Ah Paris...

First of all, I can't believe I only have one more weekend of travel before I am home again!  I can't believe how fast this trip is flying by.  Paris was a long, wonderful weekend.  I hope you have some time, because it is a long story!  Our train left Midi Station at 11:30 on Friday morning.  It took about an hour and a half to get to Paris and everyone ended up booking different hotels around Paris so we split up to go check in.  Erin and I found our hotel and boy was it a piece of work.  The man at the counter was very nice, but barely spoke english.  He told us that a study abroad group had come the day before and we no longer had a room with 2 twin beds, but a double bed.  He very much stressed the point that we got the double bed room for the same price!  We told him that wasn't going to work and he told us to go upstairs and look at the room.  So Erin and I hiked up 6 flights of stairs to the very top floor to our room.  Did you know that heat rises?  Well it certainly did in this hotel!  The room was BLAZING and the bed looked like it was probably from the early 80's.  Erin marched downstairs and told the man we were not staying there and asked if he could find us another place to stay.  Mr. Man got on the phone and called a bunch of different places and they apparently told him they were all booked.  Meanwhile we had gotten in touch with our friends who were staying somewhere else and their hotel told them they had twin bed openings!  We asked Mr. Man if there was internet in the hotel and he said, "yes, come on back!"...the internet for the whole entire hotel was his computer behind the desk!  So we went behind the desk and made reservations at a different hotel, it was a completely awkward scene, haha!  We made reservations at what we thought was the same hotel as our friends.  Turns out, there are more than one Median Hotel in Paris!  But this hotel was MUCH nicer than our other one and we really enjoyed it there.  My name even showed up on the tv!

Friday evening, the Louvre was free for people under 26 so Erin and I headed to meet our friends there.  As luck would have it, our phones we received all ran out of money and we weren't able to get in touch with each other.  We eventually ran into random people from our group walking around the Louvre!  If you have ever read The Da Vinci Code, you know all about the glass pyramid, and I actually got to see it!  It is really cool, and I even saw the inverted pyramid inside!  The Louvre was pretty cool.  It was way too huge to get around in one evening so we saw some of the major things like the Mona Lisa, The Raft of Medusa, and The Virgin of the Rocks.  I thought these were really cool because I studied these specific paintings in my art history class!  It was really neat getting to see the real things.  After we left, Erin and I went with some of the guys to eat dinner since we hadn't eaten anything since breakfast!  One major difference between Brussels and Paris is the price of food!  Fries cost 4.50 euros in Paris...and a coke costs 5.50 euros!  We were all really surprised.  After dinner we headed over to the Eiffel Tower.  Every weekend the Eiffel Tower puts on a light show and people go out on the lawn and sit to watch it.  On our way there we met a group of students studying abroad from BYU and talked to them for about 2 hours.  It is always really nice when you meet people who are in the same boat as you.  You get to share experiences and stories...and they all end up pretty much being the same!  The light show was cool, but we were all so tired by this point that after it was over, we went back to the hotel and went to bed!

Erin and I woke up at 9 on Saturday and were waiting for 2 of our friends to meet us at our hotel to go to the Palace of Versailles.  While we were waiting we walked into a town 2 minutes away and found a really nice restaurant that was serving breakfast.  We went and sat down and the waiter was really nice.  He brought us 3 pastries for breakfast.  One was just a plain croissant, another was a raisin/lemon pastry, and the third was a chocolate filled pastry.  He also brought some DELICIOUS coffee and fresh-squeeze orange juice.  The coffee was SO good and so was the orange juice!  Erin and I just sat there and watched people until our friends showed up!  Getting to Versailles only took us about 20 minutes...and then we had to stand in line for about an hour to get tickets to get in!  This was probably my favorite part about Paris.  Versailles is incredible!  When you walk in the gates, it's just this huge open area surrounded by a really huge mansion!  The open area is full of cobblestones...but not just any old cobblestones- they are actual rocks of all different shapes and it is so hard to walk on!  You literally have to watch where you are walking so you don't trip on the stones!  We went through the gardens first.  I don't think I can full explain how it feels to be standing next to this huge mansion, but looking out over the large mass of land that belongs to the Palace.  It seems to go on and on forever, and every single bit of it is beautiful.  When we got there, it was kind of gloomy and the gray sky made the green grass and trees stand out so much more.  We walked down for at least a mile and ended up taking a trolly back to the Palace.  Inside was just as amazing as the outside.  No description or pictures can do it justice!  The paintings on the walls make you think that someone had to be in that house every single day for years to pain everything that was there.   My favorite was the hall of mirrors, probably because I have heard a lot about it in art history and other classes in high school.  It was so cool to actually be standing there.  The mirrors are really hazy from age, but you really get a feel for just how rich Louis XIV was!  Again, it was not possible to see all of this house in one visit, so we saw what we wanted to see and headed back to Paris.  By the time we got back it was already 5pm so we went to Notre Dame Cathedral.  Simply put, Notre Dame is beautiful.  We didn't get a glimpse of the Hunchback, but maybe he was getting ready for mass:)  Unfortunately we didn't get to climb to the bell tower because they closed the line before we got there!  I guess I will just have to go back at some point:)  We decided to trek over to the Sacre Couer Basilica which sits on top of a hill and overlooks all of Paris.  When we went inside, what a surprise!  They were having mass and the nuns (dressed in full nun wardrobe!) were singing!  It was really cool getting to see that.  When we were leaving we ran into some other people from Clemson and went and ate dinner with them.  Afterwards we went back towards the Basilica and found a really cool spot to watch the Eiffel Tower light show!  A bunch of the guys bought a couple bottles of wine and when the light show was over, we, along with hundreds of other tourists, sat on the steps leading up to the Basilica, drank wine and watched the lights come on in Paris at night.  It really was an awesome night and such a pretty sight.  Around 12 we all dispersed and went to our separate hotels.  On the way back, Erin, David, Shawn, and I happened to enter the metro station just as some guy was caught pickpocketing some people!  It was a fiasco.  These people had this guy pinned to the wall and were going through all of his pockets pulling out the things he had just stolen from them!  I was so freaked out I walked towards the wrong metro line!:)  Erin told me we had to go the other way- right past the pickpocket dude!  We were waiting until he left, and as soon as the people let him go, he whipped out his knife from his pocket and started screaming in french.  He was really drunk though and eventually just left the metro station.  It was crazy getting to experience that and definitely made me keep a closer eye on all of my things!  It was interesting way to end the evening!  Back at the hotel we turned on the tv and found CNN!  Hallelujah for American television!  We watched CNN for about an hour, catching up on the news and sporting events.  It was great!:) 

Sunday morning, Erin and I woke up and found that our breakfast place wasn't open, but saw a line leading out of a Patisserie shop and decided to go  there.  What a culture shock!  I knew that many families woke up early on Sunday's and went to the bakeries to get bread together, but here I was seeing it with my own eyes!  Of course the owners of the store didn't know english, so I got to try out my french!  I got what I asked for which was really cool because it means I asked correctly!  It was really cool getting to order in french!  We took our croissants back to the hotel and ate, then packed and checked out.  We headed over to Champs de Elysees and the Arc de Triumphe.  We walked out of the metro and there it was right in front of you!  It was huge!  We took our picture in front of it and went shopping.  I found this cute jewelry store run by this old man who actually made the necklaces I bought!  They are "real stones" he kept saying and he was so nice:)  I'm glad I found something unique to Paris because I feel like it is such a big city that you can get anything there pretty much anywhere in the U.S.    The next part of this story is for Granddad.  The place where the jewelry store was also had a Starbucks.  Of course I couldn't pass that up!  It was seriously calling to me:)  So I went and ordered a cafe mocha- in french!  I think it is so cool that I ordered a Starbucks drink in french!  After Starbucks we headed to the train station and met up with everyone and headed back to Brussels.  It was a really great weekend and I am so glad that I got to experience Paris!  I will definitely have to go back though, because there are still things I want to do and see...there is no way to see and do it all in 2 days!

This week should be pretty eventful.  Tomorrow we have one class in the morning- IS.  Tuesday is a full day of psychology, but we are taking a 30 minute train ride to a really big university on the outskirts of Brussels and our professor is taking us to a pub for lunch so that should be pretty cool.  Wednesday is a field trip to Antwerp and Thursday is a field trip to the Stock Exchange.  It is really going to be a busy and fun week!  We aren't really sure where we are going next weekend but I'm sure, being the last weekend, that it will be something fun!  I hope you enjoy all of the pictures from this weekend!  I love you!