Paris!

Friday - Caught the coach outside the Great Portland Street station. The group was almost 40 of us - 11 of which were from my school group. The coach drove about two hours to Dover, an English port city .. I slept pretty much the entire way. You would too after only four hours of sleep. The coach was loaded onto a ferry, we ventured to the top deck for lunch. I looked in the ferry shop, where they sold almost every brand of perfume. I didn't partake. After a few hours, the ferry docked in Calais in France, we boarded the coach again for a three hour drive to Paris. Once in Paris, we drove around the Arc de Triomphe (which is in the middle of the biggest/scariest round-about in the world). We parked at a dock for sightseeing tours on the River Seine, right in front of the Eiffel Tower. Our tour guide Yan met us then, he was such a cool guy. We took an hour-long boat ride, which was kind of pathetic. All the sites I wanted pictures of were on the opposite of where I was on the boat.

After the boatride, we paid 10 euros to go to the very top of the Eiffel Tower. Poor Teresa and her fear of heights, she made it to the very top! It was just around dusk when we were at the top, and we missed the lighting of the tower. After going back to ground level, we walked back to the coach while trying to hoard off the gypsy/street vendors who will bug you to buy their souveniers to no end. We drove to the hotel, I roomed with Teresa of course. Our room decor was awesome - it was like a modern/60s mod/Austin Powers motif. We rested before going to Japanese food with the others, which turned out to be awful. Like typical French food - horrible food in tiny quantities for a ridiculous price. I was too tired to complain, so I went back to the room and changed into my jammies and watched French TV.

Saturday - Woke up, showered, went down to breakfast - scrambled eggs, sausage, baguettes, juice and coffee. I haven't had coffee since I left the States (I've been drinking only tea in England), I wasn't disappointed. We loaded to the tour bus, to visit the Sacre Coeur church (almost pure white), souveneir shops (where I started my search for a figurine of the Opera House), and then the Moulin Rouge (looks nothing like the movie). After getting some lunch, we went on the bus again to visit Notre Dame. Now I'm starting to get Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame soundtrack stuck in my head. We looked inside and took pictures, but didn't go to the top this time (line was too long). Looked at a line of street vendors' booths, still nothing with the Opera House.

On the coach again, we went to Palace and Gardens of Versailles which Teresa was super excited for. We spent an hour looking inside the Palace - I seriously was about to lose my baguette/Sprite lunch from all the gold/floral print decor. There was not a blank spot of wall in that entire place. To quote Lewis Black - 'I never really understood why the people of France chopped off Marie Antoinette's head, now I f---ing get it.' Outside we went into the gardens - which were completely dead. Teresa and I walked around for another hour and took pictures before heading back to the coach. The coach drove us back to the hotel, it was dinnertime and we were starving and our feet were killing us. We walked across the street to an Italian restaurant (a trip to France, and we eat Italian food). My tummy was happy and filled with spinach/ricotta tortellini. Back to the room and watch the Disney channel in French before going to sleep.

Sunday - Usual routine again with the waking up with showering and breakfast. Then we went to our rooms to pack our suitcases and vacate the room. On the coach, we found ourselves being few of the non-hungover people on the tour. We drove to the Louvre Museum, and it being the first Sunday of the month, it was free! We really just wanted to see the Mona Lisa, and a few others. We just went to one of the three wings and walked up and down some stairs and down some halls before realizing we passed by the Mona Lisa which was in one of the side rooms. You would think it was the paparrazi in there taking photos of the celebrities in there. The painting was roped off for 10 feets, everyone was taking pictures of it. My photos kept getting glare because the painting is behind bulletproof/vision-proof glass. Still an amazing site to see.

Once outside the Louvre, Shannon and Teresa wanted to spend the last hour getting lunch before we had to go back to the coach. At this cafe, you could down this opposite street the Opera de Paris, the site I really wanted to see. I opted to walk down the street (barely under a mile) to get a good picture of it. Walking back down the street, I popped into more souveneir shops, still finding no figurine. Finally, I found a shop that sold mostly porcelein/figurines. Finally, finally, FINALLY I found an Opera House figurine for only 10 euros! I was a happy little tourist.

On the coach, we journeyed back to Calais for the ferry. Before going to the port, we made a pit stop at a wine/beer/cheese joint. Shannon got a bottle of rose wine from Germany, Teresa got a bottle of white zin from France, I got a bottle of red wine from Italy. Each cost like 2 euros. Onto the ferry, after going through the border control with our passports (we didn't have to show our passports to get into France). Finally we docked in Dover, England and I slept all the way home on the coach. We made it to the flat at 10PM, where we found that Paw and Rebecca (our flatmates who didn't go to Paris), made Teresa a birthday cake. So sweet!


My legs are hurting, I'm still tired and, more importantly, my mouth and throat hurt from trying to talk in French. I will agree with anyone who say that France is overrated. Maybe they're snobby as well, but anyone I interacted with was really nice to me.

Just when I thought I've enough of Paris for the next few years of my life, right now we're booking EuroStar tickets to go to Disneyland in Paris next week. Egads!