Paris

For the past three weeks, French transportation workers have been on strike because the retirement age has been raised from 60 to 62. Tough life.  You know how taxing a 35 hour work week is.  So in the middle of all that, Shelby and I decided to go to Paris.  Luckily, we made reservations on the TGV, a high speed direct to Paris from Luxembourg train. You can get there in about 2 hours, because the train can go well over 200 mph.  Shelby's mom was great and got us a hotel right next to the Eiffel Tower. Everything in Paris is pretty spread out, but they have a great metro system set up so you can just head to the subway and get almost anywhere.  And pretty much every metro trip was quite the experience.  We arrived at about 16:00, and freshened up to head out.  On friday nights, the Louvre had free admittance for European students after 18:00, which saved us about 10 Euro.  I am not a huge art person, but it was fun getting lost for a couple hours and stumbling upon the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo.  The Louvre is simply massive, and when we tried to follow the exit signs we ended up in the mummy displays.  But it was a lot of fun, and when we finally got out we grabbed some dinner. I was so excited to be able to order my chicken, potatoes and carrots all in French! We headed home fairly early and mapped out the rest of our weekend.

On saturday, we got up early and headed up to Moulin Rouge, where we thought our tour started.  We grabbed Starbucks right across the street and took some pictures.  15 minutes after the tour was supposed to start there was still no tour guide, so we checked the directions again and realized we were at the wrong place.  Oh well, at least we got a tour of the city.  Luckily for us there was another tour starting in an hour, so we headed toward Notre Dame and the Saint-Michel fountain.  This was our third city that we used the New Europe walking tours, and once again it was great.  We walked all around the city and got to hear some great history.  She also told us about some the typical scam artists you would see in the city.  My favorite was kids with clipboards asking you to sign for peace, and really there was fine print saying you owe them 40 Euro.  The end of the tour took us to the Eiffel Tower, so Shelby and I took the opportunity to take some pictures.  We did not go up, because it had been closing frequently for security threats. After we were done with the whole tourist thing, we headed back toward the center of the city and did some shopping, finding some great things at H&M.  We found a cute Italian place and had some penne arrabiata and some wine. Before we left the center, we decided to pop by the Arch de Triumph for a quick picture too.  We headed home around 22:00 and rested up for our last day in paris.


On Sunday, we decided to take the train 30 minutes outside of the city to Versailles.  The palace was absolutely amazing! The gardens were gorgeous and the Palace itself was covered inside and out in gold leafing.  And because we were students of the EU, we only had to pay 6 Euro for the gardens as opposed to the regular 25! Good deal for sure.  We wondered around for a while, and it only confirmed my belief that I should have been a princess.  We couldn't stay for too long, because we had to catch the TGV home at 18:00.  We did end up with more time then we thought we would, and so we stopped by the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.  It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It is pure white, and situated at the highest point in Paris. We probably spent a little too much time there, and so for the next hour we were running around Paris trying not to miss our train.  We made it, barely, and were soon on our way back to Luxembourg!