Italia Adventures!!: A Whirlwind Week

I just realized that somehow I just didn't write anything about our final stop on the first travel week when we went to Paris! Because it's about a month late, I'll just hit the major highlights even though it was such an amazing place that I could write pages on everything we experienced!

I'll begin by saying one of the greatest parts about Paris was, again, being able to travel/stay with people from home at Iowa State! We were lucky enough to be able to stay with our friend Caine who is studying fashion and living in Paris for the semester - it was great to not only see her but have a free place to stay! What was even better was one of my very good friends, Nickie, came down from where she was studying in Ireland and spent the three days of the Paris leg of our journey with us. It was so awesome to see her that even if Paris would have been terrible (which it definitely was NOT!), I would have had an absolutely fantastic time!

Anyway, in addition to the wonderful company we were able to see as much of Paris possible in three days. A few people I knew that had visited Paris told me that one of the best things that they did while they were there was take a free walking tour of the city. Because we really didn't know a ton about where everything was or, more importantly, what everything was, we decided to take the tour on the first morning we were there.

It ended up being a great decision as we were able to see almost all of the main sights within a three hour time period! We started in the Latin Quarter and saw Notre Dame, walked along the Seine and under the New Bridge, went through the Louvre and around the famous glass pyramids, and even got to take our break at Starbucks!!! (I know it sounds silly but after two months of tiny cups of coffee, I stopped at every Starbucks we saw and dominated American-sized cups of coffee the entire time I was there - it was GREAT!!) After our break we got to stroll through the park directly outside the Louvre and wander our way down to the start of the L'Avenue des Champs Elysées (the most famous road in Paris). Seeing that as well as the Royal Palace, the building where Napoleon's tomb lies, and a distant view of the Eiffel Tower made it a tour well worth our time!

In the next couple days we did more exploring of the places we wanted to go back to like Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the stained glass cathedral, and the Arch de Triumph. I was super happy because not only did I get to eat duck, escargot, and crepes but I found authentic French macaroons that were out-of-this-world delicious! One of my favorite things was watching Emily at the Paris Opera House - she was in her own version of heaven on earth...I literally thought she was going to pass out! All of this combined with a half day trip to amazing Versailles and a nighttime walk up to the Montmartre District made it a very successful trip and a great end to the week!