A Weekend in Paris and Movie Nights with the Roomiez

     This past week has been so much fun! A few weeks ago, two of my friends and I booked flights to Paris for the weekend of February 1-3. Our flight on Friday was at 12:50pm, and we got into Paris in the late afternoon. We bought metro passes at the airport, and took the train into the city. While Michelle and Rebecca checked into our hotel, I went to a bar/café because the hotel thought there was only two of us staying in the room, so we couldn't all go in together. I ordered a coffee in French, and then this middle aged guy sitting next to me asked to buy me a beer in French. It was pretty amusing. I said no thanks, and we had a brief conversation. Surprisingly my French wasn't too rusty so I was able to understand most of what he was saying and speak back to him. He was actually pretty friendly and just asked what country I was from, what I was doing in Paris, etc. Rebecca and Michelle then came to the café to meet me, then we started looking for somewhere to have dinner. We ended up going to the Hippopotamus and had caesar salads, and calamari with fries and onion rings. I asked our waitress how to get to the Eiffel tower from the restaurant, and she was super helpful and told us which metro to take and what stop to get off at. We took tons of pictures in front of the Eiffel tower, then saw the light show at 8pm. Even though I've seen the Eiffel tower at night multiple times, it never gets old. We decided to get dessert crêpes afterwards (yum!). I got a banana and nutella one. It was so good. It was getting somewhat late and we were tired from our travels, so we took the metro back to our hotel and just chilled out and watched a French movie. There were three of us in a queen sized bed, so it was a bit "cozy" but we made it work haha. 

     In the morning, Rebecca and Michelle went downstairs for breakfast and brought me back up a croissant, jam, and some fruit. We left the hotel and about 9:30am and went straight to the Eiffel tower, and bought tickets to go up to the top. While we were up there, we were trying to estimate how many marriage proposals per day/week/year happen at the top of the Eiffel tower. We noticed there was a champagne bar, so we figured there must be a pretty high number. Afterwards we made our way to the Champs-Élysées to admire the Arc de Triomphe and all the expensive shops. By that time the weather was starting to brighten up, and we had some sun and blue skies which was really nice! We headed over to the Louvre and decided to have lunch at a café across the street. I had a croque-monsieur, which is basically a toasted sandwich with melted cheese and ham. Before going inside the Louvre, we wandered through the "Louvre des antiquaires". I had never been inside there before, but it was so cool! We pretty much spent the entire time admiring antique engagement rings, and in Rebecca's case, super expensive walking sticks hahah random. We spent about half an hour in there, then went to check out the Louvre. We found out that we got in free with our student cards so that was a huge bonus! First off we went to see the Mona Lisa (of course), then I wanted to wander around the section for classical Greek art. It was really cool because I saw a lot of sculptures/pottery that I had learned about in my Greek and Roman studies classes. We left the Louvre at about 4pm, then went back to the hotel to have a nap before dinner. For dinner that night we went to a little diner by our hotel that specialized in "moules et frites". I wasn't feeling adventurous enough to order mussels, but I tried one of Rebecca's and they actually weren't bad! After dinner we took the metro to see the Moulin Rouge lit up at night, and had dessert at a little café across the street. We had dessert crêpes again (no surprise there) and just sat and chatted/people watched for an hour or so. We were super exhausted from all the walking we did that day, so we decided to call it a night at around 9:30 and head back to our hotel. We watched another movie in French -- this time it was that really bad Disney channel movie with Aly and AJ called "Cow Belles" haha.

     When we woke up in the morning we packed up our bags and were able to leave them in the hotel luggage room after we checked out so we didn't have to carry them around all day. First off we went to LaDurée to buy some macarons because everyone raves about them. I got pistachio and coffee and they were so tasty! The coffee one was my favourite. Now we're trying to find places in Glasgow that sell macarons but we sadly aren't having much luck... While we were eating our macarons, we walked along the Seine and took pictures on the bridge of locks, then went to a famous bookstore called Shakespeare and Co. I picked up a hardcover edition of Les Misérables which I thought was a nice souvenir of our time in Paris. It's pretty heavy but I figure I'll keep it in my hand baggage when I go back to Canada to avoid my checked bags being overweight haha. We also saw Notre Dame cathedral, then made our way to Montmartre to see Sacre Coeur and get some lunch. I managed to find a restaurant that I ate at with Crystal, Lindsay and Kaitlyn on our school trip to Paris in grade 12, so that brought back really good memories. Like the last time, I ordered escargot. It's actually really good, although the texture is a bit weird. We had some time to kill before we had to go back to our hotel and get our bags then go to the airport, so we just wandered around Montmartre, and somehow ended up at the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier). I'm a huge Phantom of the Opera nerd, so even though this was my third trip to Paris and I had already seen the Opera House, it was exciting. 

      We still had some time to kill and wanted to rest our feet, so we tried to find a little café where we could have coffee and free wifi. All of the cafés we found had ridiculously high prices for coffee (around 5 euros!) so we settled for Starbucks. It's funny that Starbucks is considered the expensive coffee back home, but the cheapest we could find in Paris. It was finally time to go back and get our luggage, so we picked it up then went to the train station. For some reason the trains to the airport weren't running Feb 2nd or 3rd, so we had to take the train to the final stop then transfer onto a bus to the airport. We weren't too inconvenienced by it because we left ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport, but lots of people seemed like they were in a rush and were complaining/stressing out. Our flight was at 9pm, and by the time we got through security and to our gate, it was 8pm so we just relaxed for awhile. The plane ride was pretty smooth, and I spent most of the flight listening to heartfelt music and looking at all the old photos on my phone. I actually got pretty homesick seeing certain photos, especially ones of me with my pets: 

     We finally got back to our flat at about 11pm Glasgow time, and I had a skype date with Cyrus which was really nice. All in all it was a really memorable weekend, and a great third trip to Paris for me. I realized that I have now been to Paris during three of the four seasons; when I was 11 I went in the summer, when I was 17 I went in the spring, and now I've been there in the winter too. I guess I have to go back during autumn! 

     In other news, my flatmates and I have gotten into a routine of having movie nights together! Last week we watched Crazy, Stupid, Love, and last night we watched the Inbetweeners Movie, followed by two episodes of Skins. It's been really fun, and we are planning on having a cheesy chick flick night on Valentine's day (not watching the movie Valentine's Day though. So bad. Love, Actually perhaps). Tonight we're all going to something called the International Students Sub Crawl. It's basically a pub crawl, but everyone is divided into 4 groups, and we all take the subway to different bars/pubs. There are seven stops we have to get off at with our groups, and there are recommended drinks at each stop to buy. Afterwards we get free admission into a club. It should be fun! Hopefully I'm not too exhausted tomorrow. 

     ALSO, we've booked flights to Dublin from March 1-4! It's me, Michelle, Kirsty and Anna who are going (Bethany is going for St. Patty's Day) and we're so excited. I've wanted to go to Ireland for a while so I'm happy we've planned a trip.