Paris: Day 1

The Seine River: Paris

After a bus ride to Alicante, a train ride to Madrid, a Ryanair flight to somewhere in France, and an hour bus ride to the center of the city, I finally arrived in Paris, the city of my dreams. Once I stepped outside the bus I felt such a rush of excitement. I couldn’t wait to explore the city, meet the people and delight in the wonderful French food.

I went to Paris with two of my Fulbright friends, one is an ETA in Alicante and the other is an ETA in Madrid. Not only was I excited to experience Paris with two other people, but I also knew that these two people loved coffee and wine as much as I do. And that’s just an excellent combination.

Although our journey was a little long (we woke up at 3:00am), we still arrived in Paris pretty early so we immediately stopped at a restaurant to have a small Parisian breakfast. As soon as we sat at the table outside the waiter greeted us with the French greeting “bonjour”. And we replied. I don’t know any French but one of my friends knew a tiny bit so she did most of the talking. For breakfast we had coffee with cream, croissants, yogurt and orange juice.  This is a typical “French breakfast”.

After eating we tried to find the hotel that we were going to be staying at so that we could drop off our heavy backpacks. It wasn’t very easy to find, but after a lot of walking, we finally found it and checked in. The room wasn’t luxurious but it was private and had its own bathroom and it was perfect for the small amount of time that we were going to spend in Paris. After relieving our backs we headed out into the city to start our exploration.

Église Saint-Sulpice

First, we stopped at the Église Saint-Sulpice, a beautiful Roman Catholic church in Paris, and the second largest church in the city. This church was featured in Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code. After leaving the church, we decided to find the Luxembourg Gardens. We figured that Friday would be the perfect day to visit the gardens because the weather was expected to be a lot worse on Saturday and Sunday. The Luxembourg Gardens is one of the largest public parks in Paris and it is very popular because of the range of people and activities it attracts. Once I got to the gardens I was impressed by the number of people there and the variety of things that they were doing. There were old men playing games of chess, university students doing work, children playing, athletes exercising, people playing tennis, professionals casually eating lunch in their business clothes, girlfriends chatting, musicians playing music and everything else that you could imagine. I absolutely loved the scene at the Luxembourg Gardens. It seemed like such a nice place to relax, catch up with old friends and just enjoy the day. It was also very beautiful. Surprisingly though, it wasn’t as green as I expected it to be, but this could be because of the season.

Luxembourg Gardens

After visiting the gardens we were famished so we decided to look for a place to eat. We walked around the city and browsed menus at different restaurants. After spending at least half an hour trying to find a place that had a good menu and wasn’t too expensive to eat at, we finally decided to stop at a place. I ordered an omelet with ham and cheese and we shared a bottle of wine. It was perfect.

After lunch we decided to make one last trip of the day to see the Sacred heart Basilica of Montmartre, also known as Sacre-Coeur. This is another Roman Catholic church and it has a great political and cultural significance to the people and history of Paris. It’s located on Montmartre Hill, the highest point in the city, and it's one of the most noticeable landmarks in Paris.

Sacre-Coeur

When we got to the Sacre-Coeur I was stunned, not only by its beauty, but also by the atmosphere around it. Many people surrounded the front of the Sacre-Coeur; they were sitting on top of the hill, talking with friends, playing games, and visiting the church. There was also a musician singing and playing the guitar while people watched and sang along. The scene reminded me so much of a hippie show, where so many different types of people just lounge around outside and enjoy the weather and the company of their friends.  I really liked the atmosphere.

View of the City

My friend told us that Montmartre was a wonderful place to watch the sunset (since you can see the entire city from it) so we decided to sit down and watch the sunset there. While looking into the city, we could see the Eiffel tower as well as other landmarks in the city from a distance. It was a beautiful sight.

While we were sitting down waiting for the sun to set, we noticed a guy across the street from us who seemed to be searching for something on the ground. The guy literally examined the ground for at least 20 minutes and he would move in a way that seemed so calculated and unnatural. He reminded me of Orlando Bloom. He had long black hair, a young face, and he looked like he could be an artist of some kind. Some people occasionally saw what he was doing and laughed at how strange he looked. While others (I presume) went up to him and asked if he needed help with something. But the guy just kept looking at the same spot and thinking really hard about something. My friend kept saying that he was “so French” and I couldn’t have agreed more.

After leaving Montmartre, we attempted to find our hotel. We had arrived in Madrid after midnight on Thursday and woke up at 3:00 am to get to the airport. And on top of that, we were all so busy during the week that we hardly got any sleep. So we knew that we were going to go to bed early. On the way to our hotel we bought a couple of mandarins from a fruit stand, went back to the hotel and crashed before it was even 10:00pm.