Jenn's International Travel Adventures: A Weekend in Paris!

This weekend I went to Paris! I left on Thursday 7/11 after class and got in to Paris around 10:30pm. I went with three other students who are on the program with me, so we all got to the studio we rented for the weekend around 12pm.

Friday we woke up and headed out to explore Paris! We walked to Notre Dame and got our first Croissants, and then we got on an open bus tour to see Paris that way! We saw a LOT of different things and it was all really cool and interesting.

We stopped at the Eiffel tower to eat lunch and take pictures, which was really fun.

After that, we headed to the Louvre, which we were able to get into for free! We saw the Mona Lisa and all sorts of cool famous paintings and sculptures. I also noticed my really bad sunburn. Ouch.

After a few hours in the Louvre, we headed out to get some dinner! I got cabonara pasta, which was something way out of my comfort zone that I tried anyway.

I wasn't the biggest fan in the world but I still ate it and it was decent, so that's always fun!

After dinner, we started heading back to our studio to get some sleep when we stumbled upon a cute little street market. We found a cute gelato shop that formed it into rose petals:

So we of course all had to get some! It was SO GOOD! I loved it and wish I could get it shaped like that back home.

After that we wandered around a bit, and visited Notre Dame again before heading back.

What a view!!

Finally, we got back to our studio and made it to bed around 2 or 3 am. We got up late the next morning for another day of exploring Paris. This time, we headed to Sacre Coeur on Montmartre!

We got more croissants and ate them overlooking the awesome view of Paris before heading in the chapel. No pictures were allowed to be taken inside, but we did get to clime the dome of the chapel and take pictures of the AMAZING view, and that was so cool.

After Sacre Coeur, we got Omelettes before heading to the Arc de Triomphe!

The Arc

This is where, of course, my camera decided to die on me! So the rest of my pics from that day are from my phone. Which sucks, but that's life.

From here, we walked to the Eiffel Tower to eat dinner in front of it and then go up top.

Crepes! SO GOOD!

Eventually, we had to get up to get in line to go up the Eiffel Tower. We walked up to the second level and took the elevator to the top from there. (SO MANY STAIRS.)

Despite the large amount of stairs and lots of breaks I had to take (I'm not in shape, okay?) I finally made it to the top and we got to see the Sunset from the Eiffel Tower! We waited on top till it got dark, and we were up there for probably 3 hours in total from start to finish! Now for some pic spam:

Our Paris Group!

Little Boom loved it!

Finally, it got dark and Paris was so pretty at night! We saw lots of fireworks too, so that was super cool.

A beautiful view with a fabulous firework!

After we got back down, we waited 10-15 minutes until midnight (0:00 for you europe folks) to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle!

It was definitely worth the wait and it was so darn pretty!

From there we walked back to our studio, which was a really long walk that took us a good 1 hour and 30 minutes or so until we got to the Metro. Finally, we made it back and got to bed at 3. It was a exhausting day!

Sunday we got up early to get to the Bastille Day Parade! Unfortunately we missed some great spots, (Because someone in our group thought if we went up farther on we'd get better ones... nope, just a bunch more people and a I-Can't-See-Anything view...) but we still enjoyed seeing it with all the flyovers and such.