Hello everyone! Sincerest apologies for taking so long to blog. The last few places that we’ve stayed in have had bad internet connections, so I was never on it long enough to create a post. So since my last post, quite a lot has happened.
First of all, I’d like to give a shout out to Courtney Kimball. Courtney is one of my friends from school, and today is her 21st birthday. Happy Birthday Courtney, hoping it is the best one yet and wishing I could be there to celebrate with you!
Sooooo, where to begin. We did go to Lyon, France for a day before ending in Paris. When we got to Lyon, it started storming, so we ended up just walking around in the mall for awhile, getting some sandwiches for dinner, and spending time together in our hotel. We actually really enjoyed it even though we didn’t really see much of Lyon. So I’m sure it is a wonderful city, but honestly I’m not sure what it is like!
We only stayed in Lyon one night, so the next day we got on the train to Paris. I think getting to Paris was what really made being in Europe a reality for me. When you are walking past things like the Eiffel Tower, it really makes if feel real. Whaaaaat, I’m in Paris?? We arrived early on Friday morning, so we just dropped our luggage off at the hotel since we weren’t allowed to check in yet. I was so surprised at how cool it was in Paris! Most of the places we have stayed have been in the 80s. It was in the 60s most of the time with a lot of rain and wind, making it cooler than I expected for the time of year. We had a nice lunch at a French café, which was delicious. We then took a walk to the Notre Dame, which is stunning in person. We decided we were going to go back the next day for Mass. After getting settled in the hotel, we went to a famous museum called the Louvre. I think this museum holds something like 35,000 pieces of art work dating back to the ancient Greeks up to the 1800s. It was crazy to see how well people could sculpt back then, and how well these pieces of work have been preserved. This museum has the famous Aphrodite statue as well as the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa is actually quite small in person. It was funny, because on the other side of the room was the Wedding at Cana painting, which filled the entire opposite wall and was far more impressive. A lot of the art work consisted of different artists’ views of the death of Jesus, which was very interesting as well. We spent about 2 hours there, but you could easily spend the entire day in that museum – it is that big!
Saturday, we started off the day with another New Europe tour, which we also had done in Madrid. From about 11 to 2:30 we walked around Paris, hearing some incredible stories and learning a lot of really interesting history. Our tour guide was very quirky. She was from New York and has been living in Paris for only a year. She gave us an incredible tour and then told us afterwards that we were only her second tour ever! To give you an example of what she was like, she told us that she was going to count to three and then we should laugh hysterically to make the tour group next to us think she was really funny. She was very entertaining for sure. My favorite part about these tours is hearing the stories. Some of my favorites are as follows. When we walked past the Notre Dame, she told us about a barbershop across the street from it. If any of you are familiar of the story of Sweeney Todd, this was pretty much that story. Our guide told us that Sweeney Todd is a fictional story, but there really was a barber across from the Notre Dame who would murder his clients and sell their meat to a cook. Also, Henry the IV built this bridge across a river, and people were afraid that it was not safe. So to get people to think it was great, Henry had a party and invited all kinds of royalty. He also invited great artists to make art of the royalty at the party. These nobles were enjoying themselves a little too much, had quite a bit to drink, and so the art work the artists created were quite funny. All along the bridge still to this day are sculptures of the faces of these royalty, all of which looking quite fabulous as you can imagine. So after those faces were added to the bridge, commoners would come to the bridge to laugh at the royalty. The bridge ended up becoming popular after all J. A lot of really interesting stories came from World War II. One story in particular was about a general in Paris who got word from Hitler as the war was coming to an end that he wanted this general to burn Paris down – if Hitler couldn’t have it, then no one can. The general didn’t want to do this because he had come to love Paris. When Hitler heard that this general hadn’t followed orders, he threatened to kill him and his family if he continued to do nothing. So this general took all of the furniture out of his house, put it in a huge building with a glass roof, broke the roof open, and set it all on fire. This made such a big cloud of smoke in the sky, it fooled Hitler into believing that Paris was burning down. Basically, this general saved Paris, which is pretty amazing. Smart huh? The last story that I will share is just one that I found pretty funny about the Mona Lisa. One of the reasons it is so famous is because people have debated forever about whether or not she is smiling in the painting. Well, just recently it has been discovered that she is smiling about 70 % in the painting. How did they figure this out? There is a store in Japan that has a device that can tell how much their employees are smiling. This store wanted to make sure that all of the employees were smiling at all times, because friendliness increases sales of course. So they used this device on the Mona Lisa. Pretty funny J. I think it is so incredible how those little details from so long ago got passed down throughout all of these years. It makes all of these people and events so real to me, and I love hearing about other people’s stories. It is such a beautiful thing to see where they all come from and why things happened the way they did.
After the tour, we were going to have a picnic outside, but it started pouring just as we were getting groceries, so we piled into our small hotel room for a tasty lunch. We then went to Mass at the Notre Dame, which was very cool. The church has a very old, gothic style, which was very pretty. The Mass was a mixture of French and Latin, but luckily for us they had sheets to follow along that had the readings in English. After Mass, we went on a search for a restaurant that Katie’s brother had recommended for us that is supposed to have incredible crepes. After some good searching, we finally came across it. The crepes truly were phenomenal, so we are grateful to Katie’s brother for the suggestion! I had a coconut and nutella one, which I really liked. We sat outside at this restaurant for a while and enjoyed the ambiance.
I would also like to make a shout out to Katie as well, because she can speak some wonderful French! Even though most people could speak a little bit of English, she was so helpful with communication and helping us get around. She also knew a lot of great things for us to see. So thanks Katie, you were great J.
Sunday, we got up nice and early to get to the Eiffel Tower when it opened at 9. It was nice because there was a lot of people, but we didn’t have to wait very long to get up there. It has a first and second floor, and the very top of course. So we took the lift all the way up to the top, and the view was so amazing! The city of Paris stretches on forever, and you can see all of the important buildings from the top. Our tour guide told us that they were actually going to tear down the Eiffel Tower at the beginning because it was ugly, but I’m really glad they kept it!
Quick funny side note – the people on the streets who try to sell things to girls call them all Lady Gaga. So many times on the streets I got called Lady Gaga. Maybe I look like her? Who knows. Why do they call girls that? I will tell you…I have no idea!
After having a nice lunch in the park, we saw the Arc de Triumph, which was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. There is a flame in the middle of it in remembrance of those who have fought for France, which is really cool. After that, we walked along a street in France that is known for expensive shops. It was amazing to see how much clothes cost on in those stores. Yikes! We walked past an Abercrombie & Fitch that had a huge golden gate with bodyguards standing on the outside, and you wouldn’t believe how long the line was to get in! It was craaaaazy. After that we took a little rest at our hotel and while we did that, I got some pictures courtesy of one of my best friends Jen Simonton, who is being nice enough to share her photos with me. And for those of you who don’t know Jen, she is truly gifted when it comes to photography and editing. So once I get to Greece, I will put some pictures up here for you all to see. Shout out to Jen for the pictures – thanks Jen J. We did some more shopping within the smaller streets of Paris, and then got some dinner and ice cream of course. We then walked up to a basilica called the Sacred Heart, which was beautiful. We sat up there for a while, because you get a great view of the whole city and you can watch Paris light up as it gets dark. Some of our friends from school happened to be staying in Paris, so we got to see a lot of familiar faces on this leg of the trip, which was so wonderful. We then ended the day at the Eiffel Tower, which is all lit up at night. Every hour, it sparkles for 5 minutes. I did not know that the Eiffel Tower sparkled – it was cool! Our tour guide told us that the artist who added the sparkle affect in the year 2000 gets paid every time that tower lights up…you can imagine how rich that guy is!
Well, today we transported ourselves to the airport via metro, and I am currently sitting on a flight to Athens, Greece. I can hardly believe that I am already done with pre-travel and getting ready to start school! Time is already going so fast…I’ve already been gone 2 weeks. I’m getting very excited to meet up with the rest of our Greco-Roman group. We will arrive in Athens tonight, and have orientation at the school for the next couple days. I believe we start classes on Thursday, so time to get to work! We are really excited to get to know the Athens area and explore a bit, as well as do weekend traveling in Greece. Not going to lie, we are also excited to get settled in one place for a couple months! I think that this was a long enough post ;) pictures to come soon!
Peace and Blessings,
Laura
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