PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! July 2-4

OMG OMG OMG! Paris is the most beautiful amazing romantic wonderful stupendous breathtaking city I have or probably ever will see in my entire life. I cannot even express how blessed I feel to have spent the last three days in such a wonderful city/country. We left on Saturday morning at 6am on a train to go to Paris, and we got in our seats and relaxed, and I ended up reading half of a new murder mystery on the way. Train rides are great for getting reading done. And then we ended up arriving in Paris at like ten thirty or so. We bought metro passes first thing because i had heard that it is the only way to get around Paris, and let me just say that it is one of my two favorite purchases that weekend. Saved us tons of money and trouble. The weekend day passes were only three euro thirty, and the monday was like six euro. We were going to buy this three day metro pass for like twenty four euro and then the really nice train guy told us to get it this way since it was the weekend and saved us almost ten euro. Already, I was loving Paris. Then we hopped on the metro and went to find our hostel. Super easy, and like two blocks from a metro stop. And about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower!!!!! We dropped off our bags even though we couldn't check in yet, so we didnt' have to carry them. Then we walked to the eiffel tower just so we could see the city and stuff. At a market we bought wine, champagne glasses, cheese and a baguette. Basically the most French lunch ever, and just sat in front of the Eiffel tower eating and talking and toasting our wonderful beginning to our Paris weekend. The Eiffel tower is just breathtaking, and I can't even describe in words how amazing it was to sit in this huge stretch of grass in front of it. Only the souvenir peddlers who would occasionally block our view of the tower were a little bother, but we did buy some, so I guess they came in handy too. Then we walked up to right under the Eiffel tower and just were in awe of it. The second big thing we did in Paris was go to Versailles, which is AMAZING. We get there after our train ride and just see this amazing huge palace with gold all over it. It was so shiny and amazing. We paid 15 euro to take the tour of it, and it was totally worth it. The thing was absolutely massive and they had all of the rooms from like everyone like Louis 14 and Marie Antoinette. The hall of mirrors was as grand as I imagined it would be and then some. Just chandeliers as far as the eye could see. And the ceilings in this place were massive and painted with these intricate murals. I would have loved to have been Marie Antoinette living in luxury, wearing beautiful dresses every day and being royalty like that. Especially after seeing the bed that she slept in. You would not believe how massive it was with this huge canopy over it. OMG! Of course all of this is except for the fact that she gets her head chopped off. ha ha. Anyways, after we did that we took the trains back to the city. Of course to do this we had to sneak past the entrance gate for the trains because we realized that Versailles is basically the only thing outside of the zones of Paris our metro pass covered a little too late. But we all made it, and made it back to the city in one piece. One piece and probably like half a pound lighter since somewhere in that time I managed to lose the camera that was hanging around my wrist the entire time. Yes. It sucked, I was not to thrilled about it. I can't seem to manage to go more than a year with the same camera. Or maybe losing the camera was karma for hopping the train stop in Versailles. Thanks a ton mom for praying bad things happen to me when I sin. I am partly blaming you, just like I did when I got fined in Italy for not validating my ticket on the bus :p. Whatever the case, it was gone, and I had to get over it. Whether lost or stolen, it was no longer in my possession, and thank God I had already uploaded pictures from Salzburg. Thankfully. It took me like ten minutes of kind of thinking about it, and I was like, ok. I am alive, and I still have my Eurail and Passport. Things could be much worse. I also have three friends here, Molly, Lindsay, and Kristina, that are willing to take pictures and share them with me at the end. Much worse things could have happened. And I was pretty much over it right away. I mean I can just go buy one on base thank goodness. Its not like I'm backpacking and don't have the access to get another one. So after that we went to Sacre Coures, which is like this big church. It was gorgeous inside, and I'm glad we went. Outside there was like this huge crowd of people that were watching some guy slide down this massive rail on skates and try to break some record or something. Who knows. It was a little odd. After this, we went to dinner and relaxed for a bit before heading back to our hostel. We had to pay for sheets and a towel which was super lame, but I guess worse things could happen. This will definitely be my most expensive weekend, and I think second will be Interlaken, Switzerland. But totally worth it. Then we changed to go out on the town. Unfortunately my stomach wasn't doing too good and I was hurting. Maybe it was the cheese in the cheese crepe I had for dinner, but I was not feeling good. But they convinced me to go out anyways and see the Moulin Rouge at night. And the Notre Dame. I will say that we went first to what we thought was the Notre Dame at night, and we discovered the next day that it wasn't it at all, embarrassingly. ha ha. It was like some weird building, and we were like why isn't it lighting up!!!!! And it turned out not to be it at all. Then we went to the Moulin Rouge, which I had no idea was this like huge sex district. Who knew. Maybe I am just super sheltered. But we went up to it, and took pictures at it and stuff and it was super pretty. There these three guys that were like part Spanish part French that came up to us and were trying to get us to go dancing with them and stuff, and the one was like singling me out and asking me to like run away with him, and saying we should get married and stuff. I was so embarrassed but they were really nice. I was like of course when I'm feeling like crap this happens lol. But it was fun. I got a picture with him and then we hopped on a metro to go home. On the ride home, another guy like waved at me through the window. so random! Why do guys only do this when I am not feeling good or pretty!!! But nbd. We went back and I like passed the heck out and slept like a rock. The next morning I woke up officially in Paris yay! And we ate "breakfast" which was cereal and bread, but good bread, and then we went to Musee Orsay, which is one of the two museums we wanted to hit. The museums are free on the first sunday of each month, so Yay for us! We waited in line for like an hour almost, which for this museum ended up not really being worth it I think. Although it was amazing, it was nothing compared to the Louvre we went to later in the day. But we saw some awesome paintings and stuff, and then went to the Eiffel tower again. We went and got in line to go up the eiffel tower, which took like forty five minutes or so. Not too bad. And then we walked up the stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs to level one, and then the same thing. More stairs, and more and more to level two. The view was breathtaking, and the sun was so absolutely perfect all weekend long, that it was just absolutely incredible. Molly and I didn't wanna go all the way to the top, so we went straight to the Louvre, and Kristina and Lindsay went to the top. I am so glad we got the the Louvre when we did. The line was like so so so massive, and it took almost an hour to get in, and the thing closes at six. It was like four when we got in. Two hours. Should be enough time for a museum right? Not even close. This place is like four stories big and stretches and stretches of building. It wasn't even possible to hit like all the main things in that amount of time. However, we did get the like Venus de Milo statue (the one with the missing arm) and Mona Lisa, which are by far the two main ones. And many many others also. We actually amazingly got almost all the main ones down. Or at least the ones we had heard of at least. I was so glad. I thought that the trip to the Lourve was so far one of my favorite things. I mean the Building on the outside itself would be worth going to. It was gorgeous. So then we were dead tired by the time the museum closed, and we went to get dinner. I had this like cheese sandwhich, but french style. It was like a slice of bread, a slice of ham, a slice of bread and then cheese on top. It was surprisingly not plain and very very good. Then we headed over to the real Notre Dame, which we only at this point realized we had not actually seen the Notre Dame the night before, and that's why it hadn't been lit up or looked like what we've seen of pictures of it. The actual Notre Dame was breathtaking (I feel like I'm using that word a lot to describe this weekend) and we walked all around it, but it was closed for tours, so we had to come back the next day. And then we went to the Sein river, I think that's what its called, and took a boat tour of the city. It was my favorite thing I spent money on during the weekend. We left at 10pm, which is when the sun was setting (yes, it is super late in Europe!), and we started going around to everything. The pictures of the sunset are unreal beautiful. And then the sun was set and the whole city started lighting up. Everything, I mean everything. And then the Eiffel tower came into view and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Just that view alone of the Eiffel tower would have been worth coming to Paris for. I had tears welling up in my eyes literally from the sheer beauty of the lit up Eiffel tower against the night sky. And if that wasn't enough, there was this little beautiful crecent moon right above the eiffel tower. You can kind of see it in some of the pictures that I will put up on Facebook. Unreal, unreal, unreal. I still don't fully believe it actually happened. And then to make it even better, as we were sailing away from the Eiffel tower, 11pm hit, and the whole tower started to sparkle with alternating lights as our tour was finishing. I can't even describe it. We were so tired after that, but we walked and saw the Notre Dame at night. Beautiful, but nothing compared to the Eiffel tower. Then we took the metro back to our hostel, grabbed a blanket from the bed, bought some wine, and snacks, and walked to the Eiffel tower. We sat in front of it for like almost an hour and just talked and looked at the tower. The only kind of annoying thing was all of the happy couples kissing and stuff. It really made all of us miss our boyfriends. But the tower was so beautiful none of us could take our eyes off of it, and we were mesmerized by it until 1, which is when it started to sparkle again, and this time we were up close. When it started going off, we all yelled "glitter!" like little girls on Christmas who get a new tiara or the dress up gowns with glitter all over them and sat staring with our jaws open wide to the ground. Out of everywhere in the world I could be, I was in Paris on the very beginning of July 4th, 2011, and sitting in front of a glowing Eiffel tower. I can't describe how very blessed I felt at that very moment. Our walk back wasn't so much fun, got a little lost, but came back in one piece and everything was ending up ok. Slept for like four hours, then up again for an early start to the day. That morning, Lindsay and Kristina went to look for a belly ring top and were going to meet us at the Notre Dame, but our phones weren't really working so we didn't see them til the ride home on the train. So Molly and I went on a tour of the inside of the Notre Dame, and it was AMAZING. So much beautiful stained glass and ceilings and stuff. Plus this like huge cross of gold. Wow, wow, wow. And then we went over to the Arc de Triomphe, which was way huger than I thought it would be, and it had these like intricate carvings in it. We got to it and took pictures, then wanted to walk up close. We couldn't figure out how to get from the outside to the actual arc since there was a road surrounding it and no crosswalks. There was an underground bride we found on the other side that had another entrance on our same side we started on, but oh well. It was worth the walk. After this, we went to the Opera Garnier, which is this huge famous opera house. It was so cool. It had like gold angels on the top of it, and then statues of all the famous composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, etc. So awesome. Also very cool was that we found an H&M next to it since it was this large shopping district. Stopped there for a couple minutes and I got this awesome jacket for like 10 euro. Yay H&M. I haven't done much shopping since being here. And then we found this outside vendor who was selling these gorgeous scarves. Yay for fashion scarves from Paris. Yes! By this time it was getting close to our train time to go home and we headed back to the hostel to get our stuff, and we went to the train station. We were like an hour early, but I was so beat down and possibly the most tired I've ever been. My feet and knees hurt so bad after that. It was like bad news bears. But I got this yummy pasta salad and we waited. The train ride home was kind of awful. We were at a four person table and not the seats in rows so we couldn't stretch out our legs because we would hit the other person. This made the ride very uncomfortable and sleep was impossible. When we got back I was too tired to go to the fireworks on base, and I just had to go to bed. So I'm writing this a day out of context, but the story is still the same. I love Paris, I want to go back someday, and I am never going to forget this magical weekend for as long as I live. Je'taime Paris!