A Whirlwind Weekend in Paris

I feel so lucky to be here.  I just keep pinching myself because it still feels totally pretend: I'm studying abroad in London and if I want to I can just hop on a train and in two and a half hours I'm in Paris.  For Ann and my first trip to Paris, I think we did pretty well for ourselves actually.  We left super early Friday morning to go down the street to the St. Pancras International train station, and left London at 5:25 am.  After a very smooth ride (we slept the whole way in fact) we arrived in Paris and somehow managed to navigate our way to our hostel (called the Peace and Love Hostel, actually not too terrible, we only had one roommate who was a very nice girl from Italy who used Spanish to communicate with us...hahaha).  Then, our friend Eddie who we met last weekend (who had already been in Paris for four days, and therefore had agreed to be our "tour guide") met us at the hostel and we all set out for our crazy tourist day in Paris.

We decided to go to the Eiffel Tower first.  Honestly it was soooo amazing to see it in real life.  I'd never imagined that it would live up to all the hype.  haha!  We rode the elevator all the way to the very top and the views were incredible!  You can see the whole city and it makes you feel very very small.  After the Eiffel Tower, we were all totally starved, so we went on a hunt for some place to eat.  We ended up at this quaint little cafe on this street that Eddie had read about in his very important Paris guide book and wow...it was DELICIOUS.  After somehow managing to get the rude waiter's attention (most French people that I interacted with all day were terribly rude) so we could have an English menu (very touristy, but I couldn't understand what on Earth I was ordering otherwise) I ordered the fried duck with potatoes and green salad.  And OH MY GOD it was quite possibly the best meal I've ever eaten.  And it wasn't even that expensive at all.  We must've looked ridiculous, because we just kept eating and eating and going on and on about how delicious it was.  So good though.

After lunch, Eddie navigated our way through a bunch of different streets (honestly, Ann and I would have been totally lost without him, we had no idea where we were going at all) and we got to go to the Musee d'Orsay which was incredible and amazing, but by this point, we were all TOTALLY exhausted.  We basically had to drag our feet through the whole museum, and ended up forcing ourselves to get to the pieces we really wanted to see and then get out as soon as possible because otherwise we would've passed out on the floor of the museum.  But it was pretty incredible to see a bunch of the pieces that I've always heard about by some of the big names: Monet, Matisse, Degas, etc. etc.  :)

After the museum, we decided that we could probably pull up enough energy to go to see the Arc d'Triumphe and the Champs Elysees.  I must say, the Arc is pretty darn impressive.  It's just such a powerful structure to look at.  After a quick cappucino on the Champs Elysees, we hopped back on the Metro, and Eddie helped us find our way back to the Peace and Love Hostel so we could nap before going out later that night.  

Our train left at two on Saturday, so after checking out of the hostel at 10am, we somehow managed to find our way on the Metro over to the train station (because Eddie wasn't with us anymore, we had to navigate on our own, which was quite difficult because we both have zero sense of direction and zero knowledge of how to speak French).  We ate a pretty disappointing breakfast and then wandered about the area a bit, until we just went back to the terminal and waited for our train while eating our delicious almond croissants and writing postcards.