PARIS, Je t'aime!

First and foremost, good news with the apartment - we get to keep it! No moving out for me.

Now onto the good stuff...Paris was incredible. Will probably be one of my favorite cities in Europe. So full of culture and art and generally a beautifully designed city. All the buildings seem to match and look like a painting. I wish I could have stayed a little bit longer. Granted I don't speak any French, which was frustrating for me, but Pam saved me, and I can mimic a decent French accent with the basics - Merci, Combien?, etc...Unfortunately then they believe that I can speak fluently and talk back to me really fast and I have to look attentive...

From the top: Friday Pam and I woke up at 5:30 to catch our flight at 9. The flight was smooth. Getting to the hotel was another story. From Charles de Gaulle airport, it cost us 45 euro to get to our hotel. On top of that, we went to the wrong one, DESPITE the travel agency telling me there was only ONE Hotel Bristol. No, there are two, and we spent an additional 20 euro to get to the other one. As for the hotel? Tiny room. No bathtub, clogged drain. Beds smaller than twin pushed together, mattresses made of lumpy plastic, and NO HEAT. It is 3 stars, European style. The upside is that it was right by the metro stop Republique, which is very connected to many other parts of the city in just a matter of minutes.

But aside from our hotel fiasco, everything else went over great. We met up with Maria and Alexandra and walked to the Opera, where we caught a tour bus that lets us get on and off as we please. We hit all the main stuff - Arc de Triumph, Champs de Elys (can't spell), Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame. I was actually not too impressed with the Eiffel Tower. It was kind of small and I didn't like the brownish color of the metal. Notre Dame, however, was incredible - one of the most breathtaking churches I have seen on this trip. We came during the evening mass, so a choir was singing, and despite my ardent atheism, I felt spiritual. This is in the back of the cathedral:

After Notre Dame, we hit upon the Latin Corner (leave it to us to go to a Latin area of Paris)
We came across this cute little bar decorated with all these Christmas lights and settled there for happy hour - Pam and I decided our ceiling will look like this next year!

The next day it looked really rainy, so we went to the Louvre, where I saw all the essentials: Winged Victory, Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, and pretty much the entire Italian and Spanish paintings wing and the Egyptian wing - incredible. The Louvre in and of itself is a work of art, as it used to be a palace. Here is the inverted pyramid made famous by the Da Vinci Codes right by the entrance:

I also wanted to see the French wing and also see the Musee D'orsay, because I love Impressionism, but since the weather was so fickle, and we finally got some sun, we decided to visit Sacre Cour in Montmartre instead. It's a pretty steep ascent to Montmartre, but I appreciated the exercise. The view was gorgeous from the top, and Sacre Cour is a precious cathedral. It also started raining while we were there, so we grabbed lunch, and I had the BEST OMELETTE EVER. Too bad it cost a whopping 8 euro.
Sacre Cour (Sacred Heart)
And on the way down, we saw a rainbow!

Saturday night we decided to revisit the Eiffel Tower. It was much more majestic at night, and around 9pm these blinking lights came on. While it was beautiful, I can imagine how irritating it must be for native Parisians to endure this epileptic seizure-inducing light show every night weekend...

So afterwards we went to Pompidou, got dinner at Le Petit Continent, and tried to bar-hop. Unfortunately Paris is not like Spain. Even on Saturdays most things close by 11pm...so we went into this African bar that played almost exclusively reggaeton and reggae. Just our luck! And cocktails were 9 EUROS. Really good thing I didn't stay longer!

The next day, Pam and I checked out of our hotel and took the metro down to rue de Descartes, where parts of Amelie were shot. It was an adorable street, all cobblestone, pedestrian-friendly, fun little shops and cafe's, and an outdoor market. From there, we found the metro shuttle to the airport, which cost us only 7 euro, thankfully. And our flight went over just fine and now I'm back! Overall it was a really relaxed, fun-filled trip and one of the best birthday presents a girl could have asked for.