Put your reading glasses on, get comortable, and be sure to hydrate - this is going to be a long one.
Spring Break took forever to get here and is going by incredibly fast, as usual. My last class was Philosophy and we got out two minutes late, but who was counting? That was last Thursday. We had a big "empty the fridge of all the stuff that will go bad while we're away" dinner and then after a while we went to "Amo" for salsa dancing. Staying out late the night before you fly to Paris is maybe not the best idea, but it seemed like the thing to do at the time.
Friday morning I had to shop around Ortigia a little because the funny thing about backpacking around Europe is, you need a backpack for it. I left mine at home because I prefer my Vera Bradley tote for school. We took the bus to Catania early in the afternoon even though our flight wasn't supposed to leave until 5:25 PM so that we could sit around in the airport and people-watch. At about a quarter to five we found our gate and waited. The flight was delayed. Eventually it said that it was delayed two hours. Um, that's a problem. That would mean we would miss our connecting flight from Milan to Paris. And the hostel we had booked in Paris might cancel our reservation if we didn't make it there by midnight. So with our best "Don't Mess With Texas" attitudes Brie and I went to talk to someone. They kept saying that they had called our names to change our flights, we must have left the airport, they couldn't help us, it was impossible. Finally they found a way to get us to Milan that night and a flight to Paris the next morning. The airline would pay for a hotel for us in Milan, they said.
So we flew to Milan. We got there at about 11, and check-in time for our flight to Paris was 7 the next morning, so unfortunately there was no time to see Milan. Plus the airport is about a 45 minute train ride away from the city, apparently? It took about an hour for the people in the Milan airport to figure out what had happened in the Catania airport and to give us plane tickets and a hotel voucher. A bus took us and a about 20 other people who I imagine were having similar problems to the hotel. It was nearly an hour away, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, but we didn't care. It was a "4 star" hotel where we could finally sleep. We still had to pay for the hostel that we didn't make it to, but we figured we were getting a hotel for the price of a hostel.
The next day we arrived in Paris around noon, I think. The airport was very confusing; none of us spoke French and the dictionary I bought had limited phrases and not much of a pronunciation guide, but the people were super nice and most of them spoke English. We finally go the right metro tickets and found our way to the stop where we needed to get off for our hostel. The stop was called "St. Michele / Notre Dame" and as soon as we climbed the steps out of the station, the first thing we saw, our first view of Paris, was Notre Dame. That was a pretty amazing moment. Of course I got a little squeally and jumpy and we took a lot of pictures, and then we went inside, where you aren't supposed to take pictures. It was beautiful. After a while we started to wander around in search of lunch, and our first Paris meal was salty crepes from a street vender, filled with all sorts of cheeses. We sat on the steps of the "Pantheon." After some walking around we got to our hostel and I think I slept for about 14 hours - I was so tired from midterms, dancing, traveling...the next day we saw the outside of the Louvre, which is quite remarkable even if you don't go inside, and we walked down a beautiful street with parks and trees and statues and fountains - I'm not describing it well at all and even my pictures aren't going to express what it's actually like - and then we saw the Arch di Triomphe (I hope I spelled that right). I had a quiche and croissant for lunch but I don't remember what everyone else had. The Eiffel tower was next. The lines were long, it was cold and rainy, my umbrella broke, and the battery in my camera died that night but it was still one of the most exciting weeks of my life ever.
I love Paris. I saw a lot of it from the top of the Eiffel tower, and I want to go back. We waited around so that we could see the Eiffel tower at night. In front of it there is this glass thing that has "peace" written in lots of different languages. I got a picture of the English word with the tower in the background. I think I also managed to find "paz"(Spanish), "pace"(Italian"), "paix" (French?), and something like "eirene" but in Greek letters, so I'm assuming it was modern Greek. That night we stayed in a particularly sketchy hostel. I don't want to freak anyone out, but there was a small blood stain. We were safe, though, of course, and the next day after breakfast and some walking around we went inside the Louvre. The Louvre is shaped sort of like an A that isn't pointy, and in front there is the big glass pyramid that everyone seems to recognize from The Da Vinci Code. That is the entrance. You go down into the basement, basically, to buy tickets and leave your backpack, and then you go into the Louvre. It was overwhelming. There are all sorts of floors and courtyards. It's just huge. You could spend a week in there. All the captions for the paintings and statues are in French, but I could recognize some of the Classical and neo-Classical works and when I looked at the captions I could tell if I had been right in guessing the names of the mythological figures. Practically the first thing I saw was the Venus di Milo. I got dizzy in some places. The cielings were so ornate I could stare at them for a long time. I have to go now...but I'll finish the Spring break story later....