Yay! I’m finally up to date ( you’re welcome Henri)! This week was great, it was a lazy week spent in the pool and catching up on blogs. And also…. I spent the weekend in Paris!!

On Saturday afternoon my host family took me to the Longon train station to go to Paris with Elisabeth and Denis. Despite not being a stranger with trains now, I never ever get bored on them – it’s so cool watching the country side wizz by. We arrived in Paris at 21:30 and caught a tram to a friend of the families, where we would be staying. I only got a slight glimpse of Paris that night, and it was torturious having to wait untill the next day to explore!

I woke up bright and early full of energy, totally ready for a day of sightseeing. Elisabeth however, was not so excited and totally wrecked so we didn’t leave until 10am. Our first stop was Le Louvre. The building itself was a masterpiece and the works of art inside were just as great. I myself, am not really interested in art. When I look at painting I just see a squiggle while other people see other worlds. However, I did find love with this amazing painting that took up a wall called “Liberty Leading the People” by Eugène Delacroix, 1830. When I saw it my heart skipped a beat – it reminded me so much of Les Miserables and the french revolution. In one of the many suviner shops I found a copy of it so of course I had to get it, I’ve put on my wall. And who can’t go to Le Louvre without seeing the Mona Lisa? The whole room was packed and I probably saw about 30 copies of her through the camera’s of those in front of me before I got to look at the Mona Lisa herself. To be honest my reaction to the painting was sort of meh, to me it was just another painting and compared to all of the other amazing art in the museum I didn’t find it too impressive (sorry).

We then took the tram to the Eiffel Tower – at this point I felt a bit like a mole popping up and down everywhere. It felt quite surreal getting my first look at the Eiffel Tower, and when we went up to the top the view was out of this world! It was raining when we went up so we couldn’t see the full view but it was still great. However I do think that the sky tower trumps it in terms of fear factor because of the glass floor.

Elisabeth had to go to a meeting for Lina at 14:00 so I was left alone for 4 hours. I had a free tour with Sandemans at 16:00 so I decided to do some exploring in the mean time. I strolled along the Seine and took my time looking at all the small stalls and artists who had planted themselves beside the river. Of course when I saw an ice cream store even the miserable weather couldn’t hold me back!

I arrived at the Saint Michel Fountain just in time for the tour. Our guide was brilliant and had us laughing the whole time but at the same time it was super educational. I made friends with a girl a few years older than me and we stuck together like glue the whole time as we weren’t with anyone else. We visited the following places (maybe not in this order) in just two and a half hours:

• Notre Dame de Paris
• Tuileries Gardens
• Assemblée Nationale
• The Louvre
• Palais Royal
• View of the Grand & Petit Palais
• Latin Quarter
• Pont Neuf
• Place de la Concorde
• Ile-de-la-Cité
• Palace of Justice

As expected being on a free tour, we weren’t able to enter any of the buildings, but the outsides of them were amazing enough. I recommend this tour to anyone travelling to Paris, it gives you a good brief history and stepping stone to start with and you can go look at everything in more detail in your own time.

After the tour I met up with Elisabeth, Denis and Lina. Lina spent the weekend there to do a prep program for her new school so she was pretty wrecked and we turned in. I however, was so awake from the adrenaline and excitement of being in Paris and just wanted to explore all through the night; it was only 6! Luckily, after dinner Elisabeth took me out again to see the Eiffel Tower lit up in all it’s glory. We watched the sun set behind it, and had a good laugh at some young Asian women who literally spent 2 hours taking turns posing to get the perfect picture. 😀

We dropped by the Arc De Triumphe while we waited for it to get dark, it was pretty incredible. The busses had stopped running by the time we finished and I wanted to make it back to the Eiffel Tower to watch it’s light show that happens every hour. Elisabeth let me run back to see if I could make it in time. I was literally sprinting through the streets of Paris at 11 pm following the top of the Eiffel Tower which was peeking over the tops of buildings and praying by some chance I was going the right way. But of course I wasn’t and got a bit lost and had to find my way back to Elisabeth (it’s alot harder than you’d think when you don’t pay attention to any of your surroundings but the very tops of buildings). I found her pretty quickly but we missed the light show unfortunately. I didn’t mind that much because I had such a great night already.

The next day Denis and Elisabeth dropped Lina off at the train station to go to Germany, so I had 2 hours to kill. I left the house (which was in the middle of Paris) and headed out to the shops as all the main attractions were too far away. I had a great time just melling around and even bought a cool jumper and cardigan. Shortly after lunch we all went to the station and caught the TGV back home where I went back to my other host family and collapsed onto bed after such a late night!