Paris Holds The Key to Her Heart.

For those of you not attuned to the lyrics of quasi-Disney animated musicals- the title of this entry refers to the line from a song from Anastasia entitled "Paris Holds the Key to Her Heart" (obviously). So I have just returned from my first weekend trip to Paris. It was just as great as I imagined it would be, and them some.  Let me tell you all about it! Get ready for a long entry.

 So Andrea and I arrived in Paris around 5:30pm. We were traveling with two other girls from our program, Brooke and Carly. We are all going to Geneva together. Luckily, we found a British student studying in Sevilla who was very familiar with Orly Airport and helped us find the train to the metro. If we had not found this girl we would have been completely LOST- it was very confusing and dark. So we find our way to the line 4 of the Metro and get off at Gard de L'est. It's a pretty large train station which includes a mini-mall.  We have to find our hostel on Rue du Nancy, which we can't really find on the map.  To spare you the long story, we walked around for two hours trying to find Rue du Nancy.  I speak minimal French, as does Andrea- so we ask "Ou est Rue du Nancy?" to anyone walking by - in total about 8 people, each with their own set of wrong directions to our hostel.  I think they were just rude and giving us the wrong directions due to our American accents. Eventually we find a police officer who brings us to the street and we arrive at our hostel.  The young people behind the reception are very nice and speak English.  We have to drag our bags up the three longgg flights of stairs and we arrive in our small double room (which is very uncommon for hostels).  There is a sink and a bidet in the corner of the room, a water closet down the hall, and one shower located on the first floor. But overall it was very clean.

We venture out into the 10th arrang. of Paris and find a really nice tavern to order mushroom omelettes and share a salad. It was perfect. Spanish  food has been good so far but it was nice to eat more familiar, tasty food. On the way home we pass by a creperia and we share my first nutella crepe. End of our first night in Paris.

Day 1:

Wake up early and meet Andrea's friend Emily at the Notre Dame station. We walked in the cathedral and around the grounds- it was all very pretty but I've been seeing lots of cathedrals in Spain, so I wasn't overly excited.  Then we walked to the Louvre- we didn't go in but we walked around the building- it's hugeeee and so beautiful. We did go into Musee D'Orsey- it's a really cool museum built in an old train station. It must have been recently renovated because it all looked very new.  We stayed there until we got bored and took the metro to the Eiffel Tower.  We didn't go up, we were lazy tourists but hung around there and tried to find some lunch.  We couldn't find anything we wanted so we went on a seearch for a nutella and peanut butter crepe.  Blocks and blocks later we found one and it was definitely worth the wait.  After lunch we walked around St. Germains area and got coffee in some really nice, Parisian cafes.  Andrea and I had a light dinner at Les Deux Magots (which according to Pedro is a very famous, well known French restaurant).  On our walk home we got some macaroons for later.  We went out that night with Andrea's friend Emily and her friends.  They took us to this cool club located under a bridge.  There was a live French band playing and it was a really cool venue.  There weren't many tourists either- just lots of French kids. End of day 1.

Day 2:

Slept a little later after our night out in Paris.  We met Emily on Rue Cler- which is a pedestrian street that was recommended to me by... I don't know.  There are lots of little markets and speciality food stores and open cafes. We bought cheese, grapes, bread, and coffee for a picnic on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. After our early lunch we walked/took the metro to a new little area in the middle of the city- it's like Paris's Soho.  Lots of little boutiques and restaurants.  I can't remember the name o fit but it is known for it's Jewish and Gay population.  It was definitely filled with religious jews, the falafel place, jewish deli, and kosher pizza place was closed because it was Saturday.  that night we went for sushi- something we've all been missing in Sevilla. it wasn't the best but it was definitely goodd!!!  the night ended with another shared nutella crepe of course.

We left Paris this morning and I returned home to sunny, warm Sevilla this afternoon.  Paris was great but I was definitely ready to return home to Sevilla. It's funny how that happened... this has become my home- or at least some sort of interim home.  Okay well I'm going to upload some photos and start some work that I've put off.  Enjoy this long entry- there will be more soon.