I’m going to start with day 15 (Monday).
Today we woke up at 5am to get ready and meet John and
Courtney at the tube station. We then headed our way over to Kings Cross (Harry
Potter fans?) to leave for Paris. We took the Eurostar to Paris and got into
town at about noon. I slept the whole way and it was wonderful. I was surprised
at how comfortable the train was, a lot more than airplanes for sure.
We walked to our hotel in a torrential downpour and when we
got to the hotel, they didn’t have our rooms ready so we dumped our luggage and
went to find something to do while we killed time for 2 hours. Since we didn’t
know where anything was, Tia, Clark, Mirielle and I just wandered around in the
rain. We didn’t find anything interesting and came back to the hotel wet and
cold, it was pretty epic in its lack of epic-ness. Not the best introduction to
the beautiful city of lights.
Later that night, we had lectures with Courtney and John and
then some of us girls went to shoot Tia with a speedlight and some crazy
makeup. I got a shot I actually really like. It was fun!
That was day 15, mostly travel and adjustment, but still
pretty good.
Now for day 16 (today).
We met this morning and headed over to Notre Dame. I’m definitely
not getting over seeing these places in person; I still catch my breath from
how incredible they all are.
Lesson learned of the day:
Don’t forget your memory card. Your heavy camera will become
an expensive paperweight and your heart will cry in agony from not being able
to document the beauties that you see.
As you can assume, I wasn’t able to take pictures today. So
the couple hours that we spent in Notre Dame were spent writing in my journal
and sketching what I saw. It was enjoyable for sure, more so when I got over
being upset about my memory card.
Afterwards, we walked down the Seine river and headed over
to Hotel de Ville for our wonderful and magical, wait for it…. bike tour of
Paris.
And it was so good!
We rode around the back roads of Paris along with some
famous landmarks and the tour guide would stop and tell us facts about the city
and the places we were stopping. It was so great being able to see the
picturesque spots that most tourists don’t know about and don’t go. And it was
great getting a sense of the city and the layout. It was even better being able
to ride a bike through the cobblestone streets with markets and smells of fresh
bakeries. What a romantic introduction to Paris.
When it was over, we stopped by the market and I grabbed a
baguette and some herb cheese for dinner (ya ya ya Shauna, I don’t want to hear
it, it was more like garlic herb cream
cheese).
Now we’re in the boy’s hotel room watching a movie.
It’s definitely been a beautiful day!
Thoughts:
#1: Paris is magical, beautiful, lovely, enchanting and
wonderful. I fell in love with London, but London is nothing compared to how I
feel about Paris. It’s everything I hoped it would be. I love it here so very
much. I wish so bad that I didn’t forget all of my French, but I’m glad I at
least remember some :)
#2: (This one is for Jessy) I never thought this would ever,
ever happen… but I’m obsessed with
nutella. Holy smokes that stuff is good. I didn’t want to jump on the bandwagon
but here I am…. on the bandwagon.
#3: Tomorrow we’re going to Versailles. I don’t think that I
have to say anything more about how amazing this is going to be.
My photo of Tia:
Cheese Gromit! :)
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