This past week we had a long weekend here at Harlaxton and headed off to Paris, France. Although entirely practical, I think that the fact that we took a coach to the Grantham train station funny. From there we took a train into London King's Cross, then walked across the street to St. Pancreas International where we went through French Boarder Control. Yes, I got my passport stamped for France while I was in London! Then we sat around and waited for our platform to be announced so we could go get on the Eurostar. While waiting I finally found an English keychain! (not British, English!) That definitely made my day. I've been searching for one ever since I got here! We took the Chunnel to France (which I didn't even realize we were in because we were in so many tunnels on the way there! It was a little over 2 hour trip. Then we all (50ish of us) had to hop on the metro and take that to the hotel. Little did we know when we got on that our station was closed! So we had to go down one more and get off there. It wasn't a long walk, so it was fine. It was funny to see Kingsley walk off on his own in order to make sure he knew where we were though! So we eventually got to the hotel and (after some problems) got our room keys to work and dropped our stuff off and headed back downstairs to find dinner. Kingsley recommended a restaurant to us, so we headed there and had some good food! By the time we finished dinner, it was 11, so we went back to the hotel and went to bed, that way we would be ready to go come tomorrow morning!
Thursday started off with some amazing croissants for breakfast (yes, you will be hearing about all my food because it was so good!) and then I headed off with Sarah, Jordan, and Christina to the Eiffel Tower. We too so many pictures!!! It was absolutely beautiful. The sun was shining and made for some awesome pictures. Plus it was warm! (like, t-shirt warm with just the perfect amount of breeze so you don't sweat.) We then proceeded to climb! (that's right, climb) up the Eiffel Tower! It was scary as heck climbing up, but totally worth it. I can now say that I have climbed up the Eiffel Tower. You can only climb to the 2nd level, then you have to take a lift if you want to go to the very top, which we did after taking loads of pictures on the first two levels. It was really cool at the top because they showed you which direction to look for all these countries capitals! And, if you wanted to pay 10 euro (I didn't) you could have champagne at the top! Back down on the second level, I picked up a couple of souviners and waited for them to come back down, then we climbed back down to the first level and Christina and I got a waffle with chocolate/nutella and I wrote a couple of postcards (well, I had to send some from the Eiffel Tower!). Then we went back down to ground level (well, I ran and got there a good 5 minutes before everyone else! It's even scarier going down for me!). Then we took some more pictures and headed off in search of food and one of the Statues of Liberty. We found this take-away place near the Seine, where I had this amazing hot dog! I know, a hot dog in Paris?. But let me tell you about this hot dog. It was in a baguette and had white cheese melted on top. It was sooo good! We ate in this little green area on the Seine, then continued on our way to the Statue of Liberty, stopping to watch a wedding on the way. =) The Statue of Liberty in the Seine is a lot smaller than the real one in New York (obviously) but it was still really cool to see! After that, we headed to a metro station and then to the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees. We didn't go up in the Arc, because we had just gone up the Eiffel Tower, but it was cool to see it! We didn't walk down Champs Elysees either, because someone had told us that more affordable stores were on this street next to it so we went down that one instead (there weren't). We did find a grocery store though and bought some baguettes and nutella and chocolate-covered waffles for dinner though! I loved it. Noming on a baguette is probably one of my new favorite things to do. =) We also found a souvenir shop where I found something awesome for my sister! We went back to the hotel around 6 and just chilled the rest of the night. My feet hurt!
Friday Jordan, Christine, Meredith, and I were off to Normandy! We had some problems getting our e-tickets for the train, but we eventually got them and headed off to Bayeaux! (a 2+ hour train ride.) Once we got to Bayeux, we had about 40 minutes to kill before our tour picked us up from the train station, so Jordan and I pulled out the food we stole from breakfast that morning for lunch, and Christina and Meredith grabbed some food out of the vending machine. Our tour group consisted of our guide who learned to speak English from watching Seinfeld, 2 retired men from Columbus, Ohio, a teacher working on her masters from New York City, and a middle-aged Texan man. Our first stop of the day was Pointe du Hoc, which was a German outpost on the bluffs between Utah and Omaha beaches (the two U.S. beaches). It was really cool to hear the story of how the Ranger had to scale the bluffs and take out all of the Germans in the bunkers and they found the guns that were hidden in a field about 500 meters away and destroyed those too. There must've been some wizards among them! And it was amazing to see the bunkers, which we could go into, and look out over the sea and see what the Germans would have seen in 1944. Plus, there were all these craters from bombs all over the place there! They were massive! And they've naturally filled in over the years, so they were almost twice as deep in 1944!!! I kind of scampered around on my own most of the time we were on the tour, because I tend to just start wandering to wherever I feel like going and look around me 5 minutes later and realize that no one that I came with is there anymore! But that's fine with me, because I get to see what I want to see. Our next stop on the tour was Omaha Beach. It was high tide unfortunately, so it was hard to imagine the sea 500 meters farther out and how far they would've had to run and dodge and they didn't have any shelter except German defenses to hide behind because all of the bombs landed too far inland, on the bluffs, so the guns were still working when the engineers and soldiers landed on D-Day. They do still have some of the gun bunkers there though. One still has a gun in it and there is a memorial to the U.S. National Guard on top of it. It was really cool because all the words were in both French and English. While at Omaha, we also saw the memorial to the first American Cemetery in France from WWII, which was right off the beach. All of the bodies were later moved when the American Cemetery opened up in 1954. Speaking of the cemetery, that was our next stop! The American Cemetery is absolutely overwhelming! When you first walk into it, you walk into a memorial for all the soldiers whose bodies have never been recovered or identified. Each name is listed on a massive wall. If there is a black dot next to the name on the wall, it means that the body of that soldier was found after the wall was built. It was good to see some of those dots. After you pass through the memorial, you are in the cemetery proper. It is absolutely massive! There are almost 10,000 bodies buried there, with around 900 unknown soldiers and 600 or so Jewish soldiers, who have a Star of David gravestone rather than a cross. Just walking through the cemetery made the sacrifice that these men (and women) made so much more real and the numbers made so much more sense. The cemetery is located on top of a bluff, overlooking Omaha beach, where many of them died. The requirement to be buried there is that they had to die in Normandy. Recently, they've started a program with the families in the area where they each get a soldier in the cemetery and bring flowers to put on the grave at least once a year. This tradition will be passed on through the generations. It's a way of remembering the soldiers and all that they did for the people of Normandy and France. On a slightly happier note, I was on American soil! France gave that land to America, so it's technically American soil, so I was home last Saturday! It felt so good to be back. =) We were able to be there for the lowering of the American flags and the playing of taps, which was really cool to see. We also kind of followed the Ohioans around at first because one of them had brought flowers to honor the soldiers and we wanted to see where he would put them. He chose to put them on the grave of a soldier who died on D-Day. He thought it was appropriate. The last stop of the day was Longues-sur-Mer, another German outpost located on a bluff, this time between U.S. beach Omaha and British beach Gold. This one is really cool because all of the original guns are still in the bunkers! So I actually got to touch a German gun! I really liked walking around there and seeing all of this stuff. It really made the war more realistic and I can imagine things better because I've actually seen some stuff! We were dropped off back at the train station and grabbed some food out of the vending machine to eat while we waited for our train to take us back to Paris. My original plan was to go see the Eiffel Tower light show that night, but by the time we got to the metro station it had already started and I didn't want to wait until 11 to go see it, so I just headed back to the hotel, stopping at a grocery store on the way to pick up another baguette (which was even better than last night's one!).
Saturday, Hilary, Lyndsay, Meredith, and I headed off to Versailles (or, as I see that this could be completely plausible, Beauxbatons). We took the metro to the RER station and bought tickets to take us out to Versailles and back. The RER took about 40 minutes or so, but walking out and seeing the palace was so cool! Versailles is so ornate! And crowded. All of the rooms were absolutely gorgeous, but it was so crowded that you couldn't really just stand in the rooms and look around, you were kind of pushed from room to room. But that's ok, because I still got to say I was there and I have some awesome pictures and memories to show for it! We went out to look at the gardens, but we didn't really get to walk around them because it was our last full day in Paris and we all still had stuff we wanted to see back in Paris proper. So we made sure we were heading back on the RER around noon (or as soon as it actually left the station after 12). Meredith and Lyndsay got off to go see the Eiffel Tower, while Hilary and I got off at the same stop and then parted ways, she went to meet some friends at the Opera House, while I headed off to Notre Dame. Notre Dame was absolutely gorgeous. I love all the detail in the stone! And the stained glass windows were beautiful. I was so glad that I went there! I didn't go up and see the gargoyles,because the line was long, but I did walk around the outside and get some great pictures! I also stopped at a souvenir shop and bought some prints of paintings, which are really pretty! I next attempted to walk to the Louvre, but got lost and ended up just finding the nearest metro station and taking the metro there (it's hard to find your way around when street names randomly change, not all of them are on the map, and there's no signs pointing in the direction of the Louvre!). My original intention was just to take pictures of the Louvre, but after doing that, I decided that I actually wanted to go in! So I got my ticket and headed off to see the Mona Lisa, which was cool to see in person, but there was a crowd there, so you couldn't just stand there and look at it really. After that I just wandered, ending up in the Oriental and Egyptian sections of the museum instead of the painting sections. Which was fine because that was more history type stuff, so I'm sure I enjoyed that more than I would've enjoyed the paintings! I actually ended up getting lost in the Louvre and it took me half an hour to find the exit! I finally found it though and made my way to the souvenir shop and bought a couple magnets and a gift for a friend. Then I went to the cafe and got some dinner (another hot dog, a really good pastry with chocolate in the middle!, and apple juice, which was really good.) I was then planning on going out of the Louvre through the pyramid and walking through the garden to the obelisk at the other end, but it was raining! So I stayed inside and walked around the mall instead, stopping to get some really good dark chocolate gelato! By that time, it was about time to go meet Meredith and Lyndsay at the Eiffel Tower, so I hopped on the metro and headed off to that stop. Since it had just stopped raining, there were some great pictures to be taken of the Tower! And WWF was there doing something on the terrace, so that was really cool to see. I almost stole one of their pandas, but I don't think they would've appreciated that too much. Our plan was to see the lights on the Eiffel Tower, but they never came on! I thought since it was dusk it would be fine and they would come on but they didn't! I was (and still am) so mad!!!!! That was one of two things that I wanted to do in Paris, climb up the Eiffel Tower during the day and see the light show at night! And I didn't get to see the lights! We couldn't go back later, because the three of us were going on a pub crawl that we had booked. Sad, I gave up and we went back to the hotel to drop stuff off before heading over to Moulin Rouge (the group was meeting right across the street from it, so we got some cool pictures before the pub crawl started). The pub crawl was a lot of fun! We went to 4 different pubs before we left (we weren't sure whether there was another one to go to or not, but we were tired by that point in time, so we just left). And we got drink discounts at every pub too because we were on the tour! We met people from all over the world, so that was pretty fun. Then, on the metro home, we met a Canadian girl who is a au pair over there! It was fun talking to her and everyone else. We got back to the hotel really late, so we crashed.
Sunday, we packed, and took the metro, Eurostar, train, and coach back to Harlaxton. It was a really fun weekend, even if I didn't get to see the Eiffel Tower at night. Guess that just means I'll have to go back sometime! School's almost done here. I can't believe it went by this fast. My last real weekend trip is this coming weekend when I head off to Northern Ireland!
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