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!

View of Monaco!

Our next stop being Nice, Brad and I were excited for a new country …but a little nervous that neither of us know ANY French! We found some last minute couchsurfers just outside of Nice in a cute town called Antibes! Kasey was an American from Pennsylvania, and her boyfriend Barack from Israel! They were both really easy to talk to…it was nice not having to speak broken English!

Our first night we all went into the town together…grabbed some food and admired all the MASSIVE yachts whose owners are too wealthy
for their own good!

Yachts!

Antibes beach

The next day we decided to hang around in Antibes. The beach there is actually sand (unlike Nice) and apparently not so crowded. Except…it was SO crowded! Not what i am used to…so spoiled in Perth! And unfortunately…the water was quite dirty…although it still felt really nice to swim in once we got past all the crap!

That night, kasey’s friend that went to Auburn was visiting and we all cooked together! Mango lime fish with rice and broccoli salad. We stayed up really late chatting and barack missed his French class the next morning whooops! SORRY! We had to leave the next morning but messed up our Busabout times and were left with nowhere to stay. We found some SUPER last minute couchsurfers that happened to be down the street….and the husband was in the SAME French class as Barack! This couple were both Turkish and super
super accommodating and friendly! We wished we could have spent more time with them!

That afternoon Brad and I went into Nice. The Jazz festival was going on, so we walked around for a while enjoying the abundance of buskers and small performances!

Nice Jazz festival!

The beach was absolutely beautiful! The water was much cleaner AND there were waves! Although…the beach was very rocky! We decided to grab some cheap beers and sit on the boardwalk while the sun went down! We got beers with tequila in them…which turned out to be really good…AND we saw a man riding his bike down the boardwalk with a dog sitting on his back! Good day! We walked around endlessly looking for some Crepes….savoury not sweet…didn’t have any luck…but settled for delicious burgers instead! When we wanted to go back to Antibes…we just missed the 10:30 train and had to wait until after midnight to catch the next one! Ufuk WAITED up for us to pick us up from the station! AH felt sooo bad!

Nice Beach!

SO unfortunately we didn’t make it to Monaco and Nice … although beautiful…wasn’t our favorite city as broke travelers! It is definitely a place for the rich and famous! In that case…we’ll be back

in a few years haha