Part 3: Paris, The Last Leg

After flying all night and sleeping in the Barcelona airport, we arrived in Paris about 9:30am to a dismal cold and rainy day...but hey, it's Paris!

Aileen and I met up with Nicole Koehler (VU, in Germany for the semester) at our hotel, changed clothes and were back out on the Parisian streets to begin another two crazy days exploring our third and last city for the break. We hit the Louvre where we ran into the VU Germany group who was doing their art class for the day in the huge Parisian muesuem, saw some amazing artwork and tried not to get too lost in the winding hallways and galleries. From there we visited the Notre Dame Cathedral (beautiful, huge, and centering) and then went back to the hotel to pick up Anna before heading out to climb the 200 steps up to the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur which had an absolutely view of Paris at night and where we had our first Eiffel Tower sighting. Probably one of my favorite spots. Then Anna, Aileen and I had a lovely French dinner (Onion soup is really amazing in France...) complete with funny, stodgy resturant owner, three courses, French wine, and a woman serenading all of us eating in the resturant...beautiful.

Day two started out with me deciding that I valued sleep more than seeing Versailles (don't judge me...we'd done a lot of traveling!) and heading to the Bastille and doing a little window shopping (which later turned into real purchasing) before meeting up with the girls for lunch and the day's plan. Aileen, Nicole and I went to the Musee D'Orsay which was awesome. I think I liked it better than the Louvre because it was so well laid out and slightly less intimidating. We saw some amazing art by Degas, Monet, Manet, van Gogh, Renoir...awesome. Then we jumped back and forth from the metro into the rain to see the Opera House (very magestic), Moulin Rouge (pictured here), and then the Arc D'Triumph where we had a hilarious but slightly traumatizing experience for Nicole in which a Paris pigeon took direct aim at Nicole's head covered in her blue hood...I have a great picture which juxtaposes green bird doo on her head with the amazing architecture of the Arc D'Triumph, all the while standing in the middle of the street with cars on both sides whizzing past. Good times.

Aileen and I then went back to the Bastille for a mad-quick shopping trip in which we decided that French fashion is amazing and that it's probably good we don't live there because we would never have any money. :-)

Back to Notre Dame to meet up with some other VU students studying in Germany (Caitlin Kerr for you Valpoites) for dinner...keep in mind that all of this back n' forth is done basically running through cold shivering rain. Awesome.

After dinner, Aileen, Nicole and I finished our time in Paris by going and seeing the Eiffel Tower all lit up and sparkling. And I must say, wow. It's one of those touristy things that you just have to do, but at the same time it is gorgeous and does have a romance to it that I didn't really see in Paris (which could have just been the rain) up until that point. Ultimately, a great way to end our two days in the city.

That evening, we packed and I basically stayed up and recorded the week in my journal and showered just in time to wake the others up and leave at 4am to catch a taxi and bus to the Paris Beauvis airport(notice that this is the 3rd Paris airport I visited within the week), flight to Madrid, Madrid to Casablanca...customs, back into Morocco, train to Meknes (with all our fellow international students who were journeying back from various places such as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Italy, the Canary Islands...), taxi to Ifrane. It was BRUTAL. I was pretty much dead and unamused the whole time and very glad to be back by the time I arrived in my room at 10pm that day. Whew.

But ultimately all of that traveling (over 20 hours in airports + flight time) was totally worth it to see good friends, three amazing cities in three different countries, eat good food, and have the lovely experience of traveling a crazy amount within a week on discount airlines and staying in hostels and cheap hotels...there's a reason people only do that as students I think. But hell, it was a really good time! :-)

And that was my spring break...check out the pictures. They're awesome.