PARIS: Two of my Best Friends, Delicious Crepes, and SO Much History...

It's about 4:00pm on Sunday afternoon and I've officially visited both Paris and Berlin within the last two weeks! What a life right?!
Paris was an AMAZING weekend! I started the trip off by staying in a hostel in Stockholm the night before my flight because it left super early the following morning. Staying by yourself in a hostel is definitely a tad uncomfortable, but I made the best of it! In fact, a very significant part of my trip started here, with a conversation I had with another guy in my room. I'm pretty sure he was from somewhere in Africa and while we were both getting ready for bed he says to me: "You're so lucky your native language is English." I replied by saying: "Ya, but sometimes I feel ignorant since I don't know another language." He replied: "Why? You don't need to."
I didn't think much of this until the next morning when I was sitting on the bus to the airport. I realized he was right, I am lucky to have been raised in a country where English is the native language. You can travel almost anywhere in the world these days and pretty much assume that most people will speak English. I started thinking about who chose English as the universal language? Who decided the English language is in some way better or easier or more common than other languages? After taking four years of French and coming nowhere close to being fluent, I'm very aware of how hard it is to learn another language. Basically what I took away from this small conversation is how the English language is something we take for granted everyday in the US and how we really are lucky to be raised around the language that for one reason or another is becoming universal. Communication is a vital part of life, but something like a language barrier should never be the reason why someone can't succeed. I'll never experience that, simply because of the environment I was born into, but so many people in the world do, which I never quite recognized until now. So thank you random man in the hostel! haha.

Anyways, back to PARIS!! I got there early in the afternoon (two Thursdays ago) and after figuring out how to navigate the metro system, met up with Gabby. We stayed with her host parents, who are extremely wealthy (which is an understatement!). Julia Roberts owns a house on their same block, just to give you an idea of the chique area I'm talking about. They gave us extra food in the fridge, an extra bed to sleep in and then left for the weekend, leaving us the house to ourselves. As if being in Paris isn't cool enough, we were basically spoiled for the weekend too! Here's a picture of the pathway leading up to the house, it's beautiful!

We saw SO MUCH for only being there over the weekend. Gabby was the perfect hostess and showed us everything a tourist would want to see, but also areas you wouldn't necessarily know to go to unless you lived there! We started Friday off by visiting the Notre Dame, only the first of MANY cathedrals we saw throughout the weekend. Gabby kept joking about how she was secretly converting us haha, but in reality there's just no escaping Europe's religious past.

The Notre Dame...it's beautiful inside and out!

The Seine river...runs alongside the Notre Dame.

After Notre Dame, we walked along the Seine river, which basically runs through the middle of Paris. We stumbled upon this awesome bridge with a bunch of locks all over it...turns out it's called the 'Lover's Bridge' and people buy locks to symbolize their love. So of course we bought a lock and now share a piece of our love for each other forever in Paris!

Our lock!!

The Seine river at night...Gotta love the reflections!

We visited the Louvre on Friday night because it's free after 6pm on Fridays! Yes, we saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and so much more. And yes, the Mona Lisa is a bit of a disappointment in person...much smaller than you'd imagine, but still way cool to see!! It's awesome to have learned about a lot of this stuff in my history classes and then actually see it in real life!

Gabby and I outside the main entrance of the Louvre!

To end a full day, we walked down the Champs-Elysees, which was probably one of my favorite areas of Paris! As we were strolling down the main street of Paris, we stumbled upon a pretty big protest of people standing up for Egypt. Apparently Parisians love to protest anything they don't like, so it wasn't like this was anything new. But the atmosphere around the protest was awesome to witness in person: Egyptian flags being waved everywhere, cars passing by honking their horns, and police protecting the area, but letting the people embrace their right to protest at the same time! The street itself is very city-like, but gorgeous to walk down at night since it leads up to the Arc de Triumph!!

Arc de Triumph!

On Saturday we visited another cathedral called the Sainte Chapelle. After standing in line for a solid hour, finally making it through security, and paying 8 euros (which is about $10) to get in, we walked into the cathedral and found nothing special. The room was your typical European cathedral with some big pillars, small stain glass windows, and a larger figure of Jesus at the front. We all took pictures since that's what you're supposed to do as a tourist, but were overall unimpressed. I even commented to Gabby how waiting in line and paying to get in all turned out to be anti-climatic. Just as we were ready to leave, we saw a couple people walking down a very narrow staircase in the corner. Curious as to where they were coming from, we ascended the spiral staircase to find a huge and GORGEOUS room surrounded by an amazing display of stain glass. We quickly realized this is why the Sainte Chapelle is so well-known and were a bit embarrassed by the fact that we almost left without actually seeing what we were supposed to...ignorant Americans right?? haha!

Sainte Chapelle!

The rest of the day was filled with more cathedrals, crepes, and finally the Eiffel Tower!! Like Piper, the reality of being in Paris with two of my best friends didn't truly set in until we walked just a few blocks down from Gabby's house, turned the corner, and saw l'tour d'eiffel lit up, in all its glory!! Describing it in words is impossible, but if I had to choose one word, I'd say BREATHTAKING! Something everyone should see at least once in their life!

Notice the reflection of light...this is why I LOVE rivers!!

I'm framing this one!

With her host family out of town and the kitchen to ourselves, we ended the weekend with a delicious, homemade dinner, complete with salad, pasta, french bread, cheese of course, and wine! 

Since I've been here for just over a month now, the reality of studying abroad has obviously set in. However, it wasn't until I was in Paris with two of my best friends that I consciously thought about how lucky I am to be only 20 years old and have this opportunity. It's truly an experience of a lifetime and I'm appreciating every minute of it! So as corny as this might be, I'll take one sentence to thank mommy, Mike, daddy, and Linda...without you guys I'd never be here :)

Anyways, enough of the mushy stuff! This is long enough, so I'll update you on my trip to Berlin in a couple days!