Paris

               I forgot to mention a really important part of our trip back in Belgium.  As we were standing outside the chocolate shop after hours, we noticed that we started getting notifications on our phones because they were automatically connecting to the store's wifi.  We found out the Pope had decided to step down.  This also led to multiple emails from both of our parents telling us to head back to Rome for the last Papal audience.  We rushed back to our hostel, got on real computers and started emailing away and looking at how to rearrange our trip.  With the support of our parents and an email sent to the nuns, we shifted our attention to getting to Paris.  **Click on photos to enlarge**

                Ah yes, Paris, the City of Lights, or to most, the City of Love.  Being the smart girls that we are, we stupidly made it so we were in Paris for Valentine's day.  Single ladies unite!  At the same time, we do credit ourselves to a cost efficient and very authentic Paris experience.  We quickly realized Paris hostels were not going to be cheap and so we opted for a thing called airbnb.com where you rent out someone's apartment and roughly pay the same price as if it were a hostel.  So we ended up with the cutest studio in the 3rd arrondissement, which is walking distance from all the tourist sites.  We arrived after a train ride of literally running to the train after last minute buying seat reservations.  Again, yay for backpacks.

                This was the start of the week I kindly dubbed "I think God is sick of me".  We went to mass on Sunday in Amsterdam, and now our first whole day in Paris was Ash Wednesday.  So for Wednesday, Katie found times to go to Ash Wednesday mass in Notre Dame.  When we awoke in the morning, I was informed we would be participating in the fasting process with no meat...yes Paris and i'm fasting.  So we had some coffee and walked ourselves to Notre Dame.  It was actually pretty cool to not just be any other tourist and sit down and see this huge space be turned into something other than a cool picture backdrop.  But see then the next day, it was raining and we opted to visit Rue de Bac, which is another church.  Welp, mass just happened to start the moment we were about to leave, so that would be mass number 3 this week.  And then apart from visiting many other churches during week, we went to mass in Barcelona on Sunday.  So we were 4/8 days in mass.  Sorry God, I'm sure my face got annoying.

                I finally got to prove myself worthy of our trip.  Not only did 4 painful years of high school French utterly pay off, but it seems even in this day and age, some 29 year olds don't know how to use public transportation.  Katie's got an ok excuse though.  She lives in Los Angeles where that just doesn't exist, so I was our conductor for the trip.  With an amazing subway system like Paris', we went anywhere and everywhere.  This would include climbing to the top of the Eiffel tower, seeing the painting on the opposite wall from the Mona Lisa and any quaint thing we could get our hands on.

 

                But Paris, City of Love didn't disappoint.  One of our waiters legitimately turned his back to me to talk to the lady with the "pretty eyes" and introduce himself to her in french.  Even when I tried to tell him that Katie didn't speak French, he kept his eyes solely on her.  Now as Katie was trying to explain to me that the waiter there "only felt bad for her" and that was why he hit on her, we got waiter number two named Bruno who slipped a note under her plate when we got the check.  This time she told me it was because he "pitied the apparent single mom".  I then proceeded to tell her to knock it off and accept that she was pretty while I bought our large bottle of wine for our Valentine's dinner in.   Seriously, Valentine's day in Paris, what were we thinking?

                 Honestly though, Paris is everything you want it to be; sophisticated, quaint and surreal.  I learned that I actually like French because I wasn't practicing grammar or taking tests, but rather being a part of the culture.  Renting the studio truly made the experience what it was because we were on our own, eating from local bakeries and restaurants.  I could never get sick of Paris.  Also, relatively unrelated to this post.  Everyone, go watch "The Untouchable" right now.  Honestly one of the best movies i've ever seen.  It's French.

                 Few random things: Katie spent more time taking pictures of the flip flops she owned throughout Europe than of herself.  I found goldfish, but they only came in two flavors...Salt&Vinegar and pizza...WHAT?!  America shouldn't have nice things because we would just spend our time trying to find a way to make it funny. Next is Barcelona.