Paris!

After a slightly depressing Thanksgiving in Edinburgh (I never realized how much I appreciated being home and with family for the holidays) I jetted off to Paris early Friday morning to meet my friend Sarah for a fantastic weekend. It was my first time flying completely alone, so I was definitely nervous flying into Charles De Gaulle as it's enormous, but we managed to find each other and take the train into the city!

The only French I know is very basic (what I remember from my short stint as a French student between the ages of 8-10) so I was limited to very basic greetings, merci, and au revoir (although if someone needed me to count to 39, I could have done so). Luckily, the majority of people we encountered spoke very good English, so the language barrier wasn't too challenging.  On Friday, we found our hostel and set off to see the city.  Paris was so much bigger than I had anticipated! We managed to see the Bastille, Notre Dame, and the Palais de Justice on the first day, and even got crepes! I had a banana and Nutella crepe, and it was so messy, but so delicious.  After spending all day outside, we went to the Louvre that night.  It was so exciting to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, and all I could think about was the Da Vinci Code. Although we spent several hours in the museum, it was enormous and only got through a portion of the exhibits.  After a late dinner in a restaurant right next to the Louvre, we called it a night and went back to the hostel.

We had tickets to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower early the next morning, so we planned on taking the Metro.  Well, when we were about 3 stops away from the Tower, the train stopped and didn't move for about 10 minutes.  In broken Spanish, a woman on the train told us that there weren't enough people on it, so it was going to stop.  When sitting on the train trying to figure out what to do, it ended up going back to the previous stop! We realized we weren't going to make it to the Eiffel Tower by train any time soon, so we got off and started to walk, with only 15 minutes to make it.  Luckily a cab drove by and we managed to make it on time. The Eiffel Tower was incredible. It was enormous and going to the top was so cool! It's not possible to get a sense of the size of the tower until actually there, and I was shocked at how huge it was. After the Eiffel Tower, we strolled down the Seine, saw the Place de la Concorde (the site of the infamous guillotine), and then went to the Arc de Triomphe and strolled down the Champ-Elysees and did a bit of shopping.  There's tons of traffic around the Arc but no traffic lanes, so it was an adventure watching angry and aggressive French people drive around the circle. Our last stop of the day was the Pantheon which was also beautiful.

Our first stop on Sunday was the Sacre Coeur Basilica. This was one of my favorite buildings in Paris as it was beautiful and had amazing views of the city. After exploring the Basilica, we went to see Moulin Rouge, and then to Pierre Hermes for macarons! Although the desserts looked incredible and I could have eaten everything in the store, I settled on four flavors of macarons: rose, caramel, chocolate, and chocolate hazelnut. The chocolate was definitely my favorite. We took our pastries to the Luxembourg gardens and walked around those for a bit, and then did a bit more sightseeing before we went back to the airport.  The flight home was certainly an adventure because of snow in Edinburgh, and after a 2 hour delay in Paris, being diverted to Glasgow, sitting in Glasgow for a few hours, and finally bused back to Edinburgh and virtually dumped on the side of the road, I eventually made it home at 5 am.

Paris was a beautiful city and I'm so glad I went and was able to see all of the main tourist attractions. I was nervous throughout the trip though because security around the major areas was very intense, and it was a constant reminder of terrorist threats. Despite the security and the awful trip back home, Paris was beautiful and the trip was wonderful.