Spring Break, part 1

Ahh... FINALLY back and in blogging business! It's been a little over three weeks since I've last blogged, and let me tell you I feel like it has definitely been longer than that. These entries will most likely be cut very short so I can catch up...sorry!

I'll start with the first lag of my spring break--Paris! We left early that Wednesday morning, boarded our plane, had a Tuborg or two on the way, and landed in Paris. After navigating the trains and metro we finally found our first hostel (Aloha Hostel) which was very close to the Eiffel Tower. It was me, Elyse, Marc, Jonathan, Chris, and Chris's girlfriend Marie. We all stayed in a 6 person dorm for that night, which was nice to not have to stay with strangers. The first thing we did was to go to the Eiffel Tower. Marc, Jonathan, Elyse and I decided to walk up the Tower. It was quite a hike but the view sure was worth it when we got up there. I had been to Paris before, during my senior year of high school, but it was still nice to go with a smaller group. Next up was the famous Nutella crepes, one of my favorite things of the entire break. (PS when I used the plural form of crepe, that was no mistake.. there were definitely MANY crepes eaten after the Eiffel Tower!)

A quick walk and we were at the Arc de Triumphe and Champs Elysee. We stopped for wine at a cafe/restaurant on Champs Elysee and toured around the Arc. We had planned on doing a pub crawl with our hostel that evening, but when we layed down for a nap we didnt wake up until hours later. Instead, we went up to Socre Coeur (basilica on a hill overlooking the entire city), very pretty view of the city at night as well as of the basilica itself.

Day 2--We had to move hostels, which was very annoying considering mine and Elyses excess of luggage and the shortage of escalators and elevators in the metro and hostels. This time we stayed on the other side of town in Friends Hostel. My first hostel-mate ever was a total creep. About 55yrs old, reeked of booze, and when I said "Hi" he said "Yeah, I wish I was". Ahh.. is this hostel life?!?! Eeek! Other than that the place was pretty cool.

After we dropped all of our stuff (and said a prayer Alvin/Alfred/Arthur (creeper) wouldn't steal or touch anything), we went to the Louvre. Walked around there for a few hours, saw the Mona Lisa and a lot of places mentioned in The Divinci Code.

Since our hostel was in a relatively ''bad'' part of town, there were a ton of junk shops around, which I for some reason love going in, so I did a little browsing. I later found out that the majority of the stuff there (cell phones, perfumes, etc) is actually stolen. Who knew? I found this one store, resembled a Wal-Mart, where I found this perfume --Ms Arbell-- for 1.99euros (about $3), my first big purchase in Paris! I thought it smelled kinda good, but when I brought my prize purchase back, everyone else disagreed. Ahh well.. dinner at our neighbor kebab shop and then finally the pub crawl! Our group was relatively small (only about 18people in total), and we went to 4 bars and one club. A pretty good night, met a few cool people but more laid back than other pub crawls I've heard about.

Day 3--Pompidou (modern art center/museum) to start off our last day in Paris. I really liked the Louis Burgess galleries, and some of the other modern art was a nice change from the Louvre artwork. We did a little shopping after that, nothing major pretty much just killing time, then got ready for our last night out in France. We ended up going to this amazing fondu place, it was a total tourist place for the younger crowd but we had a blast. It was a small restaurant with a lot of character--a booth with one long table and chairs on the other side, so if people were sitting at either end you had to climb over the table and we drank wine out of baby bottles. Actual baby bottles. We got cheese and beef fondu, I have never had real fondu so it was quite the experience for me. Probably one of my favorite places we ate on the entire trip, I think we all had a blast. We were pretty close to the red light district (ie. Moulin Rouge), so we walked around there for a little bit. It was a lot classier than I would have thought, maybe we were just there before all the fun started, but really it was relatively calm. We had to get back to our hostel early for our flight to Madrid...(see next blog)