So, what does one do with her sister when she comes to visit? After just about every single thing I've done in Switzerland, I've thought, "Oh, I have to do this with Sara too!" But it's impossible to fit a year into ten days, no matter how early we wake up. I debated (with myself) about showing her different cities in Switzerland or taking her to a city/country she'd never been to before, and I changed my mind probably every day.
Eventually, after much deciding and re-deciding, I/we decided on Paris. I was graciously given two days off from the school, so we left on Friday, June 7 (our birthday) and came back on Monday, June 10.
On Friday, we got up and opened the cards from family (THANK YOU, family!) and got ready for our four-hour train ride. There's one specific train that goes from Zurich to Paris in only four hours, so that was extra nice. Once we arrived in Paris, we stared around the huge train station and tried to figure out where to go. Sara bravely asked someone at information for help and found how to get to our rented apartment (wimdu.com is amazing!) and then I asked someone who barely spoke English how to find the subway. Once we found that, we thought it'd be easy to get to our apartment. We could settle in and then maybe go out for food or drinks somewhere. Apparently Parisians don't like elevators or escalators--that's our interpretation anyway. We lugged our suitcase (luckily we had one suitcase packed together) up way too many flights of stairs and maneuvered the subway system. By the time we got into the apartment, we were exhausted! So, we managed to go buy food for dinner/breakfast from a grocery store and then ended up watching a movie and drinking wine together. Although we were not "out experiencing Paris" at this point, it was still a nice birthday evening together.
We had made a list of places we wanted to visit (with help from Dorina!) and organized what we wanted to see when. And although we were only there for three and a half days, we managed to fit in a whole lot!
On Saturday, we walked around a lot and and window-shopped down the famously expensive Champs-Elysées street (so many designer stores). We visited the Arc de Triomphe, which offers a fantastic view of Paris--and an insane view of a very disorganized traffic circle around the Arc. Boy am I glad we didn't have to drive there.
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| Arc de Triomphe |
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| View of the city |
After that, we went to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up at night. Sitting on the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower was really cool, although we felt like we were back in the US because there were SO many Americans there. So strange. But the Tower was beautiful nonetheless. We left before it got completely dark, because it started to sprinkle and we didn't have our umbrella with us (and didn't want to sit in the wet grass just to watch the Eiffel Tower light up).
On Sunday, we knew it was supposed to be cooler and rainy during the day, so we decided to go to the Louvre museum, since it's so huge and obviously all indoors. The museum was crowded in some areas (probably everyone had the same idea we had) but we were still able to enjoy it. We saw some really famous pieces, including the Mona Lisa. The Mona Lisa was hard to see because it's not that big, but there are crowds of people shoving around the museum ropes blocking it off, all trying to get to the front to get a picture of it. Insanity.
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| The Last Supper |
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| Venus de Milo |
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| Winged Victory of Samothrace |
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| The Mona Lisa |
The Louvre is so big, you could spend probably a whole weekend--or maybe even a week--in there without repeating exhibits. After the Louvre, we ate dinner in a restaurant and went back to our apartment.
On Monday, our train didn't leave until 6:30pm, so we had a full day still to finish our sight-seeing. After packing all our things on Sunday night and storing our suitcase in the lockers in the train station, we headed to the Eiffel Tower to go up it, instead of just gazing at it from the ground. I read somewhere that going up the Eiffel Tower is not that impressive because you can't see the tower then in the view, but we still found it pretty cool. Unfortunately, we couldn't go all the way up because of fog, but we could still see enough.
We also managed to get a picture of the two of us in front of the Eiffel Tower.
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| One of my favorite pictures :-) |
Then, we went to the Galeries Lafayette, which is a famous shopping store with multiple stories, FILLED with expensive, designer brands. Needless to say, Sara and I merely window-shopped. I did end up buying a pair of Parisian black flats and Sara bought some Parisian perfume (thanks, Grandma Black!), but not from the Galeries Lafayette.
And, our final destination before the train station was the Notre Dame. (Sadly, no Disney Quasimodo or Esmerelda sightings ;-D) The church was beautiful, and we even got to hear an orchestra and singer practicing for some event that was to take place the next night.
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| Outside of the Notre Dame |
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| Beautiful windows! |
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| Rehearsal :-) |
After visiting the church, we made our way back to the train station and settled in for our 4-hour trip back home.
I think I'd have to say that this was my favorite birthday yet. We felt very blessed.
