hello there!
So I've been thinking, and another thing I really miss about being home is the radio, I tend to be listening to it everyday and keeping up on the new music and such and I haven't had a chance to do that at all here. Not a huge loss but still something that came across my mind.
I haven't updated this in awhile, things have been crazy busy and will continue to be just as busy until I come home! The time is just flying by and I'm feeling very conflicted about the end, as I'm enjoying myself here and wanting to see and do everything that I possibly can but I'm also missing things/people from home and won't mind landing in America in a month.
Right. Onto the important things.
I wrote out everything I did in Galway and well it's in my room, so that entry will have to wait a bit unfortunately.
Last weekend I went to Paris on a trip organized by the international group here on campus. It was nice to not have to do any planning, just to show up and be able to go on the trip. Yet, after going on the trip I kind of wished I had planned it because it most definitely would have involved a plane. The bus was scheduled to leave at 5:30 am so we met at 4:45am to walk over to it because we planned on the gates being locked since they're not supposed to open until 7am but miraculously they were open. It was still dark out (the sun doesn't come up here as early as it does in the US) and we sleepily trudged our way over to the bus and grabbed some seats on it. I slept most of the way there, thank god, because it ended up taking us 14 hours to get to Paris by bus...not the best experience. We were stuck in traffic for a good 2 hours once we made it into the city of Paris which was really frustrating, to be so close yet so far still. That night we went out for some food and drinks, I got a chocolate crepe and it was delicious mmm. Then we ended up at some bar for the rest of the night before we hiked it back home in the freezing cold. Apprently smoking is still allowed in French restuarants and bars, I think my hair and jacket smelled like smoke for days after we came back.
On Friday morning we got up early and had breakfast around 8am in the hotel, they provided us with such a nice breakfast! Cheese, ham, french bread, pastries, croissants, cereal, yogurt, tea, ect. ect., so much food! We hoarded some for later in the day in our purses :) (might as well get our money's worth eh?). The metro was on strike as well as the bus system which didn't mean they weren't running it just meant that most lines weren't and the lines that were, were not reliable and were extremely crowded. This made traveling in Paris quite inconveinent but it must be so much worse for the people that actually live and work there, theres no public transportation to get them to and from work. So, as you've already guessed, we walked everywhere which wasn't bad because we got to see everything as we walked past and it helped work off all the bread and cheese we would be consuming alllll weekend.
In the morning there was a market right on the street outside of our hotel so we checked that out for a bit, a lot of stalls selling food ideas like fruits, veggies, breads, cheese, seafood, etc. The worst part was the skinned rabbits, yucky! Just hanging there...felt bad for them. We couldn't tell what they were at first but they had the ears and some of them still had a bit of fur on them. There were also some jewelry and scarf stalls and I got 3 pairs of earrings for 5 euro, what a steal!
Notre Dame was gorgeous, I could have spent hours in there looking around at everything, the stained glass windows really caught my eye. Then it was off to the Eiffel Tower, of course. It took awhile to get there because it was mile away from our hotel and whenever we thought we were there...we were wrong. We could see it for awhile while we were walking because it's so large but it did take quite a bit of walking to get right up close to it. We had a fun photo shoot in front of it, pretended we were holding it up and picking it up and you know, things like that. At this point we were starving and exhausted from walking around a bunch so we tried to get sandwiches at a restaurant and we sat down but once we got the menus we realized they were ALL in french and we couldn't understand a word of them. So, we left that place (which felt kind of rude, but we couldn't understand a thing on the menu and the ladies at the restaurant didn't speak english) so we ended up at this little sandwich shop and I got the best ham and cheese sandwich ever, yummy. Then, off for some more walking, just looking around and stuff, we didn't really have a destination in mind at this point. Ended up at a cafe to get some hot drinks and French pastries mmm. Then, it was off to the Louvre! Which, by the way, was free on friday night from 6:00 until 9:45, how great! We didn't realize it at the time but the walk we took to get to the Louvre was the longest way we could have gone, but we made it there and got inside of the museum pretty quickly. Of course saw the Mona Lisa, and a bunch of other paintings which I can't remember the names of. At this point in the day we had been walking for like 10 hours and were exhausted so, we didn't spend too long in the Louvre even though it was free and open until 9:45. If you're not that interested in art spending 3 hours in an art museum at the end of a long day just isn't so appetizing, even if you are in Paris and it is the Louvre.
On Saturday we went down into the Catacombs, a huge grave site for the bodies of people who died of the plague. Apparently the people living near the graveyard were getting sick because of the decaying plagued bodies, they moved all of them into this underground grave. It's crazy how organized all of the bones are, and there were so many of them! Weird to be around that many human bones. Did a lot of shopping-type stuff on Saturday as well, a lot of walking around Paris with no real direction. Ended up in the park across from the Louvre around sunset which was nice, there was a fountain with a little wooden sailboat in it, got some pictures of that which was nice. One of the girls we were with had a friend in Paris the same weekend and they had missed each other on thursday night and friday night so we went with her back to the Louvre to meet her friend and it worked and they were reunited. Yay! We had really delicious spaghetti for dinner and watched the craziest thing on the TV there, this man fishing using birds, they must be trained or something to go catch the fish and bring them back to him, weird! The spaghetti was delicious and then we went off to the river to try to find a boat cruise. Fianlly, the student card I bought paid off! The cruise was 10 euros but with the card it was 5! awesome! It was nice to go down the river at night and learn about the different buildings. The best part, by far, was seeing the eiffel tower all lit up and sparkling at night. I took a video of it because pictures weren't coming out so well in the nighttime, but the video really captures it well. It was a nightmare getting home that night, no metro, no bus, huge lines for taxis, miles away from the hotel at 11 pm, but we made it back. Phewf.
Sunday was another early day, had to pack up and check out of the hotel and then we headed for Versailles as a group. Went inside the palace which was interesting, it's huge!! We didn't end up seeing everything and it was freezing out so the gardens were a bit unapptetizing, we saw them but not in their entiretey, then we all piled back into the bus for the hellish ride home. And by hellish i mean, 15 hours later we finally made it back to England. We were stopped for 3 hours at a rest stop because the windsheild wipers stopped working and of course it was raining so we had to wait for a mechanic to come and fix it, and then it broke again so we had to switch onto another bus. Was so nice to finally be back in York and not sitting down after that bus ride. All in all, a great weekend, Paris is a beautiful city, but I wish I could speak French, I felt rude sort of assuming other people would speak English, when they come to England or America they don't just assume we're going to be able to talk to them, they have to learn our language. Anyways, the librarys closing so I must go...pictures later...and updates about visiting Megan and Dad coming here! Hope everyones doing well :)
