Paris and Paddy's Day

Hello all! I'm finally back from Paris (well, I got back at about 1am on Monday...)

Let me say first of all that there is no way in hell anyone would ever be able to cover even all of the main attractions of Paris in 4 days. Even though Annie and I started our days at 8am each morning and ended at 2am each night, we did not even come close to seeing everything, but we certainly did see a lot. I will give you a day-by-day breakdown of what happened:

Thursday: Upon arrival in Paris, we immediately found our hostels. Well, Annie found hers right away, and then we spent an hour or two looking for mine because it was on some tiny unmarked side street. After check-in, we made our way down to Cafe Luna for dinner and then up to Avenue Clichy to see the Moulin Rouge and the rest of the sex district. After our tour there, we attempted to make our way over to the Arc de Triomphe. I should mention here that if you ever go to Paris and you run into women who are asking you if you speak English, you should either ignore them or look confused and shake your head. If you answer yes, they will hand you a card and hound you for money. I was advised of this before I went, and I'm glad I was because the place was swarming with them. Anyway, back to the story: Being the cheapskates that we were, we didn't want to take the Metro everywhere so we decided to walk. It turns out that Paris is an extremely large city and the distances on the maps are deceiving. Not only that, but we had a really hard time navigating around that area so it took us a good three hours to finally find it, take pictures, and walk back. We finally returned home with plans to wake up at 7.
Total walking time for Thursday: 7 hours

Friday: After waking up at 7, falling back asleep, and getting up at 8, we took our time getting out of the hostel and finally left at 10am for The Louvre. This meant taking an hour stroll to the Arc de Triomphe, taking daytime pictures, and then walking down the Boulevard de Champs to the museum. On the way, we ran into some really awesome structures, such as a monument reminiscent of the Washington monument, but with heiroglyphics on it (turns out it was a gift from the Eqyptians, as we would later learn) and a fountain. We took more pictures and then proceeded into The Louvre, which consists of walking through a pretty large park before actually getting there. We then spent 9 hours exploring paintings by the Italians and French, as well as sculptures by the Egyptians and Greeks and other artifacts. I was able to see such famous works as the Mona Lisa, Orphan Girl (for all of Motter's Philosophy students out there!), and the Nike of Samothrace. We also had the opportunity to see a few paintings by Monet, which were absolutely breathtaking. It was unfortunate not to be able to read about any of the works, as everything was in French. That being said, The Louvre was the experience of a lifetime. Even though we spent so much time in the museum, we really only got to about 1/4 of it (if that) but the things we did see we were able to explore fairly thoroughly. After leaving The Lourve we went to dinner and did some more exploring around the city and then back to my hostel, where we again arrived at 2am.
Total walking time for Friday: 11 hours

Saturday: After waking up nice and early yet again, Annie and I left the hostel at 9 because we had big plans for the day. We ate breakfast outside at a little cafe (very French of us) and then made the long trip to Notre Dame, stopping along the way at the Republique. The walk to the Notre Dame ended up being about 2 hours, as we got sidetracked for about 20 minutes at some little shops. When we got there though, the walk had been well worth it. We were able to take a free tour through the massive cathedral, which was just amazing. I'm not sure if I can put into words how incredible that church was. I suppose I'll let the pictures do the speaking for themselves. Post-tour we decided to stay for the 6:30pm mass, which was all in French, but being raised Roman Catholic I was able to follow along reasonably, so that was cool. After mass we took a walk along the Seine looking for boat tours for the next day, and then headed to the Eiffel Tower. I would like to be the first to say that I have a weird obsession with it, because I must have taken 50 pictures of the tower alone. It really is glorious at night though. We had the chance to see it do its little light show that it does every night. We only took a quick visit at the tower before taking the two-hour walk home, since we wanted to have some energy to go up it the next day.
Total walking time for Saturday: 8 hours

Sunday: Sunday morning we met up at 8 at the Moulin Rouge and took our last visit to the Arc de Triomphe before our tour of the Eiffel Tower. We only had to wait in line for the tower for about 20 minutes (I think we just got there early enough) and took the elevator up to the second level. We were disappointed that the very top was closed due to construction, but I was secretly happy because the second level was definitely high enough for me, and we weren't even halfway up. Looking out into Paris from the tower was probably the highlight of my trip. The city stretched on for forever and there was so much to see. I think that one of the cool things about Paris is that it lacks the skyscrapers of the American cities; instead, you can see out for miles and buildings just kind of pop up in random places. It really is a sight to see. We spent about an hour up on the second level taking pictures and then decided to take the stairs down instead of the elevator. That scared me more than anything even though we were caged in. I had previously described to Annie that being on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower was "cartoonishly high" and that it wasn't as scary. However, upon climbling down the tower, I found myself gripping the rails tighter and tighter because I realized just how high up we actually were. Needless to say, it was a relief to step onto the pavement. We then took some pictures in front of the tower and headed down to the Seine for our boat tour. It was alright, but we realized we had already seen everything that they were showing us. We did enjoy being able to sit back and relax on the boat, although we both ended up a bit sunburned from it. After the boat trip we hopped on the Metro back to the Le Palais des Congres de Paris in order to catch our shuttle to the airport. After a hellish trip home (not something I would like to relive on this blog...) we finally made it back here.
Total walking time for Sunday: 6 hours

Total walking time in Paris: approximately 32 hours

Yesterday was Paddy's Day, as you probably all know. Whoever said the Irish don't do Paddy's Day was an absolute liar, because I have never seen a crazier celebration. I won't go into much detail unless asked to, but essentially the day boiled down to us getting up at 7:30 for car bombs and beruit (the other Americans here call it beer pong but that's wrong, obviously. There's an ongoing debate about it.) and then the parade at noon. Though the parade was unimpressive, the Irish definitely took the drinking part of the holiday seriously, as did we. Post-parade I went back to bed for a bit, woke up around 4, went back out to some random party, came home, drank like 3 liters of water, did an assignment, Skyped my family (I was sober), and went to bed. It was a long day.

Anyway, that's about it. I have 4 albums from Paris up if you want to check them out.

Album 1: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010347&id=1083330009&l=8687117449
Album 2: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010350&id=1083330009&l=757e5146dd
Album 3: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010363&id=1083330009&l=6e4a00960e
Album 4: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010365&id=1083330009&l=6ef7a602d3