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| So basically I'm obsessed with the Eiffel Tower! I couldn't stop looking at it!! |
So I am in complete and total love with paris!! I was so excited to go I’d been listening to my Anastasia soundtrack that has a paris song on it all week long, listened to it when I got ready before leaving Friday morning and played it on the train about a zillion times! I watched a france movie the night before falling asleep to it just to get me even more excited, and searched desperately for passport to paris with mary-kate and Ashley!! And lets just say it certainly was not disappointing whatsoever!!
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| Frau Reise!! |
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| So stinkin excited it was too much excitement for a person to ever possess!! |
Laura and I sat together on the train and laughed and laughed the entire time and when we finally arrived in paris it was amazing!! Amber, a girl that was in the Heidelberg program before, met us at the train station because she knew one of the girls in our group! She’s living there for a year and teaching English to a highschool!! I want her life! Anyways it was so wonderful that she was there to meet us because she told us exactly what kind of metro pass to buy and where to go and we didn’t even have to think about anything! It was a smoothe trip from the very beginning! What do you know it can actually happen with me in a group, weird!! Haha!!
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| We're in France!! |
So we get to our hotel and I’m already obsessed! It had ivory little balconies on every window and when you looked out it was just as I imagined a little apartment in paris to look out over a sweet little street with a just as cute building! It wasn’t the most amazing hotel but it was adorable!
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| The view from our hotel! |
Then we just dropped our stuff off and went to meet amber and dustin in front of her apartmens metro stop, which was right next to the Eiffel tower!! Yeah, like I said, I want her life!! So we emerge from the metro and we see them and then she says come on the Eiffel towers just right here, and so we’re walking and I’m following her and we’re all getting so excited and I feel like it’s just around the corner and we round the corner and I’m looking slightly to the left and I think I see it and I get all excited and it’s kind of far away and I can’t wait to walk to it, and then…. I look a little to my left… and there it is in all it’s glory towering above me!!!! I screamed and smiled so big you couldn’t have wiped that smile off my face for anything in the world!! I just can’t explain it in any other way other than it was fantastic!!! I couldn’t take my eyes off of it!! we all were the giddiest girls you’ve ever seen!! We just walked with jaws dropped up to the ledge and stared and kept saying “I’m in paris!! I’m in paris!!” and then off course we took a million pictures!! It was just amazing!! I don’t know what else to say!! I was totally in a dream!! The entire time all of us felt like we were in a movie, everything we did seemed so movie like it still doesn’t feel real!! I think it also helped that we made sure to make it a girls only trip, didn’t let it get spoiled by boys attitudes!! ;)
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| Wunderbar! |
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| I love the girls!! |
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Sarah Thompson: "wow you are almost as tall as the Eiffel Tower! How did ya'll grow so fast?
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| Preparing to jump! |
Then we walked down to the bottom of it and realized that it was even more amazing cuz it was so ginormous!!! And we walked to the top!! Ok, well not the top but as far up as you can climb the stairs!! I was so excited it didn’t even phase me that we walked over 600 stairs!! And on the first level there was an ice statue of the eifel tower and snow!! It was wonderful!! And then the second story was the most incredible view I’ve ever seen!! I felt like I was in sleepless in seattle (mostly cuz I’ve never gone up the empire state building so this was the closest relation I had to it!!) and then we got so lucky and were up there for sunset!! sigh me n paris were just meant to be together that weekend!! The sky was beautiful and clear all weekend and everyone else had been having miserable weekends there with rain and freezingness!! Not us though!!
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| Unbelievable! |
Then we found this incredibly adorable street, I think we found out later it was called latin street, or something like that and we found the coolest little crepe place! It looked like Greece inside and our waiter was so handsome and spoke little English but tried to hard to help us out and I had so many languages going on in my head that when he handed me some water I stuttered and then finally gratzi came out (which is itallian) and I laughed and said oh no sorry merci (frecnch) and he laughed and said in a different language which weirdly I understood that he didn’t speak itallian either but he spoke a little Spanish! And we laughed together about our language barriers! Then when we were leaving he said bye to everyone and then to me he said (in ittallian) cia bella cia bella and winked and laughed at me!! He was so sweet!! And then we made our way to the luve, home of the mona lisa!
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| Christina apparently missed the picture memo! |
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| Cutest crepe place EVER!! And sweet waitor! |
The outside of the building alone was enough to impress me and as we were walking up everyone was walking in the same direction from all different entrances and some guy was playing the clarinette and I was like “I feel like we’re following the star of david to jesus’ birth cuz everyone’s emerging out of nowehere all to the same place!” and my friend was like oh my gosh yes!! And then we realized It was probably because the clarinette player was playing away in a manger!! Haha!!
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| Why is everything so wonderful here??! |
Me n Chelsea C. decided to take the stroll aroud the luve together cuz we both like looking at stuff but don’t really like reading EVERY description or pausing forever to take stuff in but we do enjoy just wandering!! So we set out first to find the mona lisa!! We finally found it with much confusion regardless of the many signs pointing on how to get to it! it’s not as small as I expected it to bee so that was fun!! Everyone always made it seem like it was like the size of a piece of paper but it was normal painting size! I still don’t get why it’s so wonderful and I tried to read the description to see, however I still don’t speak French so…. That was that!! And then we strolled around and just talked and looked! It was fun! We saw king louis’ crown and other jewels and then randomly ran into another group of ours that was in paris, joe and jarred, and we decided to meet up with them later. And then, another weird thing was that Chelsea said this girl looked familiar and wanted me to ask if she went to pepperdine and she did!! It just makes me feel so happy when stuff like that happens cuz it really is such a small world after all!! And then I saw that there was a ruben room and I love ruben so we tried to find him for like 45 minutes and walked EVERYWHERE we couldn’t even move our legs we thought they were gonna fall off!! And we “got in our map” many times and still were never going in the right direction and then we finally found it and just sat down and took ruben’s massive paintings in!!
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| The Louvre! |
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| I felt like I was in the movie The Davinci Code... it was kinda creepy... |
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Who would've thought I'D ever get to see this???
Sister says: "so how'd you get this pic... I'm pretty sure it's absolutely ILLEGAL to take pictures in here.
Me: "Really??? There were no signs and we didn't think you could but EVERYONE was doing it! I think it's cuz we went to the free night? |
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| Ahhhhhhh!!! The Mona Lisa!!!! |
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| I want it! |
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Future fiances: any will do, I'd prefer the one on top but the lower ones would also be fine if the proposal was phenomenal!! ;)
Mel Says: "Fiances? As in plural? As in you plan on saying no to the first one...?
Me: "Well if he doesn't buy me the big one... duh!!! |
Then it was time for the luve to close so we met back up with everyone and went on a search for hot chocolate!! The place we wanted to go to wasn’t open so we followed joe, our own personal tour guide, around cuz he’d been to paris like 5 times and is obsessed with history so he would tell us while we were walking like every monumental building and the stories behind it! It was so wonderful to have him around! And then we realized we’d been walking for an hour to get to the Champs Elysees because when we left the eifel tower was sparkling and when we got there it was sparkling again, I’ve never actually had my legs hurt so much where I don’t even know how they’re lifting than that day!! But it was totally worth it! the champs elysees is this amazing street like the 3rd street promenade in santa monica times 10!!! It was amazing just to look around at all the wonders of a shoppers dream! And then we walked all the way down it to the arch d’triumph and joe gave us a little history lesson about that and it’s basically like the unknown soldiers memorial and there’s a flame burning!
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| Arch D'triumph |
Then the boys were so sweet cuz they were starving and hadn’t eaten like all day and it was like 11:30 at night and they took us all back to our hotels because they didn’t want us riding the metros alone that late at night and weren’t sure how long they ran so they didn’t want us to get stuck somewhere, they didn’t get home themselves until like 2 in the morning =(
So then the next morning we woke up and went to the pantheon! Which was cool cuz it has all monumental French ppl buried in it I didn’t go inside though cuz crypts really aren’t my thing if you know what I mean?!
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Posing in front of what we thought was the Pantheon!! Whoops!! Haha!
Christina says: "[note to all: she uses the word "we" loosely.]
Me: "Whatever!!!!!!"
Sarah says: "Wow we though that was the Pantheon too!! They should make a sign or something."
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| Oh there it is!! |
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| Geeze it was humongous! |
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Boy band pic!
Chelsea B. says: "yeaaaaah for my rockstar friends!!" |
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I tried to climb up it...
Marcia Garcia says: "sooooooo cute bunk mate" |
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| That's as far as I got!! Spidermanish...kinda?? |
Then we walked our way over to notre dame! It was cool to finally see and of course I posed like the hunchback of notre dame in my picture!! I wasn’t really impressed with the inside of it though cuz I don’t like gothic style things, kind of depressing! But there was this really fun playground outside of it, so of course I played on it! I think I’m the only person that can find a playground wherever I go!! And then what are the odds, I’m stuck trying to get out to play on the now free teeter totter when the other Heidelberg group that was in paris comes along!! And they were all watching for a while and I didn’t even know! And then this homeless man was speaking to us in French telling us to get off cuz it was for little kids and a French dad translated for us and laughed and he goes “he’s saying its for small kids, you’re just tall kids!” see the French aren’t so rude as everyone says they are!
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Of course I had to impersonate, it was the Notre Dame after all!
Sarah Thompson says: "I don't get it... you always look like that... |
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| Oooh la la, oooh la la, oooooh laaaa laaaaaaa!! Mon cheri!! |
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| They're so cute! |
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| So cool! |
Then Christina Chelsea c. and I went to find this old bookstore where the top floor is reserved for just ppl who want to read and it has old rickety chairs and cats bathing in the sun! I was so excited to go but we couldn’t find it anywhere, it’s so hard to read maps! But we did stumble across an igloo skating rink and man made sledding hill and carousel, and a paris thrift store!! I felt like I was in what a girl wants! We tried on all these crazy outfits and were all smooshed in this little dressing room laughin and taking pictures with pictures of exotic dancers on the wall!! I’ll never forget that it was like a movie, really!!
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| Two of my favorite things in one spot, no three, sledding, ice skating, and carousels, in Paris! Life couldn't be better!! |
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| The theatre in Anastasia! |
Then we just got lost a little more, on purpose, and found this toasted panini stand for only 3 euros and walked the streets some more before we finally headed to the museum we were supposed to meet everyone else at! My favorite part about paris was just walking around and feeling like I belonged there! And there were all these stands with painings and old photographs and everything matched my room and was like a euro so of course I bought a few little posters!! I wanted some of the paintings so bad but they were too expensive for me but I was basically OBSESSED with everything I saw!! Then we met up with the rest of the group and I split off again with Chelsea B., Dustin, and caroline to go shopping at Lafayette, a 7 STORY SHOPPING MALL!!!
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| The worlds coolest shopping mall! I was obsessed, too bad it was out of my league =( |
It looked like what I pictured the macy’s thanksgiving day parade street to look there, and there were just people oozing out from everywhere!! The first floor was designer accessories and they had the funnest hats of my life! I wanted to try on every single one! And the way the shops are set up is like theres no stores each merchant just has it’s own little area that there clothes are and its just all out in the middle of everywhere!! I was in heaven!! But everything was so expensive! I was saving my money all weekend so I could have a dress from paris, but it just wasn’t in the cards because I was supposed to meet another group at the eifel tower at 6 and so I could only stay for like 45 minutes, it was painful to leave I must say, I was in love with everything!!
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| HATS!!! See, this city was meant for me! |
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Ich leibe mutze und Chelsea!
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I wanted this dress sooooooo badly!! =(
Christopher Osterroth says: "u are so cute"
Lexi-Pooh says: "you hang out with me WAY too much because that is totally something I would buy!
Me: "oh my gosh alex I was so sad to leave it, a little bit of my heart broke when I had to walk away form it =( |
But alas, I had to run so I left them there and went by myself to meet the other group at the eifel tower, they didn’t want me to go by myself but no one wanted to go meet them and my friend matt was in the group we were supposed to be meeting up with and I knew that he would wait like an hour and would be kind of upset if no one showed up so I went! And really, I know I keep saying it, but I felt like I was in a movie, I was late so I was running down this hill that’s directly in front of the eifel tower and just staring up at it as I was running and it was starting to light up cuz It was getting dark and I was holding onto my hat so it wouldn’t fall off and my long coat was blowing in the wind and I had that paris song stuck in my head!! I felt like I was watching myself from the tv screen cuz it was totally a movie moment!! I was just amazed at how blessed I am the entire trip!!
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| It sparkles!!! Every hour!!! |
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| My new obsession... the Eiffel Tower |
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| The MILLIONS of people "meeting" under the Eiffel Tower too... YIKES! |
Well, of course there were a million ppl there so I couldn’t find them and Chelsea B. didn’t want me to wait alone down there cuz they were all gonna meet there at 8, so she told me to go to a coffee shop and just sit there till 8 but I got too nervous cuz not knowing the language intimidates me so I walked back to the eifel tower and by that time it was time for the glitter show of the eifel tower again so I sat down on the steps and watched it and then looked at all my pictures, and you know how I hate being alone?? Well I was so content and happy just to sit in front of this amazing structure and be in awe and amazed in silence and be alone!! It was wonderful!! A moment I’ll never forget!! So then I waited by the metro stop hoping someone would come early and then 8 o’clock rolled around and I wanted to see the light show again so I stood right in the center of this platform where no one was so I would be in clear sight and watched the light show again and was still even more obsessed and I started to get freezing and I just decided if noone came by the time the light show was over I’d just go back to the hotel cuz I’m not gonna be alone, so I was standing there and prayed that I was so thankful to be there and so amazed by the beauty, but also that someone would come soon because I was freezing but I dint’ want to go back and I didn’t want to be alone at night on the metos, and I’m not even kidding like 1 minute later I hear my name and I freaked out!! I started turning in all different directions praying that they were talking to me!! And then I see two figures emerge out of the darkness saying my name and it was Chelsea C. and Laura and I hugged them so hard!! I was like I’m so glad you’re here!! And they said they’d been there since 6 too and the other group had too and that they didn’t find each other till like 7:30!! So moral to the story never pick the eifel tower as a meeting point, only do cuz its amazing to keep getting to see it!! so then right as we were about to leave and just go get dinner by ourselves, we see Chelsea dustin and caroline running up the stairs!! And we all embraced again and they were so glad we had found each other and they were worried about me!!
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| Reunited after 2 hours of trying to find each other!! |
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| I kept taking pictures of my feet to see what time it was on my camera! There's like 10 of these haha! |
So then…. We went to eat dinner and we ate dinner at a café’ in front of the eifel tower and watched it glitter two more times and were served an amazing French dinner for only 8 euro and had the most charming French waitor!! He reminded me of bert from marry poppins!! We all wanted to marry him!! He was adorable! And we took a picture with him!! And then it was off to the Moulin rouge for us!! We asked our waitor how to get there and he was very concered and protective for us he said stay close together and showed us how to hold our bags so we didn’t get pick pocketed and that we should be very alert!! And then he told us two stops too early to get off so we had to walk in the red light district of paris!!! We decided we were gonna make shirts that say “don’t’ mess with us, we WALKED to the Moulin rouge!”
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| Can we just talk about how blessed I am??? I'm eating dinner across from the Eiffel Tower!! Pinch me someone this can't be real!! |
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| Bahahahahahahahaha!!!! |
It wasn’t that bad though, you just had to avert eye contact and ignore when you were clearly being spoken too!! And caroline had mace wrapped around her knuckles from laura, so we were golden!! And then this cute british couple was there taking pictures too so we felt safe and there was a metro stop right in front of it so we didn’t have to worry about walking back by all the creepers!! But then we got on the metro going the wrong direction and made the mistake of getting off to change sides at this teeny tiny station and we were the only ones there and we kept hearing footsteps and our hearts were beating so fast and we had to switch sides twice cuz one of em went off the board and we thought it was done running and we were freaking out and we were all praying inside our heads cuz there was just this one kind of shady looking guy there and that was in and then we heard a few set of footsteps coming down the stairs and all of our hearts stopped and then it was a couple and we all let out sighs of reliefs and we shifted towards them and then more ppl came and we could finally relax!! WAY scarier than the red light district!! Anyways, now that I’ve freaked out all of my relatives, we got back just in time, made the last metro of the night!! And they locked the gate up right as we exited!! Carazy!!
In the morning we dropped our stuff down at ambers apartment, which by the way is probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!! I want to do what she’s doing!! And she can see the tip of the eifel tower from her apartment!! It looks like a bird house on the inside! That’s the only way I can think to explain it!! And then we went to a bakery she told us to go to which had the most amazing pastries and bread of my life!! I could’ve just sat there and smelled for life!
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| Probably just about the best French bakery you'll ever go to!! |
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| Bread with chocolate chips!! Why have I never thought of this before??! |
Then we walked down to the bottom of the eifel tower one last time and did cartwheels in front of it just like on passport to paris!! And then it was off to Versailles, home of king louis!!
The castle was the most humongous palace I’ve ever seen and the gardens are what we walked through and I felt like I was either in the notebook or pemberly (you know where mr. Darcy lives!) I was so in love!! We just strolled around while I read out of my “how to be lovely” book!! I felt like we were in little women!! It was amazing!! I just love the picture I have in my head right now!! The more I think about it the more I can’t believe I didn’t see Mr. Darcy there!! It was absolutely gorgeous!! I’m such a nature girl though!!
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| King Louis castle was so big I couldn't even get it all in the same picture! |
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| Chelsea B says: "ICH LIEBE DICH!!" |
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| This has to be where Mr. Darcy lives! It just has to be! Or Noah from The Notebook!! Haha! |
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| That Louis sure was lucky!! |
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| This ones for you mommy! I read the book to everyone while strolling through the castle gardens in FRANCE! |
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Obviously I had to mimic this statue!
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| Lexi-Pooh says: "this is sooooo gorgeous!! |
And then we said our last goodbyes to paris and to amber and were on our way home =(
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Oh how I love you both so much!!
Chelsea Costello says: "This is a terrible picture but just because this event was so funny I'm going to leave it.
Chelsea Bailey says: "It was worth it... obviously |
I coulnd’t take my eyes off the tower I didn’t want to leave, but it was even better not doing everything I wanted to do , cuz we all just decided we were leaving it to do for when we came back, which would all be with our husbands we decided!! Ahhhh, I just love the romance of paris!! It’s true you can’t help but be romantic in pari’!! I missed my sister and my mom a lot while I was there though, I mean I know amber’s seen it, but I knew that I would’ve loved to have shared the experience of paris with them, so I decided we’re all going sometime!! I’ll pay!!
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| Sunsets from trains are my favorite!! |
Avec amour’
shannon
