Pari

The time came for me to venture out of lovely Spain and explore the rest of Europe. Where else to make my first stop except Paris, France.

We had a night flight on Friday and ended up making it to our hostel somewhere around 8:30 pm. Hungry and tired Julie and I put down our bags and ventured out into the French streets. Determined to eat anything but ham (jamon) and paella, we stubled into a nice mom and pop restaurant and sat down. I feel at this point I should tell you that my French is non existant. I litereally know how to say "hi & bye", "thank you", and "do you speak English?" Although Julie attempted we knew nothing of the language. Luckily our waitress turned out to be fabulous. I ordered some random dish which turned out to be a meat pate. I've had better dishes, but my Stella Artois was good and so was the homeade lemon tarte that she reccommended. At the end of the meal she thanked us several times, at which we inquired where we should go for night life. She referred us to a couple of places, but jetlagged we walked back to our hostel and went to bed,

The next day we decided to dedicate to Versailles. Too bad we got lost on the train for aorund 2 hours ended up on the outskirts of Paris in some ghetto area. But after some confusion we made and it was well worth the wait. The Chateau of Versailles was okay the Hall of Mirrors being the highlight for me.

This was built during the Bourbon reforms in wish excess amounts of money were sent on luxiers for the king his wife and mistresses. the Chateau was built  by Marie Antoinette's husband and is featured in the film with Kirsten Dunst.

Overall the house is just a bunch of rooms with self portraits and furniture. The Hall of Mirrors is a hallway wish various chandeliers and mirrors decorating the walls. In the windo you are given an excellent view of the gardens outside. The gardens were undoubtidly the highlight. Bright green and stretching for miles. Greek statues sprinkle them and people rowed boats in the man made lake. We walked for hours entranced by the beautiful nature. That night we went out to the bar recommended by our waitress. The played funk music and we danced with some French men. It was cool because above the bar they had symbols which the employees would play at the parts of certain songs. Upon leaving the club we saw our waitress smoking she said she was there with friends, we thanked her again.

The next day was Easter and since alot of things were closed Julie and I came to decision that we would just walk around the city. One of the girls in our hostel named Laura was by herself so we invited her to come along. She was Australian and had been traveling all over the world for a year. We walked to the Montremarte distirct. Here we went to a church (Sau Cre Cur?) and the Dali exhibit. Of course I enjoyed the Dali musuem because Iam fascinated by his surrelist work. Then we tried to go to Notre Dame but it was showered with tourists. 

On Monday we took the boat tour my roommates recommended. It visits all major sights in Paris by way of the Seine river. We visited the Saint Germain, and went to the Lourve.  Walking into the Lourve we learned it was 45 mins until closing and decided we would spend the reminder of our last day (Tuesday) at the musuem. That night we went to dinner with Laura had some nice conversation and went to bed.

Arriving at the Lourve on Tuesday we were struck with the bad news that it was closed!!! So to close off our trip we visited the Arc de Triumph and had an excellent lunch.

Overall I loved Paris I found it to much cleaner and quiter than Madrid. The people were nice (dispite what I've heard) and the food was surperp. We met alot of interesting people on this trip and I think I will elaborate on that subject on my next blog post. For this week I'm off to Italy for Spring break. Geeze this life is hard :)

Here are my pictures:

Here's a song I heard in Madrid but the accordian reminds me of France

Edward Maya "Stereo Love":