Paris

On Friday, it was extremely hard to wake up, especially since I stayed up packing till midnight and our bus was scheduled to leave at 4:30am. So, since we had to wake up to get on the Eurostar (the chunnel) to take us from London to France, almost everyone crashed on the bus and the chunnel. However, waking up to the country side of France was pleasant and very peaceful. Once we arrived in Paris we went straight to our hostel, which was extremely nice, to drop off our bags. I was lucky enough to be included in the room with 8 guys, but we had a lot of room compared to the other hostel rooms, as well as two showers and a bathroom! However, I didn’t find that out till later that night because check-in wasn’t until later. Once we dropped off our bags, a group of us led by Charles, an international student that from France, headed over to Notre Dame. It was the most amazing church I have ever seen. We went inside to take pictures and it was so vibrant with its stain glass windows that everyone was in awe. A few interesting things that we found out a couple of days later: it used to be an all black but they used lasers to grind off the hundreds of years of age, 2) the back is so heavy because of the stain glass windows that the Gothic aesthetics arm-like structures that reach to the church actually support it from falling down, and 3) in the 19^th century, Paris was going to tear it down to rebuild it but because of the book The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Paris thought it had become too famous, so they preserved it.

Following Notre Dame, Charles took us down towards the Louvre where part of The Da Vinci Code was filmed. It was so astonishing. We walked down through the court yard and had some ice cream while soaking in the Paris atmosphere. It was unlike anything else. The looks are identical to those seen in the movies, minus the magnitude of people. From the Louvre we walked to the subway to get back to the hostel because later that night we planned on watching the World Cup at the Eiffel Tower, France vs. Uruguay. The match was awesome and the Eiffel Tower not only lit up but had flashing lights, as seen in my picture. Afterward, we went back to bed and enjoyed the hours of sleep before our busy Saturday.

When Saturday came, a group of us headed for the Eiffel Tower area yet once again, but this time conquered it by climbing up the farthest you can, then hopping on an elevator to the top. Now, I’m from Dallas and have been on the titan at Six Flags and I knew the Eiffel Tower was higher, but I wasn’t expecting it to be this high! Even the Huge screen we watched the soccer game on seemed like a spec. It was so unbelievable to experience that view of Paris - much bigger city than I thought. We were smart and decided to take the elevator down this time, and broke off into our own separate groups. Michael and I decided to visit the Louvre which literally took us forever to just walk through. We actually had to rush to make it out within 3 hours due to the fact that USA was playing England, and we had to represent our country at the Eiffel Tower! There were seriously so many statues and paintings, my favorite being the Mona Lisa and the Greek mythological statues, that I recommend you have at minimum half a day prepared for the tour. And I also recommend you pay the extra 6 euro’s for the self guided tour because everything is in French so you won’t know what you are looking at. Also, as I already said, after the Louvre we went and cheered for USA and (unfortunately) ended up tying England. And, similar to the night before, we were so exhausted we went back to the hostel to pass out, but we did make a little stop at a restaurant to order some authentic crepes. it was an amazing way to end a long day.

Sunday, was filled with excitement! After barely waking up in time to hobble downstairs to grab some breakfast before it ended, I went back to the room to get ready for Mass at Notre Dame with the Morgan’s and other students. It was really interesting to hear the international service, which was not too different from my church since I am Lutheran except the exquisite beauty of Notre Dame and a few other details like the fact that it was in French and the process of the service. Afterward, a couple of guys and I ate some Subway, which so far if you have noticed I haven’t said much about the food mainly because I did not want to spend too much money, and Paris food is not really the cheapest, especially the way I eat. But once our Subway sandwiches were devoured, Michael and I again broke off to spend some time at the D’Orsay museum which I recommend to everyone! They have exquisite paintings and beautiful art work, and not as long as the Louvre, but make sure you go to both. And if you buy a museum pass for 32 euro’s you can go to any museum for free for 2 days. Another interesting part of the D’Orsay is a crime area exhibit. It shows you dramatic paintings of a darker/death feel to them as well as the change in the way the death punishment was enforced. It was pretty gruesome yet interesting when you see some of Van Gogh’s artwork. Right after the D’Orsay we bolted for the subway so we get to the hostel and back to the Eiffel Tower for a midnight bike tour of Paris called, the Fat Tire Bike Tour. Now I apologize for the length of this blog, but there is so much in Paris to see and write about, but I’ll sum up our tour because it felt like we saw easily 50 new different landmarks that would turn this into an encyclopedia. So, once we met our tour guide Bubba and finally started heading out we rode all over town, a few new interesting places to me were a bridge that has locks all over it that couples put there to symbolize their forever love, the bridge that was in the first Bourne movie, the bridge that was in the movie Taken, the statue of a flaming torch were Princess Diana died, and a multitude of buildings that I can’t even start to guess the names to. My point being that the Fat Tire Bike Tour is well worth the 26 euro’s, with student ID, especially the feeling of riding around instead of having to walk to enjoy the scenery. And unexpectedly we also were given a boat tour around the two islands in the Seine River, which was a lovely experience were we had completely different views points of most the places we saw while riding our bikes. So, once the boat docked back at our bikes, we rode back to the Fat Tire Bike Tour’s building, and then a few of us decided to take some “jumping pictures” as Callie called them in front of the Eiffel Tower. By the time we final were able to get the camera to take a good picture and get back to the hostel it was extremely late, we were all tired, and I had the best night of sleep that night. Now Monday was not that special because some of us were so exhausted from the late nights and early mornings; therefore, we literally sat at a few places around Paris after walking around some souvenir shops and just relaxed and watched fútbol. We would have slept in the room for longer but we had to be checkout by 10am, but it was nice getting a different feel of Paris, away from all the tourist attractions and “kicked back.” After we met up at 7pm to come back we took the chunnel back to London and a bus from London to Oxford, which I slept basically the entire time. Overall Paris was amazing, there is so much to do and see, but if I could recommend one thing apart from the main tourist spots in Paris, is to take a day to just relax, read a book, and absorb the feeling of Paris away from a touristy ideology. It is a completely different feel and I promise you will not regret it. This is Jeff Bartosh signing off, sorry about the “essay” I just wrote.