Bonjour!!
I actually have two other weekends of pictures that I really would like to show you, but I also have to talk about Paris. This blog is going to possibly be a shortened version of what I would actually like to share but don't have time for in as much detail. The title for this blog is inspired by the classic Disney movie of Cinderella because Paris is a place that I have always dreamed of visiting since I was a little princess (a.k.a A little girl whose daddy called her one). Okay, I may not have been a princess, but I still dreamed of visiting this romantic city in France one day. It is funny to me that I have always wanted to go to Paris because it is one of my life goals that has finally been accomplished. :-)
Before I explain about Paris, I want to tell you a little about two of the weekends that lead up to my weekend in Paris. Okay, so I went to Aviles, Spain with my friend J two weekends before Paris. She and I hopped on a bus and since this city is super close to Oviedo, we were there within a half hour. When we arrived, she and I spent the morning/afternoon taking the historical tour through the city. We had stopped in the tourist office, gotten a map and also a little book that showed us a sweet route to take in order to see the historical parts of the city. Also, we got to know the public transportation and took a bus to the beach/sea in order to enjoy a beautiful view. It was a pretty overcast day, but still such a lovely city to see. I'm known for taking pictures of random people regardless of where I am, and so I of course had fun taking pictures of people in Aviles.
The next weekend, I went on a bus once again to La Senda del Oso with my two friends D and T from UNI. La Senda del Oso literally means the trail of the bear. We had heard about this sweet destination and that we could see not only 3 famous bears to Asturias but also rent bikes for a day and explore the beautiful countryside/view of the mountains. We spent our time taking a lot of pictures of flowers and eventually found that we needed to hop on our bikes and ride for a while because we weren't moving very far very fast. The nature was just so gorgeous and so were the cute little pueblos and the AWESOME mountains that were surrounding us. It was so cool to realize that we were going to spend our afternoon riding our bikes through the mountains of Spain. We enjoyed seeing all the livestock, and I especially enjoyed the cow bells that we heard frequently that were attached to actual cows!! It was so funny to see them on cows because I was used to my band director saying in high school, "More cow bell," whenever we were rehearsing for pep band. Yay for cow bells!!
Okay, I also was the one in the group to fall off my bike. OOPS!! I was totally fine afterward and the whole incident happened in slow motion. All that happened was that I accidentally went off the paved path and over to my right onto the soft ground and when I tried to get back on the path, I failed and slowly went down and was unable to stop myself. D and T were supportive and asked if I was okay. So I stood up and stopped for a second in order to see how my body felt. I felt fine and just couldn't believe that I was the one to FALL. It was funny nevertheless. It is a FACT that I can be quite clumsy and as my sister tells me, I tend to overestimate how much space I have in order to move comfortably. It is pretty humorous I will admit.
We had a blast on our bike ride! The whole way going (which we didn't realize) was actually gradually going uphill and then the whole way back we got to coast and enjoy NOT pedaling for such a long time. I kept praising the Lord because my legs were pretty tired and after we finished our lunches, I wasn't exactly looking forward to pedaling for another 2 or 3 hours. Little did I know that the ride back would be a breeze...literally. :-) It was amazing to not have to work on the way back and just have fun looking at the view all around us.
Okay, so we had about a day and a half to see as much as possible in Paris before we had to catch our flight back home. As soon as our plane landed, we had our first opportunity to let our friend A use her French so that we could buy tickets for a bus into the city because the airport was an hour outside of the city. (Thankfully someone told us that before we left or else we might have been even more shocked by that.)
We stayed in a hostel known as St. Christopher's Inns and it was so nice!! We had an amazing breakfast each day and I got to enjoy some cereal both days!! That is something that I don't get here and as soon as I found out that breakfast would have cereal, I was WAY stoked!! It was so good to have something that I consider my comfort food. :-) We also got to enjoy yummy baguettes.
On day 1, we took a free tour through Paris and got to see and hear about many historical places such as Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe, Le Louvre, the Eiffel Tower and then some other less known but still very historical parts of Paris. Our tour guide was amazing and SUPER funny! She was sarcastic quite a bit and made me laugh so many times throughout our 3.5 hour long tour. (I think that is how long it was.) Now it is true that we could have been cheap and not paid anything at all, but these kinds of tours are based on tips so how ever good of a job we thought our guide did would be the determining factor of how much we wanted to give as a tip. Most people do like to give something any way since these guides do devote quite a lot of time to walking a large group of people around the city and talking a ton. So this was a great tour to take!
Next, we decided to make our way toward a supermarket (if we could find one) and then walk over to the EIFFEL TOWER!! We ended up stopping at a cafe and getting a quick bite because we couldn't find any supermarkets and we were more than ready to see this famous structure in Paris.
By the time we rounded our last corner so that we could see the Eiffel Tower, I about exploded with excitement...oh wait....I DID actually explode with excitement and jumped on my friend A and squealed JUST a little bit. I couldn't believe I was looking at this famous tower in Paris FINALLY. The Parisians who walked past us probably thought I was a little goofy for getting so excited but I totally didn't care. :-) It was so fun to take some great pictures and look at how enormous the Eiffel Tower is in person. (We didn't have time to climb it, but it was so stinkin' gorgeous.) Later that night we came back so that we could see it sparkle at night with lights that come on only for five minutes at the beginning of each hour starting around 8pm. It is true the tower is lit up at night, but when hundreds of lights or thousands(how ever many there are) light up at random times, it is that much more beautiful.
That same night (before we saw the tower light up) we went on another tour and went to the Red Light District. This is the same area that Moulin Rouge is located, so even though I haven't seen that movie, it was really fun to see the place that the movie was based. Our tour was maybe for two hours or a little more and at the end of it, we would get treated to a glass of wine in one of the cafes. It was an area that literally was much higher than the area we had been in earlier in the day and what a view it was. We had actually paid for this tour, so in some ways, I'm sure I paid for my glass of wine, but that was totally fine with me. Now I can say that I have had white wine in Paris! Not many people can say that right? I'm becoming a little bit more of a fan for wine I think. It isn't clear to me if I will really drink much of it when I come home, but it is a nice treat to have from time to time.
(The photos of Notre Dame weren't from the tour. We made a quick stop over here, got some ice cream, and then got to the Red Light District for our tour.)
This was our second tour guide of the day, A. He is from the U.S. originally, but he met his sweetheart (and now wife) in the U.S. and she is French. They have a son and have lived in Paris for a few years now if I remember correctly.
Since pink is my favorite color and the name of this cafe is literally "the pink house," I thought that I must have my picture taken with it. :-)
This is the famous cathedral in Paris, Montmartre. The view that the cathedral overlooks is breathtaking. It was so cool to realize at that moment that I was overlooking the city of Paris.
This was our place of choice for dinner for the evening and it was so marvelous. While we were waiting to be seated, we were chilin' outside and sitting right outside the restaurant. Well the manager came out and thought we were senseless girls I think because he tried saying to us, "Girls, this is a restaurant, not a place to just sit down." I made sure to open up and say, "We're waiting to be seated." He quickly apologized, but unfortunately he still made us pay for dinner. DRAT! Maybe next time we won't have to. :-) We had a flirtatious waiter though which made the night funny and quite entertaining. I was the only one out of my group dating someone, but it was still really funny how our evening of dining went in Paris.
Also, here is another picture of Moulin Rouge because it was really cool to see it lit up at night. Apparently the entertainment isn't nearly as crazy as it used to be, but when people go, it is mainly to get a little bit of a feel for what it would have been like to go to a show.
We also made sure to have a crepe in Paris along with our own little French dinner in a cute restaurant. It was a marvelous night in Paris and so memorable. So we made our way to the Eiffel Tower so that we could see it glowing, and then eventually got back to our hostel because we had about half a day left the next day before we had to catch our flight back home.
We got up early in the morning and made our way to the Palace of Versailles. What a place!! Now it is known for its beautiful gardens, but I will warn you that I didn't have time to go inside and explore them, but I made sure to take some pictures from inside the palace and then outside from the one place that you could catch a glimpse of what the gardens look like. I took a picture of many rooms in the palace and found one that would have been mine had I been royalty. :-) You will see what I mean when you look at my picture from the palace.
So after our many adventures in Paris in such a short amount of time, we made our way back to the airport after getting our things from our hostel and said one last goodbye to Paris. The flight home was good and that was one exhausting weekend in Paris.
But what a lovely weekend it was! I feel so blessed. Praise God for His is gifts.
Au revoir...
Spanishbyrd
