Ze City of Lights

It was a weird feeling landing in France. Iceland felt more like a vacation than a pre-moving journey, and I was kind of sad to not be landing back and home and see my parents and friends. It was hard to stay sad though since we were all pretty excited about being in France: the land of wine, crêpes and kebabs (yes, kebabs)!

Getting from the airport to our hostel was quite a journey. After collecting our bags, Olivia and I said adieu to Nick who was headed straight to Chambéry. We headed off towards the currency exchange. Guess what? They didn’t take Iceland Krona, but they did take the Thai Baht… (???!). The guy told me I could probably find somewhere in the center of Paris to exchange my krona (although I forgot, of course).

Ahh La Tour Eiffel

Afterwards, we boarded the shuttle to a different terminal to catch the RER train. For those who have not flown to Paris before, the airports are all located a bit outside the city and Charles De Gaulle is about 45 minutes outside Paris. When we got to the terminal to catch the RER, we realized all the machines only took coins or cards, so we waited about 20 minutes in line at the ticket counter to pay with cash :/  Once on the RER, we got off at Gare du Nord to catch the metro. After lugging our suitcases to and fro across the train station in search of a machine to buy metro tickets, we finally asked a worker who told us we didn’t need one since we came on the RER (cool). However, there were no elevators or escalators, so we had to drag our suitcases down about 3 flights of stairs.

Luckily, though and much to our surprise, various passerby helped us carry our suitcases up/down the stairs at the metro stations since they clearly felt bad for us. I don’t remember experiencing such hospitality in the past. At our destination station, a fellow traveler asked if we were by chance heading to the St. Christopher’s hostel, which we were! He was Australian (the second one we met that day- we met one in line at the RER station) and also participating in the TAPIF program in Marseille. We dragged our suitcases up the metro stairs one last time (with more help, thankfully) and headed off down the street to the hostel. We were getting some weird looks from some of the other hostel-goers due to the excessive amount of bags we had. We ended up seeing the other Australian from the RER there and he commented on this, so I felt compelled to explain we were moving for 8 months and we NEEDED ALL 10 PAIRS OF SHOES (just kidding, I didn't bring that many...maybe).

I had heard really great things about the St. Christopher’s chain – they have hostels in Amsterdam, London etc and are rated highly on hostelworld. This one at least definitely tried to get all the money out of you they could, which is annoying because people staying in hostels are usually broke college-aged kids. They wanted something like 20 euro to store your luggage for 24 hours which is absolutely ridiculous we just left our bags near our bed and put the important stuff in the lockers provided underneath the beds. There was also wifi, but it was super crappy, so they also tried to charge you to use the internet on their computers in the lobby. It was fine though for two nights and we were just happy to not be dragging our suitcases around the city.

Although the hostel was in an arrondissement (city district) further towards the edge of town, it was close to a couple different metro stops, which was convenient. Olivia and I were just starving since we hadn’t eaten since the croissants on the plane and found the closest café to get a late lunch/early dinner. We got a funny look from the waiter when we ordered our food since it was only about 530 pm and unlike in Iceland, the French (and the rest of Europe) eat later and don’t close their restaurants by 9 pm! I ordered the carbonara, which I did pretty much every single time it was on the menu when I studied abroad last time. This was just alright though. Certainly doesn’t beat the carbonara I had in Montpellier.

We suddenly realized how tired we were since we barely got any sleep the night before and went back to the hostel to take a nap. We had set our alarms for 930 p.m. so we could get to the Eiffel Tower before the elevators closed at 11 pm. Well, we didn’t end up getting out of bed til 1015 or so, but still headed off to the Eiffel Tower to see it even if we couldn’t go up. You don’t immediately see it once getting off the metro at the Trocadero, so I felt the suspense turning the corner waiting for it to come into sight. It’s so magical to see at night. I was super excited to see it again, so I couldn’t imagine how Olivia felt seeing it for the first time. Even though it was past 11, there were still a lot of people (and annoying people trying to sell you souvenirs and those stupid glowy balls that they fling into the air). We got a bit lost on the way back – I knew the Champs Elysées wasn’t far and we were hoping to see it lit up at night, but we forgot to cross the river and just ended up taking the metro at Place de la Concorde. When we went to switch trains, we found the connecting one had already shut down since it was past 1 am, so we just hopped in a cab for the remainder of the way back since there was no way in hell we were walking through Paris towards the suburbs at 1 am.

Every so often the Eiffel Tower will erupt in an explosion of dancing lights that cover the tower from top to bottom. It's really quite magical to see. The lights would only show up well if I took it out of focus. Still looks cool though, eh?

Tuesday we had plans to meet one of my friends from abroad Emily, who is also doing the TAPIF program in Paris. We met her in the 4^th arrondissement and were supposed to go to a falafel place for lunch that she said was really good. What we didn’t realize, though was that it was the Jewish holiday and the place was actually closed. That explained all of the nicely-dressed women and boys in yamachas that we saw the night before near our hostel. There was a falafel place across the street that we went to instead, although Emily said it meant they probably weren’t authentic since they were open on the Jewish holiday (even though the signed said in huge red letters, AUTHENTIC). We ate in a park nearby and then all three headed off to the train station to get our cartes 12-25.

One of the great things about France is their train system – you can take a train to pretty much any corner of the country. I wish we had such good infrastructure. Another good thing about France is if you’re under 25, you get discounts on a lot of things. La carte 12-25 is a discount card for trains that you can buy if you’re between the ages of 12 and 25 to get between 25 up to 75 percent off train tickets. So Olivia and I got our cartes 12-25 as well as our train tickets to head off to our respective areas the next day (me, Dax and her, Le Mans – about an hour from Paris).

After saying bye to Emily, Olivia and I headed off to see Notre Dame on the Île de France. We took the requisite tourist pics in front of the cathedral, although due to construction half of the square was blocked off by scaffolding, and then headed inside. One thing I hadn’t noticed before was that inside they have the crown of thorns (well, a replica) that Jesus wore. Then we waited about 30 minutes in the cold to get up to the towers – the real reason for visiting Notre Dame. When I went to buy my ticket, I was expecting to pay the 6 or whatever euro for the under 25 group, but the guy saw my OFII (basically, the immigration office) stamp from when I studied abroad last time and since that meant I was a “resident” of France I got in for free! There’s no expiration date on the OFII, so he had no way of knowing it was two years old and I had since been living back in the U.S.

Even though it was easily my third or fourth time up in the towers, the view is always spectacular. The grey buildings and slat roofs of Paris seem to extend for miles, interrupted by the Eiffel Tower to one side, a cluster of business buildings further out and of course Sacre Coeur towering off over Montmartre in the distance. We got to go up a level even further, which I don’t think I had been up before. We then headed back to the right bank towards Le Louvre and Les Jardins des Tuileries. It was past 5 so the Louvre was closed – not that we had time to try to tackle it anyway.

We didn’t feel bad about not trying to visit everything in this trip since Olivia is only an hour from Paris and will have plenty of opportunity to go back and I’ve already done the touristy stuff before. We continued past the Louvre into the Tuileries, although half of it was blocked off for more construction. It felt like I was back on campus in Blacksburg with the never-ending construction. We walked about halfway up the Champs Elysées and then decided we were cold and hungry and went to a café/restaurant for steak-frites (nom). Of course once the waiter realized we were American (which probably didn’t take long) he kept speaking to us in English, even though we were only speaking to him in French. That’s one thing that’s frustrating about big cities like Paris – they’ll just keep speaking to you in English. I had that happen to me in Montpellier. But I don’t think as many people speak English in Dax so I won’t have to worry about it there.

The next morning, we decided there was no way in hell we were dragging our suitcases through metro stations again. Olivia and I hailed a cab from our hostel and although he looked at us with some doubt and told us we were “chargée comme des mules” (loaded with bags like donkeys), all of our stuff fit into the taxi. Once at the gare (train station), Olivia and I said adieu at the end of my platform as I headed off to find my car and she had some time to kill before her train to Le Mans.