Paris Part II

View from the Arc de Triomphe

Paris has a lot to offer. I'm just going to answer your question right now - yes, I saw the Mona Lisa and no, I did no climb the Eiffel Tower. I'm not sure why that is such a big thing... sure it has amazing views of the city, but when you take panoramic photo of Paris, the most iconic structure is not in the picture! So instead we climbed the Arc de Triomphe. It was really cool because twelve roads lead to the Arc de Triomphe into a big roundabout around it, so you get some really cool photos down the streets. About the Eiffel Tower - its a great place to have a picnic, and every hour on the hour starting at 10 you can see the tower sparkle and its really magical!

Sarah at the Louvre

When we were in Paris, we bought a museum pass, so we of course went to the Louvre, at night in the rain, which was pretty cool. We also went to the Orsay museum, which was Sarah's favorite of the art museums. It has a huge collection of impressionist art, and it was really beautiful! The Orangerie is another smaller art museum with more modern art, but they had this cool oval room with Monet's water lilies surrounding you.

My most favorite sculpture EVER. It's
so amazing. 

Paris also has some rather unique and random museums - such as the Sewer Museum where you actually go down into the sewers that smell awful and learn how it works. That was pretty cool, but I wouldn't go again because of the smell. 

Catacombs - really hard to take photos in here because its really dark and
you can't use flash. Wish I had a tripod for this place!

We also went to the Paris catacombs (tunnels under the city where they got all the stone for building pretty things), which is by far the creepiest place I have ever been and everyone should definitely go!! We had to wait in line for an hour, which was the longest we've ever waited for anything I'm pretty sure. It was so worth it. They give the whole history of the catacombs, and at one point they took all the bones from an old mass grave that needed to be moved and they hired a guy to organize the bones in a decorative fashion. Once, they even held a concert down there with a full symphony and played various funeral marches and stuff. That would have been really weird.

Notre Dame

The Notre Dame, of course,is beautiful. The thing with Gothic cathedrals, is they mostly all look the same inside, but the outsides are all quite different. I'm sure Sarah would disagree with that and say they all look the same everywhere. Parisians prefer Notre Dame from her backside, and its very easy to see why. She's quite pretty, with a nice little garden as well!

Louvre at night

There is a bridge in Paris called Pont Neuf that is the oldest standing bridge across the Seine, because its the first one they built out of stone. Henry IV commissioned it, and there's this really funny legend that goes along with the bridge. If you look closely, all along the bridge are sculptures of really grotesque faces. Apparently Henry IV threw a huge party with lots of famous people there to show off his bridge, and he hired a bunch of artists to sketch the guests with the bridge as a souvenir, but he figured they would all get lost in the river, so he had the artists sculpt them. Unfortunately they were all drunk already and so all the faces on the bridge are of drunk people at Henry IV's bridge party. 

Pont Neuf

Making use of our museum pass, we hit up a few more random things. One was the Conciergerie Palace, where they imprisoned people before beheading them. They have Marie Antoinette's cell there, and it was pretty interesting. Pretty much right next door is the Sainte Chappelle which was pretty small considering churches in Europe, but it has really pretty stained glass, and is a good place to peek in if you have time.
Also we went into Hotel des Invalids where Napoleon's tomb is (which is really huge and fancy), and also there is a war museum there of sorts where there is Napoleon's horse in real life. Apparently Napoleon stuffed him. Of course there's lots of swords and guns. Then on the top floor is this really cool thing where they have relief models made in the 17th century they used for defense technique planning. I really liked that.
Of course we went to MORE museums - one being a music museum, which was really fun and Sarah really liked it. They had tons of old instruments and sound samples of them being played. There was also a huge collection of really pretty pianos.

Paris Part I

Louvre with cool pyramid reflection

We were in Paris for 9 days, so I have divided it up into 3 separate posts. This one is kind of a general overview of Paris and some things we did and whatever. Part II is more specific about things we did/saw, and Part III is about our day trips from Paris.

Playing 1950's housewife in our apartment.

Before Paris, the longest we ever stayed in one city was 3-4 days I think. So, I think its understandable that after 9 days in Paris, I was feeling pretty at home. It was really great because we rented an apartment in Paris, so we felt quite moved in after not too long.

I love spiral staircases, but my legs hate them.

I'm not really sure where to start with Paris. Basically I am in love, and I could stay there forever and not get bored. First and most importantly, let me tell you about boulangeries and patisseries. One of the greatest french traditions is getting a fresh baguette every morning. Before going to Paris, I had no idea how they ate a whole loaf of bread every morning, but after visiting the boulangerie by our apartment almost every morning and picking up a baguette that was still warm from the oven... we had no problem demolishing it. If you know me at all you will understand why I am completely obsessed with patisseries. I have never seen so many delicious pastries in all my life. Sarah was getting a little mad at me I think because whenever we passed one I would have to go in and have a look. I would move to Paris just for this. In fact, I may have to open a bakery at some point in my life.

Laduree Pastries 

I have to tell you about this one patisserie we went to. This store is where macarons were invented. It is the most beautiful place in all the world. It was on the Champs-Élysées, so it was very fancy and quite expensive, but it was beautiful and their macarons were by far the best macarons I have ever had. They also had macaron cakes which I am totally going to try to make when I get home!

Luxembourg Gardens

Enough about french food. Paris is exceptionally beautiful. The architecture here is really nice. We ran into more than one summer architecture study abroad classes and I would love to do that someday! Paris also has a couple really beautiful gardens. The Luxembourg gardens are huge and very pretty. They have a very large circular water pool where there are little kids with small sail boats that run around the edges pushing their sail boats across the pond. Its really cute. The Tuileries gardens are the royal gardens and are really amazing as well. The landscaping is great and they have special goats that mow the steep ditches.

Galleries Lafayette

Obviously Paris has excellent shopping, being the fashion capital of the world! Sarah and I went to a fashion show, which was really cool! Heads up - sneaker wedges are the next big thing, so you should probably buy some. Its part of the skater chic look. We did spend a fair bit of money at the Galleries Lafayette, the big department store which is so gorgeous on the inside. There are lots of boutiques everywhere which have really cool window displays, but sadly they were definitely out of our budget.

Random funny graffiti 

Paris Day Trips

Mont St. Michel

Although we had almost nine whole days in Paris (which was not nearly enough), we spent a bit of time outside of Paris, which was a nice city break.

The only picture from Versailles without people in it...

Our first day in Paris we spent at the Palace of Versailles. While Versailles was everything I imagined it to be (beautiful and massive with gorgeous gardens), I did not have fun there at all and would probably never go back except in the dead of winter when there's hardly anyone there.

Cute little cloister at Mont St. Michel

We actually didn't have to wait in line for as long as I expected, but I think they need to regulate more strictly the number of people inside the palace, because when we were inside, it was so crowded and there were Asian tour groups everywhere. It was awful. Walking around the gardens was very nice though, and if you aren't super interested in seeing the interior, I would skip it unless you are there in off season.

Mont St. Michel

Another trip we took was to Mont St. Michel, a little monastery island in Normandy where only 44 people live. I learned about this place in French class years ago, and ever since, its been one of the top things on my list to see in France. The problem is, its not very easy to get to, and we spent more time waiting for transportation than actually in Mont St Michel. This is definitely a place that is best traveled to by car.

I was distracted the whole dinner by the
cow eating Sarah's head.

That being said, Mont St Michel was really beautiful, especially from the mainland, and it was a very peaceful and relaxing place to visit. Once you get across the causeway to the island, you walk through a tiny village consisting of very expensive restaurants (we're talking minimum of 4€ for a crepe) and souvenir shops and that's all. Then you go up to the abby at the very top of the island, and that was really cool. Lucky for us the abby was on strike, so we didn't have to pay to see it haha. One time when strikes were a good thing. After touring the abby we sat on a stone wall and enjoyed the view for a while before heading home.

Can anyone tell me why there are French soldiers
with big guns at all the train stations?!

Part of the Paris Museum Pass was this little château Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. Since some trees fell down at the Fontainebleau château, they closed the whole castle for the day, so we went to Vincennes instead.

Vincennes

Sarah was really excited because it was a legit medieval castle, even though it was pretty small. We climbed a lot of spiral staircases there and made friends with the castle cat, who was extremely friendly and loved being pet, but did not like french baguette.

Love Chartres!!

South of Paris is a small town called Chartres, and if you've heard of it, its probably because of Chartres cathedral, which is basically all that is there. If you don't know, I love Gothic cathedral architecture and wrote a ten page paper on the architectural advances of Gothic cathedrals as seen in Chartres - so it was pretty awesome to see it in person. After explaining a bunch of stuff about the cathedral to Sarah, which I'm pretty sure she did not care about at all, we did a little photoshoot in the cathedral's back yard / garden area and headed back to Paris.

Photoshoot at Chartres

Venice

Random cute couple

Ah Venice. There is something about Venice that is magical, that even though its so touristy and doesn't actually have a lot of things to do, its still so amazing. 

After we cooled down a bit at our hostel (which was actually in Venice, a rare thing), we went to the Doge Palace and the bridge of sighs which was really cool. The interior was really beautiful with paintings and wood paneling covering every surface. Across the bridge of sighs was the prison, and that was cool as well. 

By this time it wasn't insanely hot anymore and after grabbing some dinner, we played a game that is really fun to play in Venice called the coin toss. Every time we came to a split in the road we flipped a coin to see which way to turn. After not too long, we got very lost and had lots of fun exploring Venice after all the tourists went back to their hotels on the mainland. This is when I fell head over heels in love with Venice!

I won't lie, when we first arrived in Venice in the afternoon, I hated it. Sure the canals were cool and the boats everywhere, but it was insanely hot and Venice is not fun to get lost in when you're carrying a massive backpack and its 30 degrees.

The next day we took a water bus to Murano, a little island by Venice where they make glass. We went in to one of the factories and saw a demonstration which was really cool. The glass there was beautiful! Sadly, I did not buy any of it because of the weight/breakability of glass, but I did buy a masquerade mask which I am really excited about. I may have to throw a masquerade party now!

We were expecting to take a night train to Paris that night, but it turns out Paris decided to go on strike, so we had to cut our visit in Venice short to take a massive detour over to Munich to catch a night train to Paris from there.

Venice by night

Cinque Terre

Manarola at night

I spent a day and a half in paradise. Cinque Terre is the most relaxing and beautiful place I've ever been! If anyone needs a peaceful getaway - this is your place. 

Bit of Manarola and the vineyards

"The territory of the Cinque Terre is the result of a thousand years of work by peasant farmers who transformed the steep cliffs into fertile terraces for the cultivation of vines and the production of famous wine. The delicate balance between the natural elements and human actions has created a unique scenery, is included in the list of cultural asset belonging to the "World Heritage" appointed by UNESCO." - Exert from a pamphlet.

Lemons are also grown here

Cinque Terre consists of 5 coastal towns along the Mediterranean Sea. The thing to do there is to hike between each town. The views are spectacular and the countryside is beautiful. We stayed in Manarola, which was the prettiest town in our opinion. The first evening we took the train over to Riomaggiore because the trail was closed to that town. After wandering a bit we found some rocks and stretched out to catch a few rays of sun. When we got back to Manarola that night we walked up to the lookout point to get amazing postcard pictures of Manarola at sunset/after dark.

My dream penthouse apartment

Tuesday we set off on our long hike all the way to the other side of Cinque Terre. Unfortunately, the coastal trail was closed between Manarola and Corniglia, so we were forced to take the mountain path that was listed as a 5 hour hike... never again. I have never been so tired in my life. We managed to do the trail in three and a half or four hours, but almost the whole thing was either climbing straight up for climbing/trying not to fall straight down. Killer workout! Thankfully Corniglia had delicious homemade gelato, and we definitely enjoyed some lemon and strawberry gelato. This is for sure the best combination of gelato known to man, especially when its really hot. 

A very picturesque hike. There are flowers everywhere!

From Corniglia we took the train to the far town of Montorroso. Of all the towns in Cinque Terre, Montorroso is the most touristy and our least favorite. Although it was the only town with an actual sandy beach, so its worth something. We were able to take the coastal trail from Montorosso to Vernazza, which was a much easier hike, and actually quite enjoyable. After taking a few pre-sunset photos of Vernazza, we hopped back on the train to go home to our favorite little village, thoroughly exhausted and ready for a hot shower and a bed! The best part of Cinque Terre was the fact that even though it is amazingly beautiful, it still felt like a very sleepy village where everyone knows each other. Of course there are still many tourists, but nothing like most of the places we've been. My only regret is that, yet again, my plans to go cliff diving fell through. Maybe I will just have to wait til I get home!

Manarola at sunset

Florence/Pisa

Cool scarf display in San Lorenzo

Florence turned out to be a lot more expensive than we expected. I figured we would spend most of our time in art museums and maybe do a bit of shopping because apparently Florence is the place to do it.

Central Market store display

Florence also has a spectacular assortment if gelaterias, and we did spend a lot of money on the most delicious homemade gelato there!

Turns out we briefly did one art museum in which we saw the lovely David, and a small musical instrument museum which was part of the Accademia. David was amazing. Definitely worth the money and definitely all its cracked up to be. I would have liked to go to a couple more museums but art museums make Sarah grumpy so we went shopping every day at the San Lorenzo leather market, which was conveniently (or inconveniently, depending how you look at it) located right by our hostel. We did spend a TON of money there which is why we really didn't do a whole lot else in Florence because we were too poor.

Awesome street artist

Markets are very dangerous for us because it is a super fun way to shop. It is exhausting though, because the men trying to sell their stuff flirt with you so much and tell you they will give you a special price because you are so beautiful. The problem is, they tell every girl that so you start to not believe them anymore, sadly. Sarah was especially popular and was told many times that she was breaking Italian mens' hearts. No surprise there haha.

Gilded ceiling of the Florence Baptistery  

Right beside the leather market is the Central Market, which was an indoor food market. We had the most delicious and reasonably priced meals there!

View from our hostel roof at night

Our last day we figured we should probably do something other than shopping the whole day, so we did some leg stretches and proceeded to climb up to Piazzale Michelangelo for a stunning view of the city. Florence is one of those cities you could recognize the skyline of from random pictures. Its quite a beautiful city! On our way back down the ginormous hill we climbed, we randomly found a really amazing rose garden, so we laid down on the grass and took a nap.

A really cute cafe/bar

We did see the leaning tower in Pisa, which was pretty cool. I can't believe that the tower was already starting to sink before they finished building it, and they just had a "meh whatever" attitude and kept building. Its funny, because if you look at the pillars at the top, they are a lot straighter, so they attempted to make it appear perpendicular...

Random side street

Because it was raining so much, we didn't stay there long, we didn't even get the classic holding up the tower picture! But we did see a bit more of Pisa which was really pretty, and looked quite a bit like Florence.

After Florence we headed over to Pisa for a day to hang out with Sarah's friend. His family graciously allowed us to stay with them, and we got a little taste of authentic Italian life. I'm in love! Mostly with the smells coming from the kitchen... unfortunately it poured rain and site seeing was less than ideal.

Florence was a really great city to relax in and soak up culture. Some day I will have to come back and visit all those art museums I missed out on!

Florence skyline

Rome

Favorite place ever!

Ahh Rome! For me it was one of those places that took me a little time to settle in and enjoy. The problem was, we got here at a really bad time. Our first morning, we try to go to the Vatican, but it was on the other side of the city and the Italians decided to go on strike and the buses and metros were shut down! It was ridiculous - that would never happen at home, or even in most of Europe. At the bus station we met four guys from Florida, and after waiting for ages for a bus that never came, we decided to split a taxi.

Roman Forum

At the Vatican, there were mobs of people everywhere and it took forever to get through security to get in. The square outside St Peter's Basilica was really nice but the basilica itself wasn't really my taste at all. It was absolutely massive though! Then we had to walk all the way around the Vatican to get into the museum and Sistine Chapel because you have to have a visa to get in to the actual Vatican. I really liked the museum. They had a huge collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures which was really great. There was also a room that used to be the Pope's office that Raphael painted, and the one wall was the School of Athens fresco which is one of my favorites from art history! It was beautiful. The Sistine Chapel of course has the famous fresco of Adam and God almost touching fingers painted by Michelangelo. The ceiling of that chapel was spectacular.

Inside the Colosseum with the fish eye lens

We walked over to the Trevi fountain in the evening and that was so gorgeous! The problem with Rome is they have so many amazing gorgeous things, everyone wants to see them, so its crowded where ever you go. I really love that fountain though... we made sure we tossed a coin in.

Palentine Hill

The next day we went to the Colosseum, Palentine Hill, and the Roman Forum. It was for sure the highlight of Rome for me! So much ancient architecture! I loved it so much. It was really great that G, our new English friend, was along because he could appreciate the Colosseum with me, being a mechanical engineer and stuff. I think Sarah really liked it too, but architecture isn't as much of a thing for her. Palentine Hill was really cool as well with all the ruins and it had an amazing view of the Colosseum and the area around. By this time G and Sarah were pretty ready to be done, but we walked through the Roman Forum, which is basically an architectural graveyard. I absolutely loved it there. I would have stayed for a couple hours but we were quite hungry and needed more gelato haha. That day we also stopped by the Pantheon, which was so cool. Its massive! All the ancient Roman architecture we saw was of such a huge scale that I can't even imagine how people felt being there 2000 years ago, when today the ruins make me feel so small - today we are used to sky scrapers and colossal buildings!

Our last day in Rome was a half day, and we basically just walked around a gorgeous park in the north end of the city and sat by a fountain. It was so peaceful with the sun shining, the sound of the fountain, and a guy playing really great classical songs on an accordion off in the distance!
I have decided that it would be so amazing to go to Rome for a class on architecture for a week or two in the summer. I'm adding this to my bucket list!

Really amazing pasta with tons of clams. So good!!