Paris is such a beautiful city, Especially when you take a stroll along the Sein with your Ipod and no distractions. It feels soo liberating being able to get through a city that you don’t speak a word of their language and somehow get mistaken for a local!
On Monday I decided to skip Sac Ocuer and sleep til 10:30am. I was really bummbed about it because that was my favorite place last time I was in Paris. But my poor swollen feet needed the break. So I took my time getting up and getting ready and I met the other girls at Arc de Triomph where we took some pretty awesome pictures and walked below it where I almost got scammed into a frienship bracelet. I’m usually pretty good about dealing with those people and spotting them, but this woman was sneaky, she was dressed like a tourist and kept asking if I spoke English. So jenna and I looked at each other because we thought she needed directions (not as if I could have given her directions since I was pretty much lost the entire time we were there, but we thought we’d try) then she came at us with this string, i was like “I DON’T THINK SO LADY!” anyway we walked down the Champs Elysee for a little while, hopped on the metro and headed toward the Opera House!
I was stoked about the Opera House considering I’ve seen Phantom of the Opera atleast 4 times and it is one of my favorites! We grabbed lunch but were on a time crunch and we didn’t get to go inside for the tour (the ONE thing I hadn’t seen in paris yet and they just skimmed by it). 
It is definently hard traveling with a group because since i’m alone I don’t really want to spend too much time alone in the city because I will more than likely get lost! So I bit my lip and we went to the Louvre.
The Louvre was Miserable. I’m not the biggest art fan in the world, so I didn’t really care about going back (i feel like that is really bad to say) but we only had about an hour there before we had to head to meet our group. So we headed straight for the Mona Lisa. Most of the girls hadn’t seen it yet and Stephanie and I warned them it isn’t some HUGE portriat on the wall, its tiny and you can’t even really see it because its always crowded with tourists taking pictures. There were just thousands upon thousands of people in the Louvre you couldn’t enjoy it. Too hot and too many people makes staci I not so happy girl!
So Stephanie, Lauren and I left Jenna and Kim and headed to Pere Lachaise Cemetery to meet the group. This was by far my favorite thing we did in Paris. The cemetery was Beautiful. Miles upon miles of cobble stone (which was quite painful) and tombstones with famous dead families! So we found out that Oscar Wilde(the gay Playwrite) was barried there. We were told that it has been tradition to put on lipstick and kiss the grave, so like all other tourists I put on gross red lipstick puckered up and Kissed the grave! The grave 
is covered in greasy red and pick shakes of puckered lips -who knows what disease I contracted from this outting. Then we walked down to Jim Morrisons grave, not quite as cool as I had expected. it was interesting to hear though that families have to rent the plots in the cemetery, and I guess Jim morrisons is almost up and people started writing ont he grave infront of it in protest to them removing him! But yea if your family doesn’t continue to pay the “lease” you are dug up and removed!
So after that we walked to a creepy bar for Absinthe tasting. This is a 140 proof aclohol that you HAVE to mix 1 part absinthe 3 parts water and 1 sugar cube. They call it the Green Fairy. partially because it is a green liquor that tastes like black licorisce and also because you’re supposed to kinda trip out on it and see fairies! well I did not trip out, I barley even got drunk. But it was a really cool experience and I’m so glad I tried it, the first one was green and the second one we tried was white.
Then Lauren, stephanie and I found a little place to get ham and cheese crepes for dinner, and then it was Nutella and banana crepes for dessert! mmmm they were soooo good.Then it was back to the hotel to pack for our next adventure.
Every time i pack it seems to be a new more challengeing experience. I haven’t bought anything, yet my bag gets bigger and bigger!!!! Kim and Jenna came to hang out and it seemed to be very entertaining to them to watch me try to pack 6 months worth of clothes in my small duffle bag.
As I’m packing Jenna and Lauren tell me I have to answer a question that will depend on our frienship- now i got a little nervous, i’m traveling with these girls if I answer wrong I’m screwed. They say, “what is your favorite professional football team?” now because I dont watch professional football except for the times on sunday when I lived with chad and Bevan that all beaver would watch was Cowboy football I answered “the Cowboys” WRONG ANSWER!!! they were not very happy with that answer! I started laughing SOOO hard I spit water out my nose, They were both pissed at me, I guess the cowboys aren’t a neutral team! about 10 minutes later i started laughing while drinking water again and spit it out my nose for a second time in 10 minutes- i’ve never done that before in my life!~ I’m such a klutz, but alteast I provide the comedic relife of the group! We left for Brussles and Amsterdam at 9 am!!!
Long bus! Off to Amsterdam We went!!!!
1 Comment
July 3, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Hi! I couldn’t agree more with you about Le Louvre: it gets so crowded it’s unbearable. I posted some photographs of Pere Lachaise in my Paris Series. Just thought you might be interested. It is a lovely cemetery.
http://nathaliewithanh.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/my-cemetery-is-better-than-yours/