Paris

So this weekend 5 of us decided to go to Paris, and it ended up being a great experience. We flew using an airline called Ryanair, which is a low-cost airline flying out of very low-cost airports, but they were great. The planes were clean, and on both flights we took off right away and landed 15-20 minutes early, so we were happy. We got to Paris Thursday night, and made it to our hostel by about 11:30. The hostel we had ended up being really nice. It was a 5-bed room, with our own bathroom, and breakfast every morning. Thursday night we went to bed pretty early so we could get up the next day. On Friday we decided to begin walking and see where it took us. We realized that we were in a good area of the city, and ended up walking to the Louvre, the Arc de Triumph, the Eiffel Tower, and Notre Dame Cathedral. Everything was amazing. The Eiffel Tower actually had snow on it because of a special event they were doing, so we got to snowshoe around the promenade. We walked up to the top of the first and second stories, but the summit was closed, so 600 stairs was as high as we climbed. We enjoyed the day and did some more sightseeing. That night we went to a pretty nice restaurant, and tried some escargot and had a good meal. We tried to hit up the nightlife scene in Paris, and realized very quickly that most of the clubs have decided to play nothing but 70s and 80s dance music, and quickly got bored and wandered for the rest of the night. Saturday we explored the Louvre, and after 4 hours inside, we had only seen about 1/5 of it, but had to leave. I did get to see the Mona Lisa and the Statue of Venus which was amazing to experience. Notre Dame Cathedral was stunning as well. It is very hard to believe that a building of this magnitude could be built when it was. It is a beautiful building, and we had found out that at 2:30 on Saturdays they give a free tour in English, so we hopped on that tour. We learned a lot, and the history of the building was fascinating to hear about. The rest of the day we enjoyed the city and had a nice dinner together before packing it in for the night, since we had to get up at 4:30 this morning to get to our flight on time. Next on the list is Germany, but I'm sure I'll have more updates about Italy before then. Hope all is well back in the states, and keep in touch.

~Mike