As you may have seen, these posts have taken a bit of time to get through – actually, a little too much time. We have decided to wrap up the final two stops of #EuroTrip2013 in two posts, Paris and Edinburgh, so we can move on and blog about present day. Without further ado: PARIS!
Like Dublin, Paris didn’t really live up to the hype. Not really sure why, maybe it was too touristy? Maybe we just had too much fun with Robby and Stefan in sunny Spain and we weren’t expecting Paris to be so rainy or cold. We both will probably visit again in the future, but it didn’t really do much for us. Without dwelling on that, let’s move on to the things that made the longest leg of our trip worth it.
The sights
Duh. The one thing Paris was not short of was beautiful places.
The Pantheon, located conveniently just blocks away from our hostel!
Luxembourg Gardens. It’s a park so you know we went here a lot
Scare Coeur from a distance
The Louvre looked pretty cool from the outside. Don’t ask us about inside though 😉
Seine at sunset
The people
Since we stayed in Paris for 5 days, we were really able to meet and hang out with the people in our hostel for an extended period of time.
Evan, a fashion design student in Ohio, was staying in Paris for 2 weeks and was our wine, bread, and cheese buddy.
We also made friends with Abi’s hostel roommate Charlotte, a rare German/New Zealand mix who took a hike up the Eiffel Tower with us (birds not included in the price of admission…but that’s probably a good thing).
Other than hostel people, Alexa kept pulling acquaintances & friends out of left field so we were never left without a fresh face to show us around the city. Annika, an au pair living in Paris for 2 years who Alexa met on a short trip to Portugal last summer, was our favorite tour guide. Seriously, everywhere she took us was so cool. And she let us grill her about the intricacies of being an au pair, which we found insanely interesting.
Yohan, the roommate of the Chilean Javiers while they were studying in Pittsburgh, treated us to drinks and crepes one evening and discussed the differences between French and American work culture (which would you prefer: 12 hour works days with 7 weeks time off, or the typical American work schedule?)
Yohan and a glimpse of crepe man!
Crepe man. He made fun of the way Abi kept repeating the French pronounciations of Nutella and banana and called us “the Americans” in a loving way. AND he remembered us the next day as we walked by his crepe shop. Made our day.
Making crepe magic
The food
Speaking of crepes, Paris definitely gave Spain a run for it’s money when it comes to delicious food. Paninis were so conveniently delicious. Gelato may have been our dessert of choice…multiple times a day. Macarons, obviously. And you haven’t had hot chocolate until you’ve had Angelina’s.
Overall, five days was a pretty decent amount of time to spend in Paris. We learned that reaching out to the random people you know living somewhere can really make the difference in whether you enjoy a trip or not, even if you’ve only met some of them once. Chances are they’d love to play tour guide for a few hours 🙂
Last stop: Edinburgh!
-Abi & Alexa
it's about argen-time! 