J'adore Paris.

Wednesday, October 30th, around 7:30, we landed safe and sound into France! Wow, I can' believe it. Two hours ago I was in Spain and now I'm about to walk the streets of France. Well, it wasn't all dandy at first. I had just got a cold and my ears popped on the plane and my right one never popped back so I couldn't hear from my right ear for almost 2 days. Then, me and Haley (a girl from salzburg college I was traveling with) realized no one ever gave us the address to the apartment so we had to find that out, but oh wait....we can't use our phones. Yay. The ultimate search for wifi began. Haley finally got wifi on her phone and we got the address so then we asked a car rental place how far the apartment was....he replied "ohhhhh that's 1 hour and a half by bus" with his French accent. So we ran over to the bus we were supposed to take and the guy said to hurry because they were leaving now. 30 seconds and a 16 euro bus ticket later and we were on the bus on our way to Paris. Headphones in and music on. 

10 o'clock rolled around and we finally got off the bus but still weren't close enough to walk to the apartment so we hopped in a taxi and in less than 30 minutes we finally got to the apartment. However, no way to contact the others inside to get buzzed in so we were on round 2 search for wifi. Luckily we found an Irish pub (haha in Paris) a block away with free wifi and got in contact with them and were in the apartment 5 minutes later, FINALLY. We were starving so we got delicious 5 euro sandwiches around the corner and walked over to Notre Dame which was 5 minutes away! 

Paris was already amazing. 

But after a long day it was time for sleep. Our apartment was pretty comfy too by the way. There were 5 of us with a giant bed, pull out couch, lots of cushions and blankets, full bathroom and a little kitchen area. 

Thursday, October 31st, HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Well first order of business, breakfast.

If I could get this 'chocolate filled and chocolate covered with almonds on top croissant' every day, I would. They heat it up for you a little bit and it is just heaven (Ariana, this picture is mostly for you, I didn't forget haha). Next we headed to our meeting spot to go on a free guided tour throughout the city that one of the girls heard about. A free 3 hour walking tour with a cool Dutch tour guide? Ill take it! Here's just some of the amazing things we saw along the way... I'm sure some things may look familiar!

Unfortunately our tour had to come to an end so we stopped for some food. Beef bourguignon and a sugar crepe. The restaurant was about a block from where the tour ended and luckily we were that much closer to the Eiffel Tower so the 5 of us continued on our own little tour after lunch. 

And then here's my little montage of myself slowly approaching the good ol Eiffel Tower! 

Yup there is it, lit up and breathtaking. I also got to see it sparkle while enjoying my strawberry banana smoothie and pistachio macaroon. I should have been eating a baguette... Sorry mom, dad, Keith and Michelle. Haha.

We sat for a good 30 minutes just looking at the Eiffel Tower. It truly was something I will never forget. But enough relaxing and gazing at the beauty of Paris because we had to get back to our apartment and get ready for a pub crawl we bought tickets for. 15 euros a person to go to 4 bars, a free shot at each bar and discounted drinks! It was so cool to see some people in their Halloween costumes too, more than I expected. I however did not have a costume and felt like a silly American loser but lots of others didn't have costumes on the pub crawl so it was fine. At one of the bars I met a guy who worked there who's dream is to go to New York so he was fascinated when I was talking to him. We were told by the pub crawl leader that the 4th place we go to is one of the best clubs around there and that's where they leave us to dance all night! Of course if you know me, I just wanted to go straight to that place! When we were at the 3rd bar, we had to meet outside around 11:30 and I was trying to get some of the people from my program to hurry but it wasn't working. By the time we went outside, it was too late and the pub crawlers had already left. And to this day I have yet to go to a club in Europe. Shocking, I know. Well at this point we went back to the apartment and my night ended by skyping in the bathroom for quite a while with some friends. Happy Halloween! Haha.

Friday, November 1st, adventures on my own! I ventured through the streets of Paris today and really had no destination. I planned on working my way towards this photo gallery that we passed by on the walking tour yesterday but I couldn't remember the way. Yup, I was lost in Paris and I couldn't be happier actually. I got a chocolate filled croissant, stumbled upon some awesome stores, found a cool nature museum that I walked through outdoors, found some cool sculptures along a river, took the subway and finally made my way to the photo gallery where I spent a good hour and a half. 

I had to start making my way to meet everyone at this meeting spot for a 2 hour walking tour we planned to go on at 6pm. So I took the subway again and when I was walking through, there was a full orchestra just doing their thing! 

Before I headed to Starbucks (the tours meeting spot) I went to a food stand and grabbed a panini to go. The guy basically gave me a whole baguette, this thing was huge haha. Also, I was able to have a conversation in French with the dude. I was surprised how much French I remembered, it all came back to me. I didn't understand a couple things but he helped me out. It was awesome, I felt so multilingual. Oh by the way, this is where I was.... 

Yeah! The real Moulin Rouge! I was just hanging in the red light district waiting for the tour to meet up. Every single store was a sex shop basically, it's true. Some would just say "Sex Shop" and others would get a bit more creative, like this one...

Haha. 

Our tour met up and we were off! Touring the older streets of Paris at night. 

We also got to see the building that Pablo Picasso lived in for a couple years. We layed low that night and I got some skyping in for a couple hours in the bathroom! 

Got to Skype with my roommate from home! (Kasey, I miss you so much! Can't wait to be weird with you in our apartment).

Saturday, November 2nd, our last day in Paris. We finally went inside Notre Dame today. 

And did a little shopping. And a couple nights ago, we got this gyro with French fries on top, it was magical. I forgot to take a picture but here is the photo they have outside the place...

Then we went out to lunch and I couldn't resist getting this amazing salad on the menu. Pineapples, cashews, avocado, chicken. They had me at pineapples.

We headed back to the apartment and at this point it was just a matter of waiting before we had to leave for our night train to Munich. After a nice nap, I gathered my stuff and we were off to catch a 7 something train. The 4 of us that were traveling together at this point all had different seats in separate carts so I made my way to my cart and there was only one woman in there so far. She looked to be in her 40s and was looking out the window at a man, waving goodbye and began to cry. Luckily I had some tissues in my bag because I was a bit sick and offered her one. She took the tissue, waved it to who I later learned was her husband and laughed. I had made a friend on the train....thanks to my tissues I guess. Haha. She was from Serbia and she was very sweet. Her English was not bad but she didn't know any German at all so she was glad I could speak English (not like I really know any German anyways...haha). Our cart was pretty social and we learned where everyone was from. I was the New Yorker, my friend was the middle aged woman from Serbia, the guy next to her was the middle aged man from Turkey who spoke German, English and French, the boy across from him was the young adult from Germany, the girl next to him was the young lady from Japan who didn't say much but had a giant baguette sticking out of her pocket book (which I thought was funny) and the woman across from me was the shy lady from Indonesia who would leave the cart for long periods of time. I felt like we were in a movie. When we would all try to communicate it would be difficult at times be aide I was the only one with English as my first language, yet we only spoke in English (thank goodness). Sometimes it would just turn into a guessing game or a game of charades. Pretty entertaining to say the least. I helped my Serbian friend with her phone at one point and then she said "Thank you God for this" (pointing at me) and then continued to say how glad she was that I was her neighbor on the train. After a long 12 or so hours on the train, we arrived into Munich train station. Now, the search for a train from here to Salzburg began. Luckily we only had to wait just under an hour for the next train at 8:45am and it was cheap. On to the final train and about 2 hours later we pulled into the Salzburg train station. We quickly got into a taxi, made it back to the dorms by 11am, unpacked and finally relaxed after an amazing 16 day Europe adventure. 

Dorm sweet dorm.