I'm baaaaack!! But only for this post :)
Incase you didn't know, I went to Paris and Zurich, Switzerland over spring break with my friends Kelly, Jack, and Kalika (from UVA) and our friends Daniel and Robbie (from Coast Guard).
Kelly, Jack, Kalika, and I left from Dulles on Friday (the 2nd) around 5 PM. We were rushing to get there because it was raining and there was a little bit of traffic on the way up to Dulles. When we got through security and to our gate, they were about to announce last call for boarding. We got on the plane and of course there was little to no room for our bags in the over head compartments. Somehow out of sheer luck, I was able to shove mine somewhere and then turned around and found a place for Jack's bag too. The flight attendant was shocked and said with a little bit of disdain "you have a good eye." Then, I sit down (Kelly and I sat next to each other; Jack and Kalika sat together like 3 rows behind us) and go through all the movies available. I love watching movies on planes so I am super excited and have movies in mind to watch. I get my headphones out and realize they won't go in the ear jack spot...Why? Because a piece of someone's head phone broke off in the jack and was stuck there. I tried so hard to get it out but couldn't :( So, Kelly and I watched some movies together on her TV and then played games for a lot of the flight. Neither of us could sleep (her because she can't sleep on planes, me because I was too excited). We landed in Paris at like 7 AM. When we got to the airport, we bought our train/metro pass into the city. It's about a 30-40 minute ride into the city, but luckily the B line went straight from the airport to the stop we needed to get off at! Our hotel was like 3 blocks from Notre Dame and 2 blocks from St. Michele Plaza, at the start of the Latin Quarter. It's called Hotel Marignan. On my other trips, I usually stayed in hostels, but for both Paris and Zurich, we found it was cheaper to ask for a 4 person hotel room and just sleep with an extra person in the bigger beds. It was a little cozy, but it was the cheapest way to sleep without staying at a 15 out of 100 rated hostel... Anyway, when we got to our stop, we had to figure out where our hotel was but it wasn't hard to find. We weren't able to check in (it was around 8:30 at this point) but we could leave our bags in the luggage room, so we dropped our stuff off and headed to a little cafe to eat breakfast. Nutella and banana crepe number 1--check. And coffee, of course. After we finished, we went to a Starbucks to see if we could access WIFI to let the other boys know we got there, etc. We couldn't get it to work so walked around a little to see if we could find an internet cafe but then just headed back to our hotel where there was free WIFI for guests. We also asked them if we could check in and we were able to at this point, so we went up to our room, got settled, used the WIFI, etc. We were all tired but Kelly and Kalika wanted to nap, Jack and I decided not to because we figured it would make our jet lag worse so we walked around while they slept.
We just kind of wandered and made our way over to Jardin de Plantes, which is just a big park next to the Paris Zoo. From there we walked along the river to Notre Dame (just to see the outside). It is a beautiful cathedral, very gothic. Then, we walked along the river some more, walked by the Louvre, and crossed a bridge just to see the view. We were able to see the top part of the Eiffel Tower from the bridge, so we decided to walk a little farther. Once we realized we were no where close to the Eiffel Tower, we headed back home through the street-area. We got home around 2 and each fell asleep for like 20 minutes, which was perfect because Daniel and Robbie showed up around 2:30! Their flight left JFK early Saturday morning (they had to leave a day later than us and come home a day earlier--their flight home was the following Saturday at like 4 PM).
With everyone together, we walked back over to Notre Dame and went inside. Like I said earlier, it is a gorgeous cathedral. Then, we were going to go inside St. Chapele Cathedral (it's the one that has the huge room with all stain-glass windows). But, it cost like 15 euro to go in, so we decided to hold off on that and if we really wanted to do it the following weekend, we could. From there, we walked over to Luxembourg Gardens and just walked through it. It was very beautiful. Then, we walked from there to the Pantheon. You could only see the outside, I'm not sure how to get in (if you can). It was cool because it looked similar, but still different to the Pantheon in Rome. The one in Paris has an additional dome-like feature on the top. Anyway, after we walked around it, we continued walking in the direction of our hotel and decided to stop at a cool bar along the way. It was happy hour time, so the drinks were a lot cheaper than normal. We all got these bright colored drinks that came with a chocolate covered marshmallow as part of the stirrer--very interesting, but it was good! Then, we headed back to our hotel to get ready to go to dinner. One of Jack and Kalika's friends was actually staying in our hotel too (she's studying abroad in Geneva, Switzerland right now and was in Paris for the weekend) so we met up with her and her friends to go to dinner. We had thought we were going to the Latin Quarter for dinner but we ended up a little turned around and apparently walked down the most touristy street for restaurants--it reminded me of trying to find a place to eat on Las Ramblas in Barcelona (where all the restaurants have a worker out front saying, "over here! come join us for dinner." etc). So, unfortunately, we ended up eating at one of those places--only unfortunate because the food was just decent for a more expensive price--we still had fun! After dinner, we went back to our hotel and got ready to go out. We kind of just wandered with a club in mind and along the way stopped at a couple different bars. There were lots of Irish Pubs and we ended up staying most of the night at one of them. We sampled lots of different things and I found my new favorite drink--white Russians! Around 2, we left the pub in hopes of actually finding the club, which was kind of close by supposedly. But, the address/map on her phone ended up being slightly different than the map the hotel gave us so we couldn't find it. However, at this point, we were REALLY far away from our hotel. We still have no idea how we got so far away, but regardless, it took us a while to get home. When we finally did get back to the hotel, we all fell asleep immediately. This was only the first day :)
The hotel we stayed in provides free breakfast, but I knew I wanted a crepe so I had the coffee/orange juice/fruit part of breakfast and let the others split my baguette of bread. After we finished, we got dressed and headed over to the Louvre. Admission is free the first Sunday of every month! On the way, we stopped at a stand to get crepes--nutella and banana time number 2! The line for the Louvre was really long, but it moved relatively quickly and inside it didn't feel that crowded (seeing as it is a HUGE museum). I'm not typically much of a museum person (I like outdoor monuments, etc.) but it was still very cool to walk around and see everything. The Venus de Milo, the Sphinxes (and the entire ancient Egypt section), and the Medieval underground area were my favorite things to see. I knew going in that the Mona Lisa was actually a small painting (which I did not know before I was in Spain and some of my friends went and took pictures of it). Regardless, I wish it was a large painting like I had previously thought--for me, because it was so small, I didn't think it was as fascinating as it's hyped up to be. We spent a good amount of time in the Louvre, a couple hours at least. When we left, we walked to the Eiffel Tower. Mostly, we walked along the river and saw things Alexander III's bridge (very intricate designs on the bridge, gold statues, etc.), the Grand Palais (Grand Palace--looks like it's made of glass), Assemble Nationale building, Hotel des Invalides/Museum L'Armee (HUGE building with a big lawn leading to the river), and across the river from the Eiffel Tower is the Cite de L'architectur (we didn't go over there but it is this half semi-circular building that holds the Palais de Challot, 2 museums, and a theatre). It is a looong walk from the Louvre to the Eiffel Tower but it was the thing I was most excited to see so it didn't really bother me. When we got there, it started raining, but I didn't care. I convinced the others to walk out to the lawn so we could get typical posing pictures (holding the tower, kissing it, etc.). No one wanted to go out there at first, but once we started taking pictures, everyone thanked me :)
After we had our photoshoot, we hopped over to a cafe near the tower just to sit down/get out of the rain/have a bite to eat. It was around 4:30-5 so we decided to head home. We metroed it home rather than walking because we were all kind of tired at this point. When we got home we showered, hung out in the room, and went out for dinner at like 6:30 or 7. In Jack's "dirt cheap" book, a place in the Latin Quarter was recommended so we headed off to find that restaurant. It was AMAZING. For the 14 euro special (which they don't really advertise, you have to ask for it), you get an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. I got a Caprese salad, then tagliatelle pasta with salmon, and for dessert I got apple pie. It was nice to have a good meal after a long day. Afterwards, we stopped at one bar just to have a drink. We only had one each (yes, I got a white Russian) and then decided we'd just rather walk around and eventually head back to the hotel. After 30ish minutes of walking through the Latin Quarter, we were all pretty beat so we just came back to the hotel and crashed.
The next morning (Monday) we got up and had breakfast and took a boat tour down the Seine. It was fun but a little bit of waste because it took us down the part of the river that we had walked along the day before. It would have been worth it if it had taken us at least to see the second Statue of Liberty, but that didn't happen :( And it was freeeeezing (wind blowing, cold=BRRRR). Anyway, we still had fun of course. When we got back to the hotel, we got our stuff together and took a bus to the Gare de Lyon train station. We didn't buy our train tickets ahead of time so we had to buy them at the station. Remember all those times that it was far cheaper to buy train tickets at the station rather than online or even at the ticket kiosk? Well, that seemed to not be the case here. It was 121 euros for a train ticket (yikes) and the train we wanted was leaving in 30 minutes. So we had to make a quick decision. We figured that we already have the hotel in Zurich, so it would cost some money to cancel and then we would need to find a hotel in Paris; plus, we all really wanted to go to Switzerland--I mean there's Swiss chocolate and Swiss cheese; and for me, they speak German in Zurich and I just really enjoy listening to German. So, without the bests reasons we decided you know what, you only live once (kind of silly young people rationale, but hey we had fun). It was a beautiful train ride through the countryside. Time for "the hills are liveee" song once again? I think so. We had a compartment to ourselves thank goodness because we are kind of annoying--well mostly Jack and I because we laugh at everything and make jokes all the time, but there were many times everyone else joined in. It was interesting crossing country borders on a train (I have been used to flying from country to country and just training from city to city). The "customs" people just kind of walked through, said "Hallo and how are you?" and continued walking. The train ride was just over 4 hours, so we got to Zurich around 5 PM. From the train station, we took a tram maybe 5 minutes to our stop, found our check-in site (which is different than our hotel); then, we walked to our hotel. We, once again, happened stayed in the middle of the red light district (Langstrasse). I guess most hotels are just cheaper in this area/it tends to be relatively close to the train station. Regardless, like the red light district in Frankfurt, it wasn't bad here either! When got to our hotel (Guesthouse Dienerstrasse), we couldn't believe how nice it was. It was like a mini-apartment almost or guesthouse, as the name suggests. There were two rooms with queen beds, a bathroom, and a kitchen. We split the rooms by snorers/people that make noise/or move in their sleep to those who are sensitive sleepers and don't do those things. Room loud=Jack, Daniel, and me..... Room sensitive=Kelly, Kalika, and Robbie. Daniel actually snores really loud, Jack makes these whimper noises every 10 minutes or so and I just breathe loudly.. embarrassing. Anyway, we dropped our stuff off and went to a Kebap place for dinner and a grocery store to buy drinks. We ate and socialized in our room for a while. When we went out, we got SO lost but we were all having fun so it didn't matter. We just literally wandered the streets for hours. There seemed to be no one on the streets but us (apparently most things close around 12 on weeknights except for a few pubs that we couldn't find this night). Zurich claims to be the nightlife city of Switzerland and that may be true on the weekends, but on the weeknights it's not exactly correct. I didn't realize this because I was very convinced there would absolutely be places open until at least 2 AM (that's what I was used to in Spain).. OOPS. Oh well, Zurich was still beautiful at night--when it's all lit up, etc. There are two rivers connecting into a lake so all along the water, everything is just gorgeous (day and night). We finally got home around 3 AM and fell asleep real quick.
The next morning, we accidentally woke up at like 11:30, oops. Once we realized how late it was, we got up and went to the bakery down the street from us. This is where I got my first pretzel (brezel) with butter, I love me some Deutsch food. Then, we took a tram to the Zoo. Zurich has one of the best public transportation systems in Switzerland--the trams are so convenient and go everywhere! The tram ride to and from the zoo was so pretty. We caught a few glimpses of scenic views (because the zoo is on a hill just outside the town) and we saw the university area which is beautiful. At first I was a little hesitant going to the zoo because, well, I've seen a zoo before and I hadn't seen Zurich's city, etc. during the day. But I wasn't going to be a party pooper. I am SO glad I went! Theere were such cool animals there (granted I have seen most of them before) but the way the zoo was set up was awesome and we just had so much fun walking around. The male lion made growling sounds to get the rest of his pack to come to where he was--that was cool! The zebras were really interesting; they were curious who we were/what we were doing every time we walked by them. This one llama went crazy and was like swinging his neck around--pretty funny. We had a great time making fun of this weird looking cat; it looked mostly like a domestic cat but was just bigger and made this really weird face, naturally we couldn't get enough of it. We also found a huge slide--for humans--that was a blast.
On the way to the Zoo, we stopped at the FIFA (Futbol Federation) exhibit. That was really cool because we got to see the monument, trophies, and the field. We left the zoo around 5 PM, and on the way home, Kalika made friends with an old lady who gave us stuff to do for the next few days. Instead of going back to our hotel and eating by there, we got off at the top of old town. Old town is a section cobblestone streets that no cars are allowed on--it extends from the area just below the University all the way to the lake. We walked down one of the main streets, Niederof, to find dinner. Everything in Zurich is expensive (apparently mostly rich tourists go there rather than college students...American girl research fail). So we found this half restaurant/half take-away place that served pasta, pizza, wraps, kebaps, etc. I got tortellini with spinach which was actually really good and the price wasn't expensive. When we finished eating, we walked a little more and then trammed it back to our hotel. Once again we got drinks at the grocery store (this is the cheapest way to buy drinks). Kalika got Valencian wine :( made me miss Spain! Also at the grocery store, I obviously got Swiss Chocolate...SO GOOD. Then, we went home and just hung out while getting ready to go out. In terms of going out, Daniel and I were the extremes. I wanted to go out at 12 (at the earliest) and he wanted to go out at like 9:30. So, the rest of the group, being the compromisers agreed somewhere around 10:30-11 was bets. It's a good thing too, because like I said everything closes down at like 12-1, besides a few places. Before going out this night, we looked up a few bars to go to that people recommended. I was still surprised that there were less clubs on the list of popular places to go to (this was so unlike Spain, where on a Wednesday night a smaller discoteca would be open all night). Anyway, we went out and stopped at a bar right next to our place just to see what they had. The girl who worked there was so nice and pulled out Amaretto for the girls, which I really like plain but Kalika and Kelly didn't--too late for that because she had already poured us the world's smallest glass to sip on. Well, Zurich being expensive is right because each of these drinks was 12 francs aka 14 dollars...... She gave the boys some other type of alcohol not quite as expensive, but still not cheap. Once again, oops. So, we left there and went to Nelson's (a British pub) and I got......a white Russian!!! After being at Nelson's for at least an hour or two, Kalika, Robbie, and I were really tired so we headed home and the rest tried to find another bar. They said they found one but only stayed for a few minutes and then got lost trying to find their way home.
On Wednesday morning we woke up around 9:30 or 10 but it took us quite a while to get out of the house. We went to the main train station to get a day pass for trams, boats, trains, museums, etc. in Zurich. I guess on Wednesdays in the train station they do an open market inside. It was a great way to get our breakfast--I got a brezel with cheese and butter. Jack got a bratwurst. Daniel got apple strudel. The others got crepes, brezels or bratwurst too. We just all sampled each others' food- yay for more German-like food! So, after we ate and bought our passes, we took a tram to the lake and took a boat "tour" around the lake. AKA, the boat is another means of transport for people living in surrounding towns to get to the city. The lake and the shoreline are beautiful. After the boat ride, we took a train up to Uetliberg (Kalika's old friend told her to go here). The train goes up a mountain where you have a great view of the city, lake, countryside. There is also a tower on top of this huge hill that makes the surrounding view incredible. We met some Australians up there and got them to take our picture--I love the accents! Kelly was able to look for rocks here for her geology class. After we got back to the city, we hopped on random trains to take us to small towns along the lake. It was pretty but there was nothing to do there so we came back to the old town area for dinner. We ended up going to dinner at the same place as the night before. This night, I got pizza. After we ate, we went to the grocery store again (drinks and chocolate) and then headed home. We hung out and looked up places to go out. We took a tram to old town (trying to use our passes as much as possible). We started off at Big Ben and then went to Nelson (both are Irish/English pubs). Somehow we made our way to some club Daniel had asked a local about. They had pretty weird music and the people seemed to stay away from us (they looked strange to us so we probably looked just as strange to them). But we got to dance there for a while and then we headed home.
Thursday morning we all snoozed our multiple alarms once again by accident and woke up at 11:30. It was raining this day on and off and we decided to go check out the university area. Went into buildings; the school rooms are so cool. The entire area up there is just beautiful. After we walked around up there for a while, we walked to Old Town to do some shopping, look at streets we hadn't seen before. Around 6 we headed home and went to the grocery store to get dinner and drinks. Kelly and I got this lasagna that we needed to cook in our hotel's oven. I guess our oven just isn't strong or takes a lot longer than we though to heat up because the lasagna did not turn out well! Anyway, after we ate we got ready, hung out in the hotel, and then went to the university because Daniel and Robbie met someone who said there was a concert up there. The band was really good and when they stopped playing, the DJ played 90s American music (so funny)! After we left there we tried to go to a club that had no cover charge on Thursday's but we couldn't find it so we just kind of walked around. We looked for some other places but they were all closed so we headed home and went to sleep!
The next morning we woke up and I got my last brezel with butter :( We packed up all our stuff, checked out, and then headed over to the train station. We got our tickets for the train to Paris and this time we had to split up on the train (3 and 3) because there were no 6 seats together. When we got to Paris, we went to our hotel (same one as before) to check in and drop our stuff off. We then went over to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed up it to see a view of the city. We got there right before sunset so we had an amazing view! Then when the sun set we walked over to the Eiffel Tower again to see it at night. It is absolutely incredible when it's all lit up at night--so pretty! After hanging out around there for a while, we then metroed home and walked over to the Latin Quarter to get food to go. I got a cheese crepe (SO good). Then we came back to the hotel to get ready. Once everyone was cleaned up and ready to go out, we headed back to the Latin Quarter to go to some bars where students would be. We stayed at this one bar that looked like a cave when you walked in for a while. Then we hopped over to a bar with lots of students in it and were there for like 20 minutes. From there, we wanted to go to a club so we started making our way towards one Kalika's friend told her about. When we got there, we were asked to get out of line. We were really confused as to why this was because we weren't doing anything disruptive (for once). Two French girls in front of us told us that it was probably because we were American. They said they had been asked to get out of line as well because they had 2 American friends with them. I was kind of surprised because we hadn't had a problem like this yet and Kalika's friend who recommended the club is American too... It was just a weird situation. So, not wanting to deal with people that didn't want us around, we ended up just walking home.
On Saturday morning, we got up and went to eat breakfast at a little restaurant/cafe close to our hotel. Robbie and Daniel were planning to leave around 12ish from the metro (their flight was at 4) so we just had an easy-going morning. Around 12 we saw them off at the metro and met up with one of Kelly's friends who is studying abroad just outside of Paris. She took us to a fun little shopping area on the island behind Notre Dame. Then, we walked over to the Catacombs and had planned to tour them but the line was SO long and she had to be back home at a certain point so we didn't want to risk it. Instead, we just kind of walked around the area near the catacombs. Then, we parted with her at the metro station near there. We took a metro over by the Arc de Triomphe again so we could walk down Champs Elysees, the street with high end fashion stores, etc. We only went into one store, H&M (because it's not that high end) and it was HUGE--3 stories. The stores and the street itself was kind of overwhelming so we only walked a little ways before turning around and heading home on the metro. We had to get another hotel for this night because our other hotel was booked for Saturday. We got lucky and the place right next door was available so we just moved our stuff over there when we got back. After we hung out in the room for a little bit, we wanted to have a nice meal as our last night there. We walked over to the Latin Quarter area and we saw a good-priced Italian restaurant so we decided to go there. We started off with wine (I got this French red wine, it was really good)! Then, our meal was amazing! I just got plain spaghetti with marinara sauce but everything was so fresh-YUM! We all got dessert as well--I got profiteroles because our host mom in Spain used to have them all the time for us; they're pretty yummy! After we finished, we went back to our hotel and began packing up our stuff while watching YouTube videos :) We tried to get to bed by 11:30 since we were waking up between 7-7:30 to shower, get ready, etc. (our flight left around 11:30 AM)
When we woke up and were showered/ready to go, we got our bags and checked out. We walked over to our favorite crepe stand and got our last crepes of the trip (nutella and banana of course). Then we got on the metro toward the airport. We got to the airport at like 9:20 and checked in. We all decided to check our back packs going home because it's less of hassle than lugging it around/we weren't too worried if it got lost for a few days on the return trip. During check in, I got profiled at the counter! The poor guy didn't speak that great of English so it was so hard to understand what he was trying to say but we got through the questions quickly since "no, I do not have any weapons in my bag" .... obviously. Anyway, then we went through security. The way the CDG airport does security is they have separate security areas depending on which section of gates you go to. So we didn't actually go through security until right before we got to our section of gates. There wasn't even a line, it was awesome! When we got to the other side, we only waited like 20 minutes until boarding started. Boarding went smoothly and the plane took off on time and the flight ended up landing like 45 minutes earlier than it was scheduled! We had no trouble in Dulles customs and got out rather quickly!
This trip was SO much fun. We all got along really well and just had a blast hanging out with each other. Neither of these cities beat my favorites but they were still amazing. Once again, I was able to experience something so cool and so much different than how things are in the US. Being back in Europe made me realize how much I miss study abroad/Spain/traveling every weekend. I don't know when the next time I will be able to get over there again, but I hope it's soon!
