Hey! I'm Here!

This is stuff I've been keeping so far. I have internet now and wanted to upload what I have! :)

Bonjour! (1/9)

I am sitting in my hotel room where I can see the Eiffel Tower from my window. It’s a bit surreal. We got to Paris yesterday at about 7:00 in the morning, after leaving Washington D.C. at 5:40 the previous night. An uncomfortable plane meant basically no sleep. Talk about jet lag. However I have nothing else negative to say. This city is amazing! I still can’t really even believe that I’m here.
We’re only in Paris for 2.5 days so we’ve been going going going to make sure we can see and do as much as possible.
Yesterday we had some free time after getting to our hotel to explore a little. The language barrier was pretty intimidating at first. Just ordering food when the only French I know is “merci, we, bonjour, and hor voir” was a bit scary.
Anyway after just wandering around a little I took a very much needed couple hour nap before we went on a boat tour of the Sien River at night, which runs all through Paris. It was amazing how much can be seen from the river, we just barely got a taste of the city. Some of us ate gyros (which are amazingly tasty). I’ve also tried crepes… I think we definitely need those in America, paninis, coca-cola light… and a few more random things. Then we went on a night walk around the Louvre. Which of course is cool to see after the movie “The Davinci Code”. But growing up in L.A. area where I’ve seen plenty of Hollywood things made that aspect of it not really seem like a big deal. It was more amazing just seeing the sheer size of the building. It is HUGE! And the glass pyramid all lit up at night is also pretty spectacular.
We called it a bit of an early night since all of us were pretty exhausted. I thought that I would sleep well through the night since I was so tired but that wasn’t the case. I woke up twice, the second time I was awake for about 1.5 hours. So I’m definitely still not used to the time change. Feeling pretty jet lagged, but I don’t want that to stop me.
Today we went on a bus tour of the entire city of Paris. One of the coolest things to me is how intricate the buildings are and how old they are. Architecture today does not pay nearly as much attention to detail. There were some buildings that are 33 centuries old. After the tour we walked through Notre Dame and then up the tour to the very top. I definitely had goosebumps walking through the church. Even though it has become such a tourist place the church is still used for it’s original purpose, and we were able to see part of a mass take place. Candles are lit up all over the place and you could see people praying. Then we walked up the spiral staircase all the way to the top. Let me tell you THAT was scary, and exhausting. But it was an AMAZING view. You could see almost all of Paris from up there. We saw the bell that Quasimoto supposedly rung. By the time we got down our legs (there were 4 of us hanging out together by the way) were literally spasming, strange feeling.
(Gotta go, we’re going on a walking tour of the artsy part of the city… will write more later!)
Ok, I’m back ☺
It is now 1:30 a.m. (which would be 6:30 p.m. California time) and I am wide awake. Really obnoxious considering I have to be up at 6:00a.m.. I should be absolutely exhausted after how much walking we did today! Oh well, at least I can write. By the way we don’t have internet so I am just writing and will upload later. I don’t know if anyone is even reading by this point because it is getting pretty long. But that’s ok cause it’s mainly for me anyway ☺.
So after Notre Dame we ate some sandwiches. I had a panini, which was absolutely delicious. I didn’t know what I was ordering when I got it, but it was amazing so I’m glad. We walked (a lot of walking today, my feet want to kill me) to The Concierge which is a museum that used to be a prison, highly used during the French Revolution. We saw Marie Antoinette’s cell where she was for 2 months before being beheaded. Then we went to Concord Square, where the guillotine was first used during the Revolution and massive amounts of people could come and watch their fellow Frenchmen being beheaded. After that we headed over to see the Pantheon. Then to the Opera house (Where Phantom of the Opera was first played). We didn’t have enough time to go in, but we admired from the outside. Then we came back for a quick break (that’s when I started writing before) and then 2 of us went to see the Eiffel Tower. We went all the way to the top, it was pretty amazing to see basically the entire city from up there. One of the reasons Paris is so beautiful is because of all of the lights, so being so high up and seeing the city all lit up pretty much took my breath away. Then my friend and I got slightly lost on our way back. Not all that fun in a strange city where the French don’t really like Americans (experienced that one more than once) and it’s nighttime and the area we were in was pretty quiet. But we managed to make our way back to the metro (which is an amazing system by the way) and then back to the hotel from there.
A couple of cool things I like about France.
- All of the shops are on the bottom floor (ground floor not 1st floor) of huge buildings and then apartments and houses are on top of the shops.
- So much history here.
Tomorrow is our last day. Morning actually. We are going to the Louvre and have a quick 2 or 3 hour tour inside. Which really is very short considering how extremely massive the museum us. Then we are off to Brussels for a day and then Brughes the next day. Then London on Friday!
How has my experience been so far?? AMAZING.

Belgium (1/11)
Chocolates, waffles, beer, 2 official languages, and the center of NATO and the European Union.
Yesterday we spent the night in Brugge, a city in Belgium. It was a very cute little town and very quite since it’s not really the tourist season. We went on a walking tour of the entire city (which only took an hour with us stopping, shows how small the city really is). There were a few very interesting buildings. I’ll put pictures up later rather than explain everything. One place of note was a church, which I can’t remember the name of, but it is supposed to have a cloth with the actual blood of Jesus on it. And there was another church we visited that had the Madonna and Christ from Michelangelo in it.