Paris, je t'aime

kitties!!

Well, as many of you know, I spent last weekend in Paris!! My "aunt" Suzi (she's actually my mom's cousin, so whatever relation that is to me, but I call her my aunt) flew out from Chicago to meet me there, so I was pretty excited. In case you were wondering where that picture of the cats came from, it came from my Aunt Debbie's camera, which she so kindly lent me since I broke mine in Istanbul. Thanks Debbie!!!!

I had unsuccessfully planned a trip to Paris three times already this semester, so I was stoked once one finally worked out. We met at Charles de Gaulle airport early Saturday morning and then headed to our hotel! We only got lost once, so I thought we were pretty successful. After dropping our bags off and wandering around for a bit, we decided it would make the most sense to go to Disneyland that day, so off to Disneyland Paris we went!!

Disneyland Paris was a lot of fun. I was really excited for it because I have been having Disneyland withdrawals. It was kind of strange because it looked almost identical to Disneyland in Anaheim, although they were lacking a French Quarter (duh). There were other slight differences, like the fact that there were approximately six rides, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. We went on Pirates, which was Captain Hook themed instead of Jack Sparrow, Peter Pan, which was basically the same, except they had two rooms over London instead of just the one, and it's a small world, which was actually different. They didn't have a whole room for each country, it was kind of just everything packed into like, three rooms. And they included a LOT of countries. They even had the Loch Ness monster in there!!! I was pretty happy to see that. And then we wandered around for a while trying to find somewhere to eat. The restaurants were all different - they had one that was Hakuna Matata themed and another that was Colonel Hathi's Cafe (he's the elephant from the Jungle Book, in case you had forgotten). Unfortunately they were all either packed, closed, or didn't have food I would eat other than pizza. We ended up at this place called "Cinema Mickey" where we dined on club sandwiches while watching old Disney cartoons like Steamboat Willie and Mickey's Garden. It was actually pretty neat.

Sidenote: Disneyland Paris happened to be celebrating their 20th birthday. You know who else just celebrated their 20th birthday? MEEEE!!! So that was also awesome. 

After a long day at Disneyland Paris (okay, it was only a few hours, but we were both exhausted from traveling and such) we headed back to the hotel for bed.

Sunday morning we started our bus tour! We stopped at the Eiffel Tower (duh) where we were greeted with a 3+ hour long line to ride the elevator to the top. Being the top-notch athletes that we are, and because we really didn't want to wait three hours, we decided to climb the stairs. It was a lot of stairs, but definitely worth it. The view was amazing! And now I can say that I've climbed the Eiffel Tower!

After our Eiffel Tower adventures, we decided to take a river cruise on the Seine. The cruise took us past all of the hotspots in Paris - the Louvre, the Notre Dame, and Alexander III's bridge, among other things. Once we finished our cruise, we were a bit hungry, so we got some crepes from a street vendor and ate our crepes while gazing at the Eiffel Tower before heading back to our bus tour. It was pretty exciting (and also extremely touristy, but whatever).

The next stop on our bus tour was the Musee Rodin, which was really cool. We noticed that many of the sculptures in the museum were donated by Rodin himself. It was there that I decided that I, too, will one day become a famous sculptor and donate my sculptures to a museum that is dedicated to me. It's going to be great. You just wait and see. We also wandered through the gardens at the Rodin, which were really beautiful, and apparently the location of two of my cousin's weddings. I'm definitely looking forward to that!!

After the Musee Rodin, we headed off to the Musee d'Orsay! The Musee d'Orsay was originally a train station before it was turned into a museum. It definitely looked like a train station. I took a picture of the main hallway and then got yelled at by a security guard because apparently you were not supposed to take pictures inside. Oops? After the Orsay, we headed back to the hotel for dinner and went to bed.

Monday morning we took a taxi back to the Eiffel Tower in hopes that the line for the elevator would be shorter. It wasn't. In fact, I think it was longer than the first time we went. We ended up catching the first bus at the Eiffel Tower and took it to the Louvre! The Louvre was crazy cool. There's just so much history in it! I loved it! First things first, we went straight to the Mona Lisa. It was actually packed with people trying to get pictures. The Mona Lisa itself was surrounded by what I presume to be bullet proof glass, which was surrounded by not one, but two wooden barriers separating it from the massive crowds. It was still pretty neat to see, though.

Once we got our pictures, we headed down to what was probably my favorite part of the Louvre - the Ancient Egypt exhibit!! While at the Louvre, I learned that I love almost all things Ancient Egypt. There were two floors dedicated to the Ancient Egypt wing, and you can bet I wandered through the whole thing. Something about Egypt just fascinates me. I have no idea what it was. But I loved every second of it, especially seeing the Great Sphinx!

After leaving the Louvre, we headed to what was probably one of the most interesting places we went to this entire trip - the Chocolate museum. This little museum in Monmartre was chock full of information about chocolate. We also got to see how they make their chocolates, which included free samples, AND some hot chocolate! Their hot chocolate was really interesting. You would get a cup of hot milk and then a cube of whatever type of chocolate you wanted (I chose dark) and you dunked the cube of chocolate into the milk and it melted into a cup of deliciousness. It was pretty awesome.

We then took the bus tour all around Monmartre which led us to see things such as the Moulin Rouge and the Paris Opera House. After we passed the Paris Opera House the first time (which occurred the first day we got there) I could not get Phantom of the Opera out of my head. Every five minutes I would just go "the PHAAAAAAAAANTOM of the Opera is theeeeeere.... inside my mind." So yeah. That happened. We went out to a nice French restaurant called Gallopin for dinner and then headed back to the hotel to Skype people. At least, we tried to Skype people. Sometimes they ignored us, or they had to go mow the lawn...

That pretty much sums up Paris! I just realized I forgot to write about Bari. Oops. Maybe I'll do that one later. For now, you can read about my exciting adventures in Paris, which is far more thrilling than what I was going to write about Bari anyway... after all, who wants to read about being stopped by the police and eating the most delicious gelato I've ever had in my life?

That's all for now! I'm off to Cannes and Prague next week, so there will be plenty more blogs to come :)

Love you all!!
Mel