"I Love Paris in the Springtime": Spring Break Part 1

It's been a week since I got back from spring break, so I need to get in a blog post about it! It's weird because spring break always seemed so far away...when we got to Prague it was January, and we knew that when we got back from spring break we'd only have about 6 weeks left in Prague. Well, break has come and passed and its now April, which seems so strange to me.

I had a very excellent time! My friend Collin and I went to Paris, Nice and Milan together. We saw two of our other friends for a few days in Paris, and then our friend Mike joined us at the end of Paris and continued to the other destinations with us. Unfortunately, especially because you know how much I love photos, my camera broke in the Prague airport on the way to Paris. Fortunately, though, Collin happens to be an excellent photographer! All the following photos I show from Spring Break are his.

Paris was absolutely fantastic, and the second Collin and I stepped out of the Metro at Montmarte, the neighborhood in which we stayed, we both fell in love (neither of us had been there before). It had been raining when we landed, and my camera broke, but in a very cliche moment, none of that seemed to matter. Montmarte is such a beautiful neighborhood, despite its numerous hills, which we were required to climb every time we travelled in it (I got so much exercise on this trip!) Here's the view from the stairs above the Metro stop:



After checking into our hostel, we decided to try to walk to the Seine. Despite Collin's iphone skills and the map in my guidebook, we ended up walking in the wrong direction. Oh well, at least we got to see some French neighborhoods, and even a Gypsy market. We then took the Metro in the right direction and ended up near Notre Dame, falling in love with Paris even more. Its so beautiful and it has a certain charm about it that I'd never experienced before. Notre Dame was gorgeous, too:



We got to go inside, and it was huge, with a large open middle sanctuary, and then lots of little rooms all around the sides, with stained glass windows and artifacts and things. They even had confession rooms where you could go inside and talk with a priest. I thought it was funny because the rooms were sorted by the languages the priests inside them could speak.

We then got some lunch (baguette sandwiches and a glass of wine) at a cafe, and enjoyed that because it was so cheap, and so typically Paris! Our friends were at the Eiffel Tower, so we finished up and decided to walk to go meet them. All the way at the other end of the Seine. That hour and a half gave me blisters, but we got to see tons of things along the way! We finally got there, and of course had to take a picture of all of us in front of the Tower:



It was awesome to see it up close...it looks a little redder than I thought it would be, and I really liked the intricate designs on it. Then, we met up with our friends' friend who is working for a year as an au'pair. She took us to the Invalides, which is a beautiful garden in front of a museum dedicated to Napolean, including his tomb. Now, EU citizens between the ages of 18 and 26 can get into museums for free. We all happened to have Czech "ID's", aka our Metro passes. These are all in Czech, with our names, pictures and birthdays. Being the cheap students that we are, we decided to try to use our Metro passes to get into the Museum for free...and it worked!! That was awesome. After seeing the musem, we sat in the gardens for a bit and took in all the French people (including two boys and their dad playing rugby, who hit us with the ball), before going back to our hostels to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was an experience unto itself. We went to this amazing French restaurant, and the food was delicious. The boys had three course meals, but I stuck to one course, beef bourginon.



It was SO good. We then went out for a bit, but were really tired so soon called it a night. Collin and I had to make three transfers on the Metro to get home, thanks to Paris' odd hub and spokes system, which looks comprehensive since it has a lot of lines, but thats deceiving because none of them really connect in convenient places.

The next day we went to the Louvre, where again used our Metro passes to get in for free! They were a little more suspicious of us there, but gave us the tickets anyway. The Louvre itself is a beautiful building, not to mention all the artwork. Here's me with a woman who's pretty famous:



Here is the museum from the outside (the clouds look really ominous, but luckily it only rained on us once during our time in Paris, so we got pretty lucky):



After the Louvre, we went to the Arc D'Triomphe, and the Champs Elysees. There's the Champs with the arc in the background:



We decided to buy bagettes from a boulangerie (bakery) for dinner, and then had some wine on the Seine. It was a pretty beautiful experience, very quiet out and all of us just sitting and looking out on the water. However, we didn't realize that the Metro closed at midnight, not 2am, so we had to walk back to Montmarte. It was pretty far and pretty interesting, but we made it! And also ended up finding the Moulin Rouge on the way, so that was cool. Collin and I took a picture in front of it:



The next day, we wanted to go to Versailles, but it was closed. Instead, we went back to the Notre Dame area, walked around a bit, and had an amazing lunch of paninis and crepes on the Seine. We saw the Bastille, and then went to Sacre Couer, a church on a hill in Montmarte that has an absolutely exquisite view of Paris:



That night, we went to a place in Montmarte that serves fondue for dinner, and also wine in baby bottles. It was a tiny, crowded place, where some of us had to climb on top of chairs to get to the benches on the other side of the table. So fun!

The next day, after another failed attempt at Versailles, we had a lovely picnic of baguettes, brie, and strawberries in Luxemborg Gardens. They were so beautiful, and it was very nice to have sunny, warm weather. Mike's cousin, who runs a study abroad program in France, provided us with one of their dorm rooms for our last night, which was so generous of her, and very fortunate for us as it was practically across the street from the station where we had to catch our 7:45am train to Nice the next morning! We had a lovely French dinner courtesy of her (I had duck and creme broulee!)

Overall, Paris was absolutely fabulous, and there is no doubt in my mind that I want to go back there and spend lots of quality time wandering around the city and seeing the many things it has to offer. It even made me want to learn French! It was a terrific start to our break.

Also, my friend Roni Beth, who lived there for years, gave me lots of advice and tips about Paris, and they were really very helpful. Thanks so much Roni Beth!