Last week I had midterms, so I decided to treat myself to a little trip to Paris. On Wednesday, my friends and I took a bus to Málaga, and we spent the night in a hostel there. Unfortunately, one of my friends was very sick, and during the night she realized she would not be able to make the trip to Paris, so she returned to Granada early in the morning. So it was just me and my roommate Cindy en route to Paris that morning.
After dropping off our bags in the hostel, we set off exploring (and in search of food). By this point, I was already in love with Paris. I really enjoyed seeing grass on the train ride from the airport to the city, and the streets and buildings were all just so beautiful. And then we stopped in a café for lunch. I had a cheese panini on the most delicious bread I had ever tasted. And I have spent the last two months in Spain, so I was already accustomed to good bread. After lunch, we set off exploring some more. Of course, when we discovered a pretty looking staircase, we knew that we had to climb it. We do live in Granada, you know.
At the top, we were at Sacré Coeur. We enjoyed our view of Paris for a bit before going inside to explore the Basilica. It was huge and gorgeous. There was another church that was really close, and it looked like a dollhouse in comparison. We went back down the hill using another set of stairs, and walked down a pretty parkway.
Our next stop was to the Eiffel Tower, but we had some time to wander before it was our time to go up. (It was very fortunate that we had bought tickets beforehand, because we didn't have to wait at all, and the line to buy tickets was super long.) Once we had oggled at the pretty lights of the Eiffel Tower for a bit, we stopped in a café for a crepe. I had mine with Nutella and bananas, and very much enjoyed eating it at a table outside with a view of the Eiffel Tower. I felt like I was doing Paris right. 
Friday morning we enjoyed some croissants, cereal, and bread with jam at our hostel before heading out on our next adventure. Our first stop was to the Catacombs of Paris. This was an ancient quarry that had been abandoned for hundreds of years before they rediscovered it shortly after the French Revolution. It was perfect timing, because the cemeteries in Paris were getting overcrowded, so they decided to dump some old bodies in there. At first they just kind of threw them in haphazardly, but then the realized they should maybe treat the dead with some respect, so they started to organize the bones more carefully, mark which cemeteries they had come from, and add little monuments and plaques. To get down there, we had to walk down a really tight spiral staircase that seemed to go down forever. It was a little disorienting, because you had no way of knowing how much longer you would be trapped going down like that. Then we walked through some dark narrow passages that were a little creepy. At some points passages split off, and these were not lit at all, so I took some pictures of them so that I could see what they looked like. 
We also saw a sculpture of a palace-like building. The artist had been a prisoner of war for 20 years, and he had a view of this building. When he was released, he sculpted it from memory. He died in a cave in when he was trying to dig a passage from where his sculpture was up to the street. After a few more windy tunnels, we got to the cemetery part. I must admit, it was a little weird to be so close to all those dead bodies (even though they were only bones), but what was really eye-opening was just how many there were. The passages that we walked through seemed to go on for a long time, and there were a whole bunch more passages branching off that we didn't even go through. The bones were completely lining the walls, and you could see at some points that they were stashed really thick, too. A sign said that there were about 6 million people buried in there. 6 million is a low estimate for the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. That is A LOT. Being surrounded by that many dead bodies was a strange sensation. It was kind of funny, though, because they had signs all over saying "Do not touch the human bones," and they checked our purses at the exit to make sure we hadn't taken any. Once we got out of this part, we were still in cool looking tunnels where they were telling us all about quarries and cave-ins. Then we had to walk up another scarily tight spiral staircase, and we were back in the daylight.
From here, we took the metro to Notre Dame, where we were to meet with a walking tour group. Our guide took us around the Latin Quarter, which is an artsy, academic part of Paris. He was really excited about what he was talking about, which made us excited too. He showed us Shakespeare and Company, an English language bookstore where authors from all over met in the 1920's (like in the movie Midnight in Paris), and he told us the history of universities while we were standing right where it all happened. He also told us the story of St. Julian, because it was depicted on one of the oldest shop signs in the city, and he told us about this really sweet love story (the story of Cyrano de Bergerac) at the place where it ended. So, it was a really good tour. Afterwards, we had lunch at a brasserie, and then headed onward to the Louvre.
I don't know if I can begin to do the Louvre justice in one measly blog post. It is simply stunning. It is huge, it is gorgeous, and each gallery is designed in its own style. To top it off, it's also filled with beautiful artwork, but I think I would still love the building without that.
After the tour, we walked down Avenue des Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. From there, we headed toward the Eiffel Tower, so we could get another view of it during the day. We got distracted by a street market, that sold everything from clothes, jewelry, and souvenirs, to fruits, meats, and cheeses. I bought some blueberries for myself (because I think other than that all I had been eating was bread and cheese), and a galette, which is similar to a crepe, but has savory food inside instead of sweets like fruit and chocolate. Mine had cheese (of course), and it was quite good. After we caught another glimpse of the Eiffel Tower, we headed back to the hostel for a bit to change our shoes, because it was raining. It rained a lot in Paris, actually, but it was prettier there than anywhere else.
We headed back out and took a bus to La Seine. I wanted to get back to the Louvre so I could revel in its Majesty some more. On our way, we stumbled upon the love lock bridge, where a lot of couples had written their names on locks and thrown the key in the river. I thought it was hilarious that some of them used combination locks. After walking through the absolutely gorgeous park by the Louvre for a bit, we headed back down the river to Notre Dame. This time we went inside. It is huge. And very Gothic. It was cool.
Then we had plans to meet a friend of Cindy's who is studying abroad in Barcelona and happened to be in Paris this weekend, too. He brought a friend of his from his study abroad program, and a German girl they had met in their hostel. She spoke French, so it was really nice having her in the restaurant so I knew what I was ordering. (It was bread and cheese, did you even have to ask?) We talked about the education systems in Europe, and it was interesting to think what someone from Germany thought of the education in Spain. After dinner we went back up to the Sacré Coeur, which seemed a lot smaller now after visiting Notre Dame, and walked around some more, enjoying the beautiful streets of Paris for one last night.
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