The city itself was not what I expected. Everywhere you turn, there is a large building of some form of importance. Statues could be found anywhere. It's not too hard to find some landmark.
With that said, the city itself was very dirty. There was a very large amount of grafiti and the streets themselves did not get cleaned. London is a very clean city, which makes Paris look even worse.
Friday night, we had an office party after work to celebrate a few key decisions made by my superiors. I got proper drunk that night, and didn't get much sleep. Suffice to say, I had a hard next morning on the train.
My housemate April (above), and I went together to Paris together. She didn't know anyone else going. Once we got there, she found some fun girls and we went our own ways.
Our hostel was ... the worst place ever. I call it the Stairmaster Inn, because we had to climb 4 flights of stairs plus a spiral staircase (which some girls found to be quite challenging to get their luggage down from). Our rooms were 3 hours late, and we were only given one key. ONE for 6 people!
We took a trip around the city. Got a number of great pictures at places like Notre Dame. I even saw a street vendor selling vintage playboy. I was going to buy it, but not at the ticket price.
Bree, Karli, John, Andrew (friend of Bree and Karli), Tina and I went to the Eiffel Tower on the first night. I walked up to the second level, then took the elevator to the top. The city skyline is quite beautiful at night.
We took the last elevator down, and decided to walk home, as the Metro was no longer running, and we are cheap bastards. I figure that it would be more fun to walk home and see the fun exciting scenery. We saw some ameteur flame .. dancing people. Not sure what they call themselves, but it was just a bunch of people dancing with flame. They weren't busking, but were just practicing. We got about 20 minutes of that, then walked more.
Walked through what I expect to be the pee bush, as we smelled some pretty rank stuff when trying to take a shortcut. We really should have gone around.
We saw a number of buildings on the way home. I don't think we really knew the exact way home, but it didn't matter. We got home in about 2 hours, but saw a lot of great things we wouldn't have seen.
Sunday morning, we tried the showers at our hostel. You had to push a button to keep it on. It was not fun, and made it hard to shower. Our breakfast was quite good. It looked like they were starting to make up for their crappiness. The hot chocolate woke me up for a few hours.
We went to the Palace of Versailles in the morning. The gardens were absolutely stunning. A huge area with many gorgeous landscapes. I met Jessica here and we had a blast talking to each other. Didn't take me too long to know she's not my type, but still really cute.
At a pond in Versailles, we caught a duck fighting with a huge carp. I tried to catch it, but was a second late. Sorry.
Later, we went around and saw a lot of fun things like the Louvre. We saw a lot of nice pieces, but I was quite tired by this time. No sleep really didn't really help.
We ate at a nice cafe in the older part of town. Definately a tourist area. It was a nice romantic dinner. Yep. Just me and 4 other people. It's a romantic dinner, just so I can scratch that off my list of things to do. For the record, Jessica was my date (not that she had a choice in the matter). I had escargot for supper. Lets just say that I was a bit hungry afterwards. I don't really suggest eating Escargot. It's not that it tasted bad, it's that it was just garlic and butter. It was an experience.
We went on a walking tour at night. We saw the church of Sacred-Ceure (or something like that), and ended up at the Moulin Rouge as seen below (with myself and Jessica).
Jessica, John and I went and saw L'Arc du Triumphe (sp?), then walked the completely wrong direction to get home. I was nearly dead by this time, and have a feeling I didn't say a word for a good 30 minute period. Didn't matter. Jessica and John had hit it off anyways.
The next morning, Brett, Brooke, Scott, John and I went out for a walk, got lost for a bit and then took the metro home.
All in all, I bought one piece of artwork for 4.50 Euros (overpriced) and a bottle of wine. Spent an arm and a leg on the trip, but had lots of fun. I probably wont go back for a while, but it was lots of fun.
In order of most fun things I did in Paris:
1) Get lost on my way home from the Eiffel Tower at 1AM.
2) Palace of Versailles, particularly the gardens
3) Trying my best to speak french to vendors and such.
