Taking on Paris! C'est la Vie!

Paris AKA The City of Light, The place where people fall in love, etc.
And just like the other millions of tourists, I too fell in the love with the city instantly. It's hard not too.

Plans for this trip fell into place about 2 weeks ago when I found round trip tickets to Paris for 30 pounds. I asked Alex if she was down to go, tickets were bought, a hostel was booked and shortly after our friends Holly and Shayna joined the adventure.
Friday at 12:30 we hoped on a bus and made the hour trek to the airport located in Prestwick, Scotland. RyanAir is a very cheap airline, you literally get what you pay for with this company, so they don't fly directly into major cities but rather small airports on the outskirts of them. We only took carry-ons since we were travelling light (and it costs 30 pounds extra to check baggage, seriously though - everything except for the basic bare ticket costs extra with this airline), went through security, and had a bite to eat before boarding.
We actually met a couple other Canadians and an Australian from the University of Glasgow travelling to Paris so we chatted with them for a bit. When we finally boarded, we ended up having to de-board and re-board another plane due to a technical issue. So we took off about an hour or so later. When we got into Paris Beauvais, we went through customs and made our way towards the line for the bus into Paris (about 1hr 15m). When we got there - we were looking at a billboard map to try situate ourselves and figure out where our hostel was (no 3G on my phone:( ) when a man out with his kids came up and helped us figure out where we were going by googling our hostel and directing us to the metro.  All of the french people we encountered were so nice and even appreciated if we tried to speak french (Most of which consisted of 'Est-ce que tu parles anglais?' and 'Bon Soire!') and to be honest I am surprised with how much I have retained from my grade 1-9 french classes. I even had a semi-full conversation in french with one guy running a souvenir shop! He totally knew I was english-speaking but went with it anyways. So that was my only full-french purchase. 

So our first adventure in Paris was navigating the metro - which was pretty successful! Next was to find the hostel when we got above ground, which we did eventually thanks to McDonald's wifi. After checking in an dropping our stuff in our NEON GREEN room, we went to explore a little bit and ended up at a little cafe-restaurant on the corner. We toasted to a great weekend in Paris and drank wine, ate crepes and baguette sandwiches.
The first night in the hostel I didn't sleep a wink. The street outside was so busy allllllll night long that I could not get past the noise to fall asleep, oh well, c'est la vie. Saturday we went down for breakfast which consisted of chocolate croissants, 1/2 baguettes and cereal and coffee, so that was awesome. We ventured out shortly after and began our trek all over the city.
We had bought Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour tickets ahead of time which allowed us to get on 4 different route buses that took us pretty much everywhere, they were 100% worth it and an easy and fantastic way to see Paris in just 2 days.
Saturday we kind of went a little bit of everywhere just to experience the city, all the museums were

Classic Flip Departure Board at the Gard du Nord 

open and free of admission on the Sunday so we decided to wait for that. Saturday we bussed it around; seeing the Moulin Rouge, Gard de Nord & Gard de L'est, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral, Army Museum and much, much more.
The highlight of the day was at the end of the day. We walked from the Army Museum to the Eiffel Tower stopping at about 14 souvenir shops on the way (they all look so enticing), we got the tower - took some pictures and went and got 2 bottles of wine for 4 Euros (they were good too) then went back and sat on the grass and hung out waiting for the Eiffel Tower light show to happen. At 8pm some 20,000 lights lit up the tower and blink and shimmer for 5 minutes. It was really cool to see. After that we headed back to the area of the city where our hostel was (Republique) to find out that it was Nuit Blanche Time Out - a night when the entire city is open and happening. They turned the King's

Fog Square during Nuit Blanche

My new toy.

Fountain Square into a Fog Square so that was cool. After checking out a few other events that appeared to have been happening (an art gallery, club with a strict line that we managed to get excepted into but was too expensive, Mad Hatter party for men only... yea we didn't get into that...) we went back to the hostel, and finally fell asleep after 40 hours of no sleep.
Sunday we checked out at 11am and were on the move again, lots of bussing around. The museum at the Louvre was 3 1/2 hours long and took us 10 minutes just to walk to the end of it, so we passed. Same with Musée D'Orsay and Rodin Museum. However! We did wander the Rodin Museum gardens where we saw the Thinker! We also got to the Love-Lock bridge, where couples from all over the world come and write their names on a padlock,

lock it on the bridge somewhere and throw the key in the river. It was so cool to see, they sun was shining and there was a man playing french music on an accordion too. I definitely loved the Seine River and the atmosphere of it in the warm weather.
We checked out a really big cemetery too before heading back towards Port Maillot where we would head out of to go back to the airport. We decided to have a nice french dinner as our last and it turned out very nice. Afterward we went into this cute little bakery next door and ordered dessert and I bought some pastries to bring back. We all took a bit of a needed nap on the dark bus to the airport and then it was homeward bound from there. I was a little skeptical about taking all the pastries carry-on through security, but I made it so we were good!
The flight was fine, 15 pounds (on sale) gets you a one-way ticket with ONE carry-on bag - no bigger than 10kg, a flight that is on time 90% of the time, a walk on the ground outside

Boarding the plane (1st time)

to the stairs at the plane, a seat that does not recline, a required bus ticket to and from the airport (located approx. 1 hour outside the city) and flight personnel that try to sell you stuff the entire way (no free water, or anything). But it's 15 pounds for 1hr 20min, can't go wrong there.

Over all I am really happy with the way the weekend turned out and cannot wait to go back later in life, for a longer time and maybe not in a hostel... but that's the student life and for now, it works when your travelling for only a couple days at a time!

I hope you have enjoyed living vicariously through my post. If you have any questions don't hesitate to comment or email me!

I have also attached a photo album of the trip because there were soooo many pictures. I'm warning you now that most of them are of the Eiffel Tower - so just a heads up for that. Every angle is a good one!

:)


                                       Taylor's Paris 2013 Photo Album