I am super lucky to have friends who are cultured and are awesome at trip planning. paris. what i know of the city stems from the movies: moulin rouge and paris j'taime (and a little bit of anastasia). of course when monica said at the beginning of the summer, 'do you wanna go to paris?' it was a no-brainer: 'of course!' however, it wasn't until i was dragged around the city by the coffee-infused, culture-hungry kids that i actually found out what's kinda big news in paris.
be warned. this will be a massive entry.
So i crashed Amanda's awesome apartment while Monica and Drew holed up w/ Sunshine for the weekend. Can i just say living above a bakery is the best thing in the world? waking up smelling freshly baked bread is...indescribable. i felt i was in heaven! but not only was this bakery delicious smelling....it also sold wildly shaped breads! should i describe the novelty breads? or maybe i can just say that the apartment and the bakery were located in the heart of Paris' gay district. love it! there was always a commotion going on at all hours of the night. best locale...i am super jealous of amanda's sweet flat.
Saturday began at 7:30am (thanks drew and monica). good thing i could grab a croissant (oh god yum) and coffee! can i just say that i think france adds a gazillion tons more butter than any other place? the croissant was so tasty in my mouth. i almost didn't even realize how small my coffee was or how early in the day i was walking around the streets.
On my way to meet up w/ monica, drew, and katherine, i saw the beautiful siene river! bam. take that charles.
We all had agreed to meet up at the notre dame cathedral at 8am. smoothest europe meet up ever according to the katherine choi. sigh. another cathedral. i didn't actually know the notre dame cathedral was in paris...but i guess that makes sense since the characters in the hunchback of notre dame seemed french-ish (except for esmerelda). actually i think before mulan, everyone liked esmerelda in elementary school. go minorities. but i digress.
inside the cathedral. it looks a lot like the munster in freiburg *shrug* i think i'm jaded.
So after the cathedral looking around, we hit up a bakery and decided to chill at the side of the siene river. these were my favorite stops, the lounging ones where all we do is sit. i like sitting.
oh! i liked this! when we were crossing one of the bridges across the Siene, there were a lot of locks on the fence. like...hundreds. we thought: that's weird. but on closer inspection, most of the locks had the initials of two people written on them! locks...of looovveeee. we then thought: awwwwwwww so cute. we are girls after all. it was pretty cute though.
OK. so afterwards, we walked to the louvre museum. in all honesty, when the kids told me they wanted to see the louvre, i thought: is that a river? apparently it is not a river. actually i recognized this place because of the da vinci code, too bad the name didn't stick when i was watching the movie because if it did, i would have seemed a little more knowledgeable than it turned out. oh well. spilled milk. an interesting thing we realized while chilling in the courtyard was that french police people walk around with machine guns. um. yea. what the!
the pyramid things! nice? i actually don't know. i hear a lot of french people think the glass pyramids are eye sores. what's really cool though is that there are cool fountains near the pyramids. it was hot. good thing we can't read the signs that said no wading. the water was cold.
the best trips are ones with a lot of snacking. that's an ideal vacation to me. constant munching. we hit up laduree to get the fabled macaroon. i've never had a macaroon before. i sneaked a picture of the macaroons in their natural habitat before the lady yelled at me and said no pictures. it's amazing how much you can get away with for being a dumb tourist. i mean...even in greece this happened as well. if you just look like a tourist, people let you get away with a lot of things (and not just the taking pictures of macroons which is really actually only G)
yay! eating our multi-colored macroons. they're like skittles, but ... not.
so then we went to go see this big arc thing in the middle of this tournaround. it is called: arc de triomphe. i guess napolean thought he was a big shot (makes sense that he thinks this) and built this huge useless arc in the middle of traffic (though there might have been less cars back then). oh well. we take a picture in front of it because we are tourists.
So after the arc, we walked to the eiffel tower. probably the most crowded touristy thing we saw that day. there were soo many people. almost as bad as disneyland. we debated whether or not we wanted to go to the top,but then decided to skip it since it was super crowded and the line was a thousand some people deep.
so after walking a million miles, drew and monica decided to go shopping a little and pick up sunshine before dinner. so katherine and i decide to go furniture store hopping. on our way we see nicolas flamel street. win! i like going to see furniture, it makes me excited for the day i will be able to own my own apartment and buy awesome chairs that feel like you're sinking into sweet sweet oblivion. also. the furniture stores have air condition and it was hot.
so saturday was also monica's birthday!!! hey 21-st! look at that smile. what a champ.
oh. but sunshine pretty much wins w/ this. instead of getting more french food, we went asian. we all havent eaten asian food in super long, so we hit up a japanese/korean place. BI BIM BAP heaven. i miss spicy asian food and this was probably the most wonderful meal i had in quite a while (compared to the ready-to-eat dinners i buy from the grocery stores during the week in Freiburg)
so after breaking for the night, we met up Sunday morning at a more human hour. (well monica and drew went out early to go sight seeing somewhere)...but katherine, sunshine, and I met up w/ the crazy kids at 11 to go to the market, get crepes, and then hit up the Luxembourg gardens.
the gardens were beautiful and sprawling w/ just perfectly manicured greenery. the contrast to mit is staggering. and even boston the city itself. french people are way into how pretty things look.
We were lounging in the shade near the gazebo when we heard kids practicing for a chopin concert that was going to be held in the park later on that night. even the practicing was beautiful to listen to.
haha. group shot. i am tired of writing. so .. fin.
London eye +Big Ben
Getting ticks to see Phantom of the Opera!
At Portabello Road! Such cool booths.
Chilling on a double decker bus!
Oh Harry
Haha, madly tearing down the street to keep up with these mad marchers.
Umbrellas :) Katherine's by far the best signaller for lost children.
The host :)
Bubbly!
Mad cool cellar!
Vineyard!
Chillin at the Schnieder's cabin-house in the middle of their field! Best view on the hill!
Bella with her fancy camera--always taking pics!
I made chocolate-haupia pie without any measuring cups. what. up.
Jonathon!
Bella!
Monica!
Jon!
Leo!
Markus!
Nele!
Simon!
Aurelien!
