After watching Germany get eliminated from Euro 2012 by Italy at a friend's place, I spent my night packing for the weekend in Paris. It was by far the best packing I have done so far, my backpack wasn't heavy for once. Sean and I had booked the same flight from Stuttgart so we left Schwenningen around noon. We flew with Air France which was a nice change from the discount airlines. It was only an hour long flight and we had arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport at 5pm. We caught a train into the city and then switched to the Metro (the subway system) and made our way to the hostel, St. Christopher's Inn, which was in the 19th Arrondissement, a bit a of a hike from the center of the city, but as we later found out, getting anywhere in Paris is pretty quick and simple with the Metro. The hostel was a very unique building, as Sean put it, it looked as if it were wrapped in rubber bands. It was built on a canal, and was quite a busy place. Inside it was very clean and resembled a hotel except for the whole strangers in the same room thing, but I was impressed with it. The girls, Laura, Danielle, and Carolann, weren't scheduled to arrive in Paris until after 9pm, so Sean and I got some supper at the hostel bar/restaurant. It was my first encounter with the overpriced food and drink Paris is known for. The food was good, but not worth the price we paid, the beer was especially overpriced. While eating, I got a call from Carolann letting me know that she and Danielle didn't make their connection so they be and hour and a half later than planned. We had been planning to meet them at their arrival station, so we decided to go meet Laura at her's instead.
On the way to find Laura, we stopped at the Bastille where we saw the July Column, a monument to the French Revolution of 1830, and the opera house. We met Laura at Gare du Lyon at 10pm, and caught the Metro to the stop under the Louvre, where I told Carolann we'd meet her and Danielle. We were going to just wait outside the station for them, but once we saw the Louvre and the pyramid, we had to go check it out. We walked around the main courtyard with the pyramids, got lots of pictures, and got thoroughly harassed by the men trying to sell souvenirs. After a few more phone calls (yes, roaming fees suck in Europe too!) we finally saw Danielle and Carolann emerge from the Metro shortly after 11pm. We got a few group shots at the Louvre, and headed to the Eiffel Tower, which appear to be much closer than it actually was. We saw many interesting things along the way, including a group of several hundred roller bladers. We walked and walked some more before finding out that we still had a few kilometers to go. It was well after midnight at this point so we jumped on a bus, which brought us much closer. We were happy to see the lights were still on. We got some pictures and decided to head back to the hostel since is was after 1am at this point. As we were walking away Danielle happened to turn around just after the sparkling light display started so we were able to see that which was very cool and once that ended the lights were off for the night, so we had made it with little time to spare. Had we not got that bus, we would have likely missed it. We caught the Metro back to the hostel, the girls got checked in, and we headed to bed.
We got up around 8:30am, ate breakfast, which thankfully was included in the price of our bed, and joined the group of people from our hostel heading out do to the free walking tour. We had done tours with the same company, Sandeman's New Europe Tours, in both Berlin and Munich and knew we'd enjoy this one as well. Our tour guide was a girl from upstate New York who had been living in Paris for the past two years after completing her masters in law, and this was her last free tour as she is moving back to the states next week. This tour was the longest yet, at 3.5 hours. It was well worth the time though, we covered almost all the major sites in Paris and learned so much about the history. To save time, since I don't have much, I'll include the link to the facebook pictures which everyone should be able to see.
After the tour finished up around 3pm, we bought tickets for a tour of the Montmartre area at 6pm, and for the pubcrawl they put on at 9pm. It was a busy day. We grabbed some baguettes and macaroons for lunch, and headed back to the hostel where we got changed and headed out again for the next tour after doing a bit of souvenir shopping. The tour began just across from the Moulin Rouge in the red light district of Paris (nothing like the one in Amsterdam), and our tour guide was the same one we had earlier that day. It was very interesting to see another area of Paris, and ended up getting amazing view of the city from the highest point at the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. After the tour we got our free glass of wine (it was just a plastic cup) and Laura and Sean headed off to do a boat cruise on the Seine while we did the pub crawl. We ran into the sisters from New Zealand we had met on the first tour of the day who were also doing the pub crawl, and Carolann and I got banana and nutella crepes for supper.
We had a great night out in Paris and met a bunch of people, although I'm starting to think that Australia and New Zealand are planning to take over Europe, there are so many people here from those two countries, all very friendly though. We met a few fellow Canadians, and we made sure to belt out O Canada once it was after midnight since it was Canada Day. I'm pretty sure we sang it twice, once in the club and once on the subway. People probably thought we were crazy. We got back to the hostel around 2:30am, and managed to get a few hours of sleep.
Laura woke me up to say that she was heading to Versailles since she had a while before her train left. Sean had already gone to the airport as he had an early flight. I didn't want to get up, but I managed to do so around 8:30am. Danielle, Carolann, and I ate breakfast and headed to the Louvre. It had already opened by the time we got there and the line was pretty long since it's free to get in on the first Sunday of every month. Thankfully, our tour guide from the day before told us to use an alternate entrance and we were able to walk right in, avoiding the lines completely. It was awesome. We found our way to the Mona Lisa, took the signature picture, and made our way through a few more exhibits on the way out. We did some souvenir shopping and had an egg McMuffin at McDonalds. The girls had to get their train around 1pm, but I didn't fly out until 7pm, so I parted ways with them and headed to Versailles. It took a little while to get there, and I fell asleep on the train, waking up after we had arrived. It was a short walk to the palace, and there were so many people standing in lines. I waited in one line for way too long, only to find out it was unnecessary unless I wanted to buy a ticket to go in the palace, which I did not have time for, as that would have involved waiting in another line about 10 times as long. I made my way to the gardens, paid the 6.50 euro to get in and spent an hour or so walking around. They were very impressive, although the size of the palace was astonishing, it's no wonder Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette were beheaded. I made my way back to the train station, got back to Paris around 3pm, managed to spend an hour on the Champs Elysees and saw the Arc de Triomphe us close, something I had wanted to see since doing a project about the street, one of the most famous and expensive in the world, while in high school French class. It was very impressive and packed with people.
I made it to the airport, ate a great meal, and slept for much of the flight to Stuttgart. I had plenty of time to make my train back to Schwenningen, I bought my ticket and caught the local train to the main station in Stuttgart. While on the local train I got a call from Breagh saying that she, Kaylen, Greg, and Joseph were all in Stuttgart to celebrate Canada Day and we going to leave Joseph's early the next morning to get to work. I made the unwise, or patriotic, decision to join them, so we had a good night at an Irish pub, saw the Euro 2012 final, and serenaded the bar with our lovely singing of O Canada. We all crammed into Joseph's very tiny apartment, and slept for a little less than 4 hours. We got up at 4:20am and headed out to get to work. I made it to work at 7:30am, not having any time to stop at my apartment, and had the roughest day at work of my life, but I had a great Canada Day, spread out over two countries. Although nothing beats Canada Day in Canada!
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