak out I wrote the paper, got 25% automatically taken off, and ended up getting the lowest grade on a paper I’ve ever gotten. But then I went to Paris! That makes the horrible grade not seem quite so bad. I was a little worried it would be hard to enjoy Paris after only getting about 5 hours of sleep from Monday to Thursday.
I flew on RyanAir to Paris, they’re known for flying out of random airports in obscure little towns, which was the case this time. I walked to the bus stop at 2:45 in the morning, got on the bus at 3:30, then two bus rides, one flight, two metro rides, and eight hours later I was in Paris, still not at my hotel. I wandered around the city for two hours and asked about ten people for directions. I kept trying to listen to people walking by to see if they were speaking English or Spanish, and in desperation, stood really close to some Africans hoping they were speaking Swahili…they weren’t. I ended up going in completely the wrong direction and a lady told me I’d have to get on the metro again, and then I ended up right back where I started, opps. I saw a group of people standing on the street drinking mate,(a traditional drink from Argentina and other countries in South America) I have no shame…I went over and started speaking to them in Spanish and asked them if they could help me find where I was. They at least got me started heading in the right direction. I finally found the hotel and it was really nice.
By this point I was completely exhausted, so I took a nap and then made myself get up to go to the Louvre because they have free admission for young people(18-26) on Friday nights. I have really great luck when it comes to meeting slightly creepy guys almost anywhere I go, kind of like the time some guy in Zanzibar asked the missionaries I was with how many cows he would have to give them to marry me. Of course, as soon as I got to the metro stop some guy came and sat next to me, and in broken English told me I was very beautiful. I said thanks….and thought, please go away. No such luck, Abdullah, from Mali wanted to take me to get coffee, um…yeah sure, not! I told him I was meeting a friend, he said we could get coffee first. He ended up following me off the metro at the next stop and finally I just had to say, good bye, I’m going this way, I’m not getting coffee with you, you’re going that way, good bye! He wanted my email address, why? So we can email each other after you stalked me for five minutes and I have no desire to see you ever again? What a great way to start my weekend in Paris. But then I was off to the Louvre minus creepy Abdullah.
The Louvre was much more amazing that I thought it would be! Its huge and even the building is a work of art. I just wandered around the Egyptian exhibit, the European Sculptures, and Napoleon III’s apartment, which was completely brilliant. Everything was gold plated and colorful and sparkly, this would turn out to kind of be a trend in Paris. My friend Katie was supposed to be meeting me at a Café later that night when she got in from Edinburgh. But we ended up just meeting at the Louvre, what a perfect place to start your weekend in Paris. As soon as she got there we went to find the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Then we went outside to see the Pyramid and walk around for a little while. We found what we thought was the Arc de Triomphe, it was pretty, but a lot smaller than I thought it would be…well turns out it was the Arc de Triomphe de something else. Haha, another trend of the weekend, almost everywhere we went we said, “What is this? This is what we’re looking for, right?” we went back to the hotel to go to bed so we’d be ready for our first full day in Paris.
The week leading up to my trip to Paris was definitely the hardest and probably worst week of the semester. I had a comparative politics paper about democratization due on Thursday before I left, which would have been bad enough, on its own. But, I woke up Monday morning to work on my paper and found out I had an anthropology paper due the week BEFORE. Not OK! In my whole college career I have never missed a major assignment or test. I might do poorly on weekly assignments, I may not always do well on tests, but I pride myself in doing well on papers(partially through the grace of easy paper grading at Baylor and the editing skills of my mom, but still….) So, after a slight freak out I wrote the paper, got 25% automatically taken off, and ended up getting the lowest grade on a paper I’ve ever gotten. But then I went to Paris! That makes the horrible grade not seem quite so bad. I was a little worried it would be hard to enjoy Paris after only getting about 5 hours of sleep from Monday to Thursday.
I flew on RyanAir to Paris, they’re known for flying out of random airports in obscure little towns, which was the case this time. I walked to the bus stop at 2:45 in the morning, got on the bus at 3:30, then two bus rides, one flight, two metro rides, and eight hours later I was in Paris, still not at my hotel. I wandered around the city for two hours and asked about ten people for directions. I kept trying to listen to people walking by to see if they were speaking English or Spanish, and in desperation, stood really close to some Africans hoping they were speaking Swahili…they weren’t. I ended up going in completely the wrong direction and a lady told me I’d have to get on the metro again, and then I ended up right back where I started, opps. I saw a group of people standing on the street drinking mate,(a traditional drink from Argentina and other countries in South America) I have no shame…I went over and started speaking to them in Spanish and asked them if they could help me find where I was. They at least got me started heading in the right direction. I finally found the hotel and it was really nice.
By this point I was completely exhausted, so I took a nap and then made myself get up to go to the Louvre because they have free admission for young people(18-26) on Friday nights. I have really great luck when it comes to meeting slightly creepy guys almost anywhere I go, kind of like the time some guy in Zanzibar asked the missionaries I was with how many cows he would have to give them to marry me. Of course, as soon as I got to the metro stop some guy came and sat next to me, and in broken English told me I was very beautiful. I said thanks….and thought, please go away. No such luck, Abdullah, from Mali wanted to take me to get coffee, um…yeah sure, not! I told him I was meeting a friend, he said we could get coffee first. He ended up following me off the metro at the next stop and finally I just had to say, good bye, I’m going this way, I’m not getting coffee with you, you’re going that way, good bye! He wanted my email address, why? So we can email each other after you stalked me for five minutes and I have no desire to see you ever again? What a great way to start my weekend in Paris. But then I was off to the Louvre minus creepy Abdullah.
The Louvre was much more amazing that I thought it would be! Its huge and even the building is a work of art. I just wandered around the Egyptian exhibit, the European Sculptures, and Napoleon III’s apartment, which was completely brilliant. Everything was gold plated and colorful and sparkly, this would turn out to kind of be a trend in Paris. My friend Katie was supposed to be meeting me at a Café later that night when she got in from Edinburgh. But we ended up just meeting at the Louvre, what a perfect place to start your weekend in Paris. As soon as she got there we went to find the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. Then we went outside to see the Pyramid and walk around for a little while. We found what we thought was the Arc de Triomphe, it was pretty, but a lot smaller than I thought it would be…well turns out it was the Arc de Triomphe de something else. Haha, another trend of the weekend, almost everywhere we went we said, “What is this? This is what we’re looking for, right?” we went back to the hotel to go to bed so we’d be ready for our first full day in Paris.
2 comments:
i LOVE this entry. I'm so happy that your first bit of time in Paris was so fun! And also--your blog is way more interesting than writing my papers. Love.
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