Paris!!

The Lourve!

A trip around Europe is not complete without a visit to the “city of lights.” Paris is a city that takes at least 1o adjectives to describe. Not only the capital of France but also an important cultural and financial capital of Europe. A gorgeous and elegant metropolis with an admirable way of life. Chill out in one of the several outdoor cafes and let the hours melt away or go exploring in the bony underground catacombs. There are thousands of things to do in Paris as it is truly a dynamic and dazzling city. Our experience began in the dark..hobbling around the streets looking for our CS’s apartment. 1 am is never a good time to arrive at a blind date, but luckily for us our host Charlotte was having a late jam session with a few of her friends.

Her apartment was tiny! I had one of those weird embarrassing moments, when I thought I was sitting on her couch, but turned out to be her bed.. oops. Our bed actually folded up into the kitchen wall/cabinet and after seeing how the place was set up, we were pretty impressed at the use of space. Seeing people live comfortably in an area no bigger than an average size family room, opened our eyes once more to how spoiled at how much stuff and room we have at home.

Our CSer – Charlotte!

Another aspect of Parisian life and probably the most important, is food. The french claim to have the best cooks and cuisine in the world.. and they might be right. I’m not sure if it was the pre-Paris screening of Ratatouille, the intensity and care the our host Charlotte cooked with or if it was the dance my taste-buds were doing, but the quality/combination of flavors in nearly everything we ate in Paris was tip top! I wish I could tell you some of our favorites but french, as you might know, is not a phonetic language thus too hard for me to sound out. But trust me, the food was bomb!

Arc de Triumph!

Equally exciting were the sights; Arc de Triumph, The Louvre, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge just to name a few and of course the Eiffel Tower (which is way better at night, especially on the hour). And we saw them all! Except Jim Morrisons grave We walked over an hour to get

Moulin Rouge

there and it was closed booo! For four days Chels and I hoofed it around Paris. A few things we learned about walking the entire city:

1) Paris is beautiful, not dirty like people say.

2) The People are friendly, not rude

3) All maps are deceiving when it comes to lengths and next time wear comfortable shoes not flip flops.

eeek…

One of the more interesting attractions that we saw were the Catacombs. We had heard that this was something different and cool to check out while in Paris and that promise was delivered and then some. Basically the catacombs are a collection of bones buried 80 meters below the streets of Paris. It contains the remains of the approximately 6 million people there was no room for in the city cemeteries, dating back to early 1800’s. You would think seeing the decomposed body parts of millions of people was weird enough but the people in charge of disposing of them, stacked them to form these perfect “bone walls” with the femur as the featured bone, and rest thrown behind. The best (or worst) part was the patterns and designs on the “bone walls”, appropriately done with skulls! It took way to long to get through the catecombs, and when we were finally spit out the end them, I was a bit queasy. Who’s hungry?! Hard to imagine that it became a tourist attraction while it was still being filled up with bones! At least we didn’t have to use a candle and follow a black line on the ceiling.

Great view!

By this point we had relocated to our other couchsurfers, Anne-Laure and Quentin who had a beautiful apartment just in the outskirts! They shared their wine and cooked us a yummy Tex-Mex dish followed by the largest array of cheese Brad and I have ever seen at someones home! We tried every single one and found that we liked the goat cheese the best (which we already knew Brad was in love with)

yummm!

There are so many more types of goat cheese in Europe…. the states get mostly the soft kind, but apparently there are soft, semi-soft and hard ones!  

They also recommended a delicious local Crepe place that we would have never found otherwise! The savory one with egg and ham was Delicious!! The chocolate one didn’t compare to the crepes Gina made us at Pauley’s!

Romance :)

On our last night there, Brad and I grabbed a bottle of wine and sat down in front of the Eiffel Tower to watch it dazzle on the hour! It was beautiful! Nothing extraordinary as far as the light show goes, but it made for a romantic night and it was fun to see the sparkle!

As far as my opinion of Paris….i came to Europe with Paris low on the list of places i wanted to go, but i LOVED it!!! It’s beautiful, clean, great good, and actually very nice people (even complete strangers)! Would go back in a heartbeat!