La Paris

In light of my new-found conviction to at least not fall further behind than I already am, and therefore write as many new posts as I visit new places, this blog comes to you mostly in list form. What can I say, we all can’t be John Green.

14 April

• When I woke up on my last day in Germany, the rest of my group had already left for Italy, so I was left to have a relaxing morning reading on a hammock in the hostel guest lounge.
• Before long, I was departing for Paris, freshly purchased LIDL snacks in tow.
• At this point, I had a serious realisation about the polarised foreign language conventions worldwide. This realisation occurred under the context of a very lost and confused Christy wandering through the Munich train station (banhof), and finally resigning to asking an information desk attendant for help. Said attendant was asked if he spoke English (in English, no less, because lost and confused Christy was far too lost and confused to successfully recall her memorised German sayings) to which he replied “a little bit”, before proceeding to give clear and detailed instructions to my platform in perfect English. I often say I know a “little bit” of Spanish, but that bit literally allows for maybe 2 minutes of basic conversation. I sincerely apologise to those English learners who will always know our language better than we will ever know theirs.
• I would now like to acknowledge the fact that these bullet points aren’t so much saving me writing time, as they are full on paragraphs of themselves. However, because I made such a big deal about this writing style decision, I refuse to do anything but stick with it!
• Anyways, I’ll spare you the tedious airport details, but suffice it to say that the experience was long as ever, helped along significantly in this area by a mysterious (due to of my lack of understanding in the French language) holdup in the airport.
• Unfortunate as the airport situation was, it was all worth it when I was finally landing in La Paris.
• Two metros and another helpful “little bit of English” conversation later, I was finally meeting up with my cousins for my first real crepe (Nutella and banana) before we were off to bed.

15 April

• When the opportunity arose at the beginning of the next day, we just couldn’t resist the urge to take an ironic picture as two vegetarians outside the butcher shop down the road from our hotel.

• Following a quick breakfast, we attempted a bus tour. This appeared to be a good idea until the cold, wind, and traffic proved us wrong. Though we got a nice drive through glimpse of the Louvre, we happily disembarked at the Notre Dame, which would soon become my second favourite cathedral of the trip.

• Following several obligatory pictures of the Colberts with various Colbert signs, we got some French pastries, ate dinner, and left for a view of the Eiffel Tower at night – one that I would highly recommend to any prospective Paris visitors.

• With that significant experience behind us, we left to spend the rest of the night at the hotel to rest for the next day.

16 April

• The next day we returned to the Eiffel Tower, this time with the intention of going to the top, before I left for Rome.

• Via plane and extremely long train coach (because airports are never actually in the cities they claim to be in), I arrived in Rome excited as ever. Though dinner was made significantly more difficult by being a vegetarian in Italy, I did eventually get a sandwich from the nearby train station before resigning to my hostel for the night, excited to explore the great city of Rome that was waiting right outside.