In the land of the Crepes.....

I'd like to begin this blog by commenting how incredible it is that I am actually writing my blog the day after arriving from my trip to Paris. Anyways, that "parenthesis" (as the Spaniards would say) aside, here are some stories from my trip to Paris.

Before the trip: After two weeks of traveling and two sleepovers in the airport for our trip to London, I was a little tired. Blame the lack of sleep, the website (for sending me back to the first page every time I tried to change the page from French to Spanish), or my sheer stupidity, but Brenda and I ended up buying nine tickets to go up the Eiffel Tower at 1 p.m.....for three people. Despite the website's strict reminders that all purchases are final and refunds will not be granted, the customer service decided as a "goodwill gesture" to return the 6 extra tickets to the "sir" that could not navigate their website properly.

Thursday: Nothing out of the usual on Thursday (Nov. 15th). We just went to the airport and had another sleepover in the cafe by the check-in counter. We did have a rude awakening a little before 4 a.m. though by the cleaning crew. I woke up to a hoarse, deep, loud and slightly irritated voice saying "mujeres. MUJERES". When I stood up the man proceed to very rudely steal the two extra chairs I was using as a make shift bed without my permission. (hehe).

Friday: Well, since we booked our flights through two different airlines, we didn't realize that our Ryan Air flight to Paris left us in the booneys at Bouvais airport. When we arrived around 8 a.m., the machine to buy bus tickets to the city center wasn't working, so we ended up taking a shared shuttle that dropped us off at our hotel, so that wasn't so bad.

Tourism on Friday: Sacre Coeur and the picturesque neighborhood around it (there w
as a woman playing accordion and lots of people going around trying to paint pictures of us....and I had my first crepe with nutella. HEAVEN IN MY MOUTH.), UNESCO, The Louvre (which is SUPER confusing to navigate, by the way. Another fun fact: Hot chocolate from Starbucks costs almost 5 euros there), met with Paige for a bit, back to the hotel! When we asked the receptionist for somewhere good to eat near the hotel, he responded "May I recommend the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe"....neither of which is near the hotel. OOOOPS. So, we went to a supermarket and got some snacks to eat in the hotel and cashed in early.

Sacre Coeur

Cute little neighborhood by Sacre Coeur

Tourists at the Mona Lisa

Saturday: Saturday we got a start around 12 to go to our Eiffel Tower visit at 1 p.m. It was a little foggy but still absolutely worth it! Outside of the Eiffel Tower was an exhibition of Buddy Bears, which are statues of bears with designs from 140 countries that have the goal of promoting tolerance and peace. Here is a link to the website if you're interested! (Also had crepes here...)

http://www.buddy-baer.com/united-buddy-bears/world-tour/paris-2012.html

After the Eiffel Tower, we were really hungry and ate at a cute restaurant on the other side of the theatre. I had a "caesar" salad, which was delicious, but tasted nothing like caesar (not to mention had eggs and chunks of corn...something that probably should've made me a little suspicious upon reading the menu)

Saturday we also went to see Notre Dame (where we stopped for Crepes and to visit some souvenir shops. I splurged and got a Crepe with ice cream! SO WORTH IT) and went out for a nice dinner to celebrate Brenda's birthday. I had gnochi and a glass of merlot. So much class! We walked around for a bit and Brenda went shopping at H&M because we realized she didn't even have a change of close for her BIRTHDAY!

Kind of a given, but Eiffel Tower :)

My crepe with ice cream :D

The arm of one of the bears

Eiffel Tower by Night

Sunday: Sunday we were lazy bums again and left the hotel a little before 12 (big mistake, given our tourist activity of the day - go to Versailles). We went to the ticket office at the metro station to buy the one day pass that lets you go to the suburbs of Paris (Versailles, basically) and the airport. I first went up and in my broken French (more like Spanish with a French twist) to ask for the ticket, and the man didn't understand me. So, I asked if he spoke English and he said a little. When we explained the ticket we wanted in English he kept asking us "Are you sure? Are you sure?". We weren't really sure what our other options were or why he repeatedly asked that, but we just said "yes". We got to Versailles a while later (I want to say a little before 2 p.m....1:30 maybe?) after transferring trains at the Eiffel tower (and stopping for Crepes...again. This time it had strawberries!). Versailles is the MOST BEAUTIFUL place. Ever. Unfortunately, it is gigantic and given our short amount of time we weren't able to fully appreciate it's beauty, but we did get to see a fair chunk! Now to learn more about French history.....

We left Versailles around 3:30 p.m., took trains and metros to our hotel, grabbed our backpacks (which were hanging out in Timhotel's luggage storage all day) and then took the metro and train to the airport. We were confused when we got to Gare du Nord, because we didn't know which stop to get off at (Charles De Gaulle terminal 1 or Terminal 2) for terminal 3. Much to our relief, there was a map of the stops on the train that included terminal 3, counterintuitively on the stop with terminal 1. Then the jerks at security made us go get a "real boarding pass" even though our paper ones that we printed from our online check-in said "if you don't have checked bags go straight through security to your gate". Upon arrival in Madrid, we took metro to the Estación Sur de Autobuses to catch our 10:30 p.m. bus to Salamanca. PHEW. Lots of traveling for just a 2 hour flight. But every last bit was worth it. Including the whole getting into Salamanca at 1:30 a.m. thing.

Versailles

Versailles

Queen's bedroom

Until next week!
Besos