Paris!

You know that quote by Saint Augustine that says "The world is a book and those who do not travel only read one page." Well, that is how I am looking at my experience abroad. I don't have the option to travel to these different countries back home, so I might as well jump on the opportunity now that I'm here!

On Tuesday we left for Paris! Ellyn and I are becoming very good friends with Heathrow airport.... to the point where we are starting to get sick of being there. But to travel, it's worth it!

We boarded our plane with our moms and then were on our way to France! Once we got off the plane we found a taxi and went to our hotel. We were staying really close to the Eiffel Tower, so we saw that on our way to our hotel. Once we were dropped off we checked in and then went to find a cafe to eat. Have you ever heard that people in France are rude? Well, it is kind of true. We met a LOT of nice and helpful people, but there were a few rude people. For example, Ellyn asked our waiter if he could speak english in french. His response was "I'm speaking to you in english." Rude, right? There were probably only two or three people that were like that, everyone else was really nice and helpful!

After dinner we went to the Eiffel Tower! Just like Big Ben, it was not as big as we expected. We walked all around it and thought about going up, but the line was really long. After being in a plane earlier that day we were all exhausted and not in the mood to wait in line. So we went to another cafe to have crepes! The waiter at this restaurant was super nice! He checked on us a few times to make sure we liked everything and even answered a few questions we had (like are dogs allowed in restaurants... they are!). We walked back to our hotel, but of course stopped at any souvenir store we could on our way back!

The next morning we got up, got ready and then headed to the river for a boat tour! It was a tour that had eight stops and you could get on and off and often as you pleased. The first stop we got off at was Notre Dame. On our walk there we found a padlock bridge! Most people leave padlocks on there, but Ellyn and I didn't have one but I had two hair-ties in my purse so we tied those on instead!

Once we got inside Notre Dame we were free to walk around. While we were in there, a church service started! Does that count as going to a service at Notre Dame, even though we were touring? It was beautiful inside.

Our next stop was the Louvre. Our group is kind of bitter of this place now because once we got off the boat and walked up the satires to the street this girl got really close to my mom and was begging her to sign a petition she was holding. My mom kept saying "no" over and over again. The girl finally left and right when she did my mom reached for her phone to take a picture, but realized it was gone. We ran towards the boat, but it pulled away before we got there. A guy saw
that we were looking for something and said that the girl was pickpocketing people. We found her right away and asked for the phone back. she claimed to not have it but we knew she did. Why would she leave that spot so fast if she was trying to get signatures for something? We told her we needed the phone right away but she still refused. We went back to Ellyn and Mrs. Goncer and they decided to go find them again. Mrs. Goncer and my mom were a group and Ellyn and I were a group. Ellyn and I were furious. She started to think of everything she would say to get that phone back. We saw our moms in the distance and they found them! We ran to them and demanded they give us the phone. We even said we would pay them for it. They continued to claim they didn't have it (and said we were crazy... come on now, we found them twice, we aren't crazy!) and then they ran away. I felt horrible. All of my mom's pictures of London and the few she had of Paris were gone. She tired not to let it ruin her trip, but she was still upset. The worst part, too, is that my mom was being the most cautious of pickpockets. The only mistake she had was that her coat pockets didn't zip so they spotted the phone right away. If you ever go to Paris and people ask you to sign something, run away.

We kept going to the Lourve, but when we got there we heard that the line was long to buy tickets and was only worth it if you really loved art. It would've been cool to see, but after what just happened we were all kind of too raged to really enjoy what we would be looking at. We took pictures by the iconic entrance instead, and then went back on the boat.





Our next stop was the Arc de Triomphe. We had a long walk from the boat to this point, but we saw a lot of the shopping area along the way. We got to the arc, took some pictures and then headed to a sandwich shop where we had lunch. Ellyn and I are determined to have a McFlurry from McDonalds from every country we go to, so we also stopped at McDonalds on the way back.

We took the boat back to the Eiffel Tower and headed to our hotel for a little bit. It was still early, so we all decided to rest. A little later we all got hungry again, so we headed to a cafe down the road to have a late dinner. We made sure to leave by a certain time so we could see the Eiffel Tower lights sparkling.

Remember how I said traveling with Mrs. Goncer was funny? Well here are two more stories for you. Similar to the Big Ben story, we were sitting on a bench and to our side you could see the Eiffel Tower. It was pretty clear! Mrs. Goncer apparently couldn't see it because she asked where it was. The funniest moment was when we were taking pictures by the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. Since my moms phone was gone, she no longer had a camera. Mrs. Goncer kept saying she would send my mom all of her pictures and took one of me and my mom in front of the Eiffel Tower. Ellyn was also taking some on my camera, but they weren't turning out great. Mrs. Goncer got really excited and said "Oh I got a good one!" She brought up her pictures and showed us and it was probably one of the blurriest pictures any of us had ever seen! We were all laughing so hard! I think someone eventually got a good picture.


We went back to our hotel after that. We realized that we had late nights in London, and early nights in Paris.