Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't updated sooner. I was busy with a paper and just generally tired. But, I will update as much as I can. This weekend everyone is going on a day trip to Belfast in Northern Ireland. Should be interesting...
Anyway, so on the 16th I left for Paris at 6:30 AM. We arrived at the airport around 9 AM-ish (Paris and the other cities were 1 hour ahead of Dublin) and took a bus from the airport to the city, then took the metro to our hotel. Thankfully Kasey knew where we were going. Lemme just say that Paris is beautiful and my new favorite city. It reminded me so much of New York. And the metro makes life so much easier, I don't have to walk 30 minutes just to get some where like in Dublin. And it's so much more diverse than Dublin.
The first place we went to was Notre Dame. It's one of the well-known cathedrals in Paris, and it's where the movie
The Hunchback of Nore Dame takes place. It's one of the most beautiful churches I've ever been to. I went to a Notre Dame in Montreal, I think that was a smaller version compared to this. You can pay 5 euro to go to the top where the bells are.
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| Notre Dame |
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| There were beautiful stained-glass windows. Too bad my camera didn't take good interior pictures... |
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Luckily for me I know French pretty well. It was exciting to test my French out and I managed to do very well. I can understand and read pretty well too. That's why I would love to live in France. My French would get better! The next place we went to was jardin du Luxembourg. There was a huge palace surrounded by a beautiful garden.
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| Luxembourg Palace |
After walking around the garden for awhile we decided to head out for dinner while looking in various book stores (le librarie in French). We reached this very touristy street filled with restaurants and souvenir shops. I bought The Little Prince postcards to mail back to my friends and family. We ate at a restaurant which we paid 10 euro for a 3 course meal. I tried French onion soup for the first time, followed by steak and fries (fries come with almost anything) and a dessert. After that we called it a day and went back to our hotel.
The next day we went to another cathedral named Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart). In was right in Montmartre where the movie
Amelié takes place. It was another beautiful church, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.
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| Sacré Coeur |
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| Montmartre | |
So, after all that our friend Paulo met up with us and we all took the metro to the Louvre! It's always been my dream to go there ever since reading the
Da Vinci Code haha. The Louvre is like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. Lots of classical paintings and sculptures. And, of course, it has the Mona Lisa and other Da Vinci paintings. When we got there we had to wait on a long line in the cold and go through security before actually getting in. We only had 2 hours to walk around, which rally isn't enough to explore more than one wing in that huge museum. Normally classical art bores me, but the huge paintings and sculptures amazed me.
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| Entrance to the Louvre |
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| Isn't it amazing that someone painted this??? |
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| The Mona Lisa! Isn't she tiny? |
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| Another Da Vinci painting |
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| Winged Victory |
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| Venus De Milo |
After our two hours Paulo and I went into the museum gift shop. I bought a little notebook with the Winged Victory on the cover as well as The Little Prince from the children's bookstore. I love The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince en français), it's one of my favorite French stories. Since my reading level isn't too advanced, I read children's books in French. Hopefully I can improve my reading comprehension as well!
I have lots more pictures and things to share. Just so I don't spam so many pictures in one post, I'll split my Paris travels in two posts :)
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