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Ok so I haven't written in a long time, but in my defense, I have a reason. I hate writing posts without pictures because that makes them exponentially more boring and my iPhoto has been being sassy for the last two weeks so I couldn't upload pictures. But a post with one picture is better than no post at all so hurrr goes..
Paris was my second weekend trip. I feel like it's just one of those places you have to go at some point in your life, so we figured, why not now?
I did my best, beforehand, to lower my expectations of the city. When things are hyped up so much (think freshman year high school homecoming dance...times 10) it's hard for them to meet the impossible standards people have set in their minds. I realized this was probably one of the biggest reasons I loved Portugal so much, because I came with no expectations, and therefore tried to lower my expectations of this magical "city of love" I'd heard about since I was 2 years old.
Our magical love journey started out with me, Morgan, a half dozen chocolate chip muffins, and a 50 euro cab ride to the airport in Barcelona (since the Aerobus doesn't start operating until 5:30am). The journey there went off without a hitch, although boarding the plane was a little interesting. They scanned our tickets and then led us down a spiral staircase to a bus...which then drove to the middle of the airplane..parking lot? and let us off outside a lonesome plane with a staircase leading up to the door. I felt like I was being whisked away in the middle of the night to some secret work camp or something. After that I don't remember a second of the flight because I fell asleep before our plane even left the gate.
Once at Orly Airport in Paris, we took the tram and then the metro to get into the city's center and our friends' apartment where we'd be staying for the weekend. At the tram we put more of our guerilla tactics into use. The ticket slot for the gate to leave the tram and get on the metro was jammed, so unless you had one of the fancy local metro cards, the gates wouldn't open to let you out. Meanwhile, there's a hoard of people behind you all trying to get where they're going as fast as they can, looking at you like you're crazy as you stare at the non-budging gate. I must communicate dispair on my face pretty well, because within a few seconds, one kind french man emerged and swiped his card for me so I could pass through with my luggage. Morgan, on the other hand, was not quite so lucky and resorted to throwing her luggage over to me and then climbing over the double gate. Haha things got real in Paris pretty quickly
Immediately upon getting off the metro after about 40 minutes of post-plane travel we immediately noticed one thing. Paris was COLD. I appreciate Barcelona's weather soooo much more after freezing in my little rain coat (the only coat I brought) with no hat or gloves.
We stayed at our friend's apartment which was just off the Guar de Nord metro stop. (Morgan's roommate from Madison, Anna, and our friend, Andrea, are both studying abroad in Paris for the semester and are coincidentally roommates so it was the perfect place to stay for the weekend.) Another thing I quickly learned in Paris is that I have no idea how to pronounce French words. At least in Spanish, I feel like I can read the words, and the letters make about the same sound (only the vowels are a little different). In French, I feel like they just don't say half the letters in each word and with my extent of French language knowledge being "bon jour" "bon appetite" "merci" and "un, do, twa" (I'm sure those aren't spelled correctly) I was glad we had people with us all the time who spoke French.
Throughout the weekend, we had a chance to see a lot of the typical Paris attractions, including the Louvre, Eiffel Tower (bigger than I'd imagined), climbed to the top of the Arc de Triumph (amazing views), and climbed up to Sacre Coeur (you can see the entire city). At night we went to Cafe Oz (there was a DJ spinning up in this giant rainforest tree) and Showcase, a really cool underground club with stone arches everywhere that was down by the river. Drinks were 12euro a piece so I stubbornly refused to buy one but still had a good time.
One difference between the clubs in Paris and Barcelona was that the clubs in Paris play house music, house music, and more house music but with the same beat the entire time and absolutely no words. I think the funnest part was watching the new dance moves people were coming up with after getting bored of dancing to the same beat for 3 hours.
Another difference was that even though the drinking age in France is 16 while in Spain it's 18, we got IDed at every club in Paris and the bouncers in Barcelona would never think of IDing any of us. This was something Morgan and I didn't know the first night, but quickly learned and were prepared the next night. One of our friends also tried getting by with a copy of her passport (usually accepted as a form of ID anywhere) and they wouldn't let her in unless she had an actual, real form of ID with her (not photocopied).
While in Barcelona, if you're American, all the clubs will pretty much let you in for free without ID and sometimes even provide free drinks for the night. However in Paris, being American makes it LESS likely that you'll be able to get into the clubs, and if you want to get in for free, you have to be there before midnight (in Barca the clubs don't even open until 2am).
The food in Paris was so much better than Barcelona. I think I ate enough for 3 people throughout the course of the weekend. My favorite were the nutella/banana crepes sold by a little food stand that was open all hours of the night right by the apartment we were staying. It was dangerously good and Morgan and I got nutella/banana crepes every single night.
We also experienced our first elaborate pick-pocketing scheme when we got off the metro to go to the Louvre. As we climbed to the top of the stair from the underground, all of a sudden a bunch of these small-ish girls ran up to us and started shoving these clip boards at us (while eagerly urging us to sign their petitions...all in a different language which I can only presume was French, but also could've been Russian). I remembered hearing from our tour guide in Portugal how this is one of the schemes these pick-pocketers pull to distract you while they clean out your pockets/purse, so I immediately put my hand over the zipper on my purse and shoved my way out of them. Morgan, on the other hand, kept telling them she was just trying to take a picture, and then all of a sudden one of the girls was holding out her phone to her, so she took it, and then they disappeared just as quickly as they had came. The girl had taken her phone out of her pocket, then must not have wanted it, and gave it back to her! Lucky lady.
Finally, the stores and fashion in Paris are amazing. Everywhere I walked, I felt under-dressed, and everywhere I looked, multi-level mega-version stores of Louis Vuitton, Dolce&Gabbana, and Tiffany's looked back at me. We walked into a few stores but the lines inside to actually buy anything were sooo long that we never bought anything. Another surprising surface offering, for 90 euros, you could take a ride in a Lamborghini that was parked on the main square. Craziness.
Now for the interesting part. As much as we loved Paris while we were there, Sunday came around and we had to get back to Barcelona to go to class on Monday morning. Naturally, we left a little later than expected and were already cutting our flight time a little close when we got off on the wrong stop on the tram and then had to RUN through the airport to our boarding gate. Already stressed out, we finally made it all the way to boarding gate (passed security and everything) when the lady looks down at my ticket and says, "This ticket is for March 4." My heart dropped. My stomach dropped. I just looked at her in fear and disbelief. We checked Morgan's ticket, and her's was booked for the correct day, so apparently I was just an idiot and booked my return flight for a month later (not surprising). I begged, pleaded, and bribed the woman to let me on that flight, but she wasn't budging sooooo ten minutes later I was in the Paris airport...by myself...with a French vocabulary of about 6 words. I normally have a "it will all work out" attitude on life and don't get stressed out/cry/have any really strong emotions at all (haha) but in that moment I was so close to crying. I gave myself a mental pep talk though, and pulled it together, realizing that having a minor breakdown in the Paris airport would only delay my return to Barcelona and make me look like a crazy American.
I was trying to ask the woman how to buy a new ticket to Barcelona (what she told me I'd have to do) and the extent of her help was to point out to the giant expanse of the airport and say "go there to the desk and buy a new ticket". Yeah ok. For a half hour I tried to figure out how I could get back OUT security (something you never think about how hard it would be to do) and tried asking countless people (using both spanish and english...neither of which anyone could understand) how to get out to the desks where you buy tickets. Finally after a half hour, I resorted to the "no-holds-barred/I need to figure this out or I'm never getting home approach" and did charades with a guy working one of the x-ray machines (he seemed very shocked, as he should of been, when I waltzed up to him), asking him how to get back out security. He motioned for me to just walk the opposite way back through the metal detectors/hoards of oncoming people, which seemed absolutely crazy to me. I feel like in America if you did that, you'd be tackled or something. So I went back through (while getting sooo many stares as the buzzers of the metal detector started going crazy since I had my bag and everything with me) and ducked under all the gates to go buy my new ticket.
I'm still not even sure how much it cost to change my ticket (I think it was something ridiculous like 100 euro) but I got a flight back that same night which is all I really cared about. I then had to check in (surprise! the overheads were registering as full so they had to check my bag. great.) go back through security and wait for my next flight...which was delayed. It was seriously a series of unfortunate events. At one point I went into the duty free store where I found a huge box of Kinder Buenos (the best candy bar in the world) for only 17 euro. I literally stared at the box for at least a solid 5 minutes going back and forth with myself if I should buy it. I finally came to the conclusion that I could either be stressed AND fat AND further the American stereotype of eating massive quantities of junk food (under the scrutinizing eye of the French)...or just stressed. So I ran out of there as fast as I could before I changed my mind.
A few hours after planned, I was finally on my way back to Barcelona. It was a fun weekend, but after the mishaps with travel on the way home, I'll be glad to stay in Barcelona for the next few weekends.
