Versailles by Day, Paris by Night

Looking back at photos of this day, I remember it to be action-packed and full of exciting and beautiful things to see.  Given that I am writing this several months late, I am regretfully unable to recall every single detail about the rest of my days in Europe.  But the feelings I get when I think about it are still as strong as ever, keeping me coming back to write about my experiences.

Day 53:

We got up early to meet Joseph, Tim, and the rest of their travel buddies at the subway station.  I remember getting frustrated because Paris subway ticket machines only accept coins.. no bills!  We'd always have to ask places to exchange bills for coins..and the McDonald's next to our hotel made us purchase something in order to get coins.  Gotta admit though.. their breakfast buns were amaaazing.

Anyway, we finally made it to the connecting train station to Versailles!  Can't recall the train ride at all... but when we got there, there was a gigantic line in which we had to wait to enter the palace.  Eventually, we were able to get the silly listening gear to do a self-guided tour while listening to different facts about the palace..I kind of dislike those.  I never have the patience to really listen.  But just walking through and seeing everything was quite interesting..tacky furniture and wallpaper.  Eventually I got lost from Stella and Cherilyn and could barely enjoy the Hall of Mirrors knowing that my phone was being faulty and I could potentially be abandoned for hours.  Nonetheless I kept it cool and found one of Joseph's friends whom I followed around for the rest of the palace tour.  The group met up again outside and we proceeded to the garden portion of the palace..my favorite!  We barely ventured deeper into the garden, as it would probably take more than a full day.  A sandwich and ice cream hit the spot as we ate on the grass.  We also decided to watch the afternoon showing of the *special* weekend fountain show.  So we sat.  The water in the main fountain turned on.  We watched.  Uh..Nothing else?  What.  No music?  No lights?  I guess that's it.. Oh, you Frenchies.  Conclusion: Montjuic fountain in Barcelona outdoes the fountain at Versailles any day.

We said our goodbyes and headed back to Paris.  On our way home, we decided to continue our productivity and see more landmarks before the day was over.  First stop: Eiffel Tower.  It really is huge.    Tons of people.  Illegal vendors.   Eating.  Chatting.  Wedding photos being taken.  Loved the activity level.

   

Then we headed quickly to the Arc de Triomphe before the sun set.  We barely made it, but it was perfect timing.  The sunset was there.  Red sky.  Lights.  Cityscape.  Beautiful.  I speculated.  I sketched.  Photographed.  Loved it.  Gotta admit that was a moment I won't forget.

 

We headed down to walk along the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.  McDonald's spotted.  Burgers and fries ordered.  Hey, at least it was a pretty fancy and clean one!  Keepin' it classy..with what money we had to spend.

Last stop on the way back to the hotel: the LOUVRE at night!  I was dying to see the lights on, so we made a stop there.  And it was so worth the walk.  Photos make it self-explanatory.  And hah, I still remember that crazy man going around and talking to people.  Other than that, it was a super nice view that I'm glad I didn't miss.

I can't remember if this was the night that the bug incident happened.  But let's just say it was.  We had been closing our windows on the way out every morning, but the cleaning ladies would leave our windows open after cleaning.  Little green aphid looking insects would accumulate.. and one night, when we arrived home.. there were MILLIONS in our room!  The concierge was a total jerk about it too, not letting us switch rooms (even though we checked the website and there WERE open rooms that night!).  He didn't even offer a vacuum..but instead he offered the RAID.  I was so agitated.  We ended up using the hotel room's towels and squashing green guts all over the walls to get rid of as many as possible.  Then we threw the spoiled towels in the hallway and asked for new towels from the jerk concierge.  Haaaa.  But we still had to sleep with buggies...

DAY 53 OVER.

art and rain

must. finish.


Day 52: 
So I have to admit, just the idea of waking up in Paris felt magical.  Maybe it was also because we stayed in a nice little hotel rather than a dirty hostel too.  After a good night's rest, we got up and headed to the Louvre.  Oh, Le Grand Louvre.  I.M. Pei is magnificant!  Seriously, photos of this crazy pyramid do not do justice.  I especially enjoyed being inside and under ground level seeing all the casted shadows.

Of course, the Louvre took hours of our day.  Art, art, art.  All I can say is that the Monalisa is overrated.  CROWDS of people were pushing and shoving just to see this little tiny framed and glass protected lady.  When Stells, Cher, and I made it to the front, we wiki-ed some information about her since we didn't have a tour guide.  Gotta love Wiki.  I think my favorite in there was the Winged Victory.  Sooo beautiful.

 

After a long morning in the museum, we headed over to see Notre Dame.  Seeing it live made us really want to watch the Disney movie, but we never got around to doing that..  Anyway, the inside was pretty amazing - the rose windows made all the difference.  We circled around the outside of the cathedral.  I remember joking and laughing about something really funny there.. don't remember what though (I really want to keep track of everything okay?).  We followed my book which took us to Ile St. Louis and of course we had to try Berthillon, the famous ice cream place.  It started storming like crazy as we were crossing the Seine River, so we hurried inside the parlor.  It was a perfect way to pass the storm :)

(Left to right: Paris' take on a "beach", haha! / Favorite part of walking in Paris.. cutest souvenirs ever. / Cute little boy chasing bubbles on the bridge :) We couldn't stop staring at him / Berthillon ice cream during the storm / Locks over the bridge <3)

We then headed over to meet Joseph and Tim along with their travel group to eat (I'm sad I don't remember the name of the place)!  We experienced our first RUDE Parisian man, who was super impatient with us when we were trying to decipher the French menu and also told other people who were coming in to leave when he had too many customers at once.  Crazy man.  But then we started feeling a little bad for him because he was the only server the whole night.  Meh.  Rude nonetheless.

That night was a bit cold and rainy, so we decided to head back to our hotel and plan the rest of our London travel plans.  I kind of miss laying like sausages on the bed with our macbooks out for hours :)

paris, the lovely.

Yes, I'm still determined to finish this thing.

Day 51:
Cher and I had to split from Stella on this day due to different flight times.  :(  Despite the fact that we had only gone to bed a couple hours before having to wake up for our flight to Paris, we managed to get up, make food, pack up, and finish writing postcards.  How, may you ask?  I honestly don't know.  This trip was always about packing in as much as possible, and booking it to the next stop.  So we booked it to the metro and caught our train to the airport.  Yeah, we were on the right train.  But we were still unfamiliar with Madrid's system that we completely missed our transfer stop (we had to transfer twice..) by a long ways.  We decided to get off finally, and ran to catch a taxi so we wouldn't miss our flight.  Of course, 'booking it', once again.  Embarrassing..but at least we got to a last glimpse of the city before departing Spain!

On the plane, I was extremely exhausted from lack of sleep.  But I felt anxious.  Nervous.  For Paris.  My first non-Spanish speaking trip of the summer.  I was always intimidated by the French.  I was scared and didn't want to leave Spain yet.  I was in my comfort zone of friendly Spaniards and I was about to enter a realm of what I have heard to be rude, inconsiderate, French people.  So I panicked.  I felt so silly, just sitting on this plane full of Europeans with my useless Frommer's guidebook open to the 'vocabulary and phrases' section.  Qui?  Quoi?  Où?  Pourquoi?  Quand?  Parlez-vous l'anglais?  Je ne parle pas français.  Suddenly, I opened my eyes and we had arrived.  I still didn't know any French.


It took a while to get accustomed to it, but Cher and I somehow made it through the day.  It took forever to figure out how to get from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris via tram, train, metro, etc.  Confusing.  We were smashed onto a train full of talkative Frenchies, and I was disappointed that I couldn't even make conversation if I wanted to.


Nonetheless, we eventually checked into our quaint little hotel room in Gare d'Austerlitz.  The hotel wasn't anywhere close to any huge landmarks, but our street was surprisingly decent.  We had a metro station right across the street, and tons of little restaurants and marts.  After a tiring morning, Cher and I decided to just webcam with friends at home and catch up with our own personal lives.  Stella wasn't arriving for a few more hours, so we just rested.  Later on we went out to eat a cheap Chinese meal next-door to our hotel.  So good at the moment, ha!  Stella eventually arrived, and we all just rested for the night.


Taken the next morning:

 

Balcony of our room :)

Our view.  ...heh?

Pretty much our daily morning routine in Paris (music, facebook, eating snacks, and getting ready for an extremely long day out)

still daydreaming

Hola, long time no blog.  Returning to the States and starting school has slapped me back into reality.  But it's funny - I still have dreams that I'm still in Europe.  Oh, I wish.

I'd love to complete this blog with as much detailed writing as possible, but sadly the longer I wait to write in here, the more I forget :( so I'll just have to do as best as I can to remember everything.

Day 50:
Good morning Madrid.  We started our day off eating in our sweet kitchen and making bomb dot com sandwiches (I miss those so much),  We headed out to tour the city with good ol' Rick - saw Puerta del Sol and other old parts of the town.  Madrid surely wasn't what I had expected.. it was actually quite the bustling town; nicely decorated buildings made up for their heights.  We walked and walked and ended up at Almudena Cathedral.  Inside was amazingly huge, and really quite different than any other cathedral I'd ever seen before.  Ceilings were colored and sparkly, stained glass was not traditional, and the organ was uniquely beautiful.

Standing in the center of Spain!

Afterwards, we stopped at its neighbor, the Royal Palace.  Of course, more amazingness.  And not so amazing violinist butchering 'Canon in D' over and over again.  It made me a little more excited for what Paris' musical streets had in store for me in the near future.

Lunch in Parque del Retiro.  Beeeautiful.  Our sandwiches made it ten times more enjoyable.

Of course we also had to visit the Reina Sofia and El Prado museums.  So much art-looking and so little time.  I was exhausted and eventually Cherilyn and I had to venture off to go walk around and shop in the city.  We also stopped by a Mickey D's for a mcflurry.. *guilt*.  But it was so worth it!  Spain mcflurries come with not only a topping but a syrup too!  So an oreo + chocolate mcflurry it was..

That night we decided to have a nicer, real meal as a 'goodbye' to Spain.  We tried El Caldero, a restaurant well-known for their paella (and delicious it WAS).  It was sooo nice to actually treat our bodies well for a nice sit-down meal for once.  We were also treated even better by our old Italian men neighbors and waiter..  photo opps, free liquor desserts, .. and a surprise farewell for Stella :P

Did I mention that before our classy meal, we stopped by 100 Montaditos for €1 caña and mondaditos?  Yes, we really did.

Anyway, it was late, but it was our LAST night in Spain.  We had to go out!  So, off to our favorite little club we went to meet Manuel for free beer/sangria again.  David the bartender also gave us shots on the house and lollipops.  Mark the DJ actually approached us for our names.  We were loved in Madrid, no? Eventually, we met Chileans who we would eventually spend our whole night with.  They convinced us to sneak in and follow their bar-hopping group..which led to more free alcohol.  So sweet.  We ended the night at Kapital, the seven-story club with the awesome fog/wind machine.  Our Chilean friends were kind and gentlemen enough to walk us home in the early a.m. and teach us hilarious Chilean phrases (which we put right to use with random passersby)!

"¡Andate a la mierda!" :)

I was sad to have to go to sleep because it'd mean I'd be leaving Spain, wonderful Spain.  But in the morning, I'd be off to Paris..

Barajas Airport, Terminal 4.  I like.

the sevillana never seemed so cool

Day 48:

Sevilla welcoming us :)

Next stop: Sevilla.
We trekked to our next hostel, The Garden Backpacker.  Again, super nice and everyone was friendly again.  There were way too many Asians (ahem, Koreans..) there though.  They even had Seoul's clock time on the wall, and someone had drawn a South Korean soccer player on the whiteboard.  Our Korean roommate made it clear she did not really feel like conversing with us, so we left her alone too.  Ehh, not a fan.  Plus, they completely hogged all the toasters and made like, eight slices of toast per person during breakfast.  So I ended up just eating plain bread and butter.

Seoul clock.  why.

Anyway.  Sevilla was a very easy city to sight-see.  We basically followed Rick Steve's again (best travel buddy ever) and walked around the old parts of town again.  I loved the drapes that hung from building top to building top, as they sheltered us from the scorching sun.  Amazing how cool it kept the area even during mid-day.  We visited the Alcázares Reales de Sevilla, originally a Moorish fort.  Again, more beautifully decorated Moorish architecture.

We continued touring a zillion more plazas in the town and got pretty tired.  I remember feeling the most dehydrated I've ever felt in my life.  After downing tons of water, we walked into the shopping area of the town..which was crackin'.  We sat down at a touristy restaurant and had a really crappy dinner, which included a poorly made paella.  Sorry to Stella, who had a bad first paella experience :(  But it felt good to sit down after another long kill-feet day.

We returned to the hostel and got a little more dressed up for our flamenco show!  We walked over and all bought Don Simon juice boxes due to more lack of fruit.  We're such dorks.  Got seated at the theater and ordered sangria!  It was really entertaining to watch the real sevillana, after imitating it in high school spanish 4.  How cool that we actually learned the same steps (although they looked way better doing it than we did..)!  Flamenco was so amazing.. how do they make it so intense yet so beautiful at the same time?

Day 49:

The next morning we headed to the Cathedral of Sevilla before our bus ride to Madrid.  We got to see the tomb of Columbus, and the craziest altars ever.  We also climbed to the top of the tower to catch a view of the entire city.  I love the rooftops in Spain.  People have swimming pools and cute little dining areas and stairs.  We barely had time to do anything else and had to rush to the bus station.

That evening, we arrived in Madrid.  I remember thinking it was perfect weather as we came out of the metro station.  The air was still warm from the hot summer day and there was a slight cool breeze too.  Way Hostel was right next to the station, which was extremely convenient.  This French guy helped us check in and he was really nice too (what's with Spain and friendly people!  LOVE IT).  Our roommate on the other hand, was a little bit TOO nice.  Hah, oh Dave.  Never got the hint to back off.  Anyway, we headed to the grocery store and made a delicious stir-fry filled with vegetables and chicken.  Then we indulged in fruits.  One of our favorite meals of our trip!  That night we went out and only had to wander for a few minutes before being swooped into several bars by promotors for free drinks.  I loved our neighborhood.  Sunset was one of our favorite places just for the people we met.  :)