Destination #7-Paris & Versailles, France

Bonjour! Je ai apprécié de Paris! Comprenez vous?

Last weekend, my friend Nicole and I went for a short weekend trip to Paris. As we have both been before, we were wanting to do something different than the usual touristy stuff. Our original plan was to go to Versailles one of the days and to a place called Mont St. Michel the other day. Unfortunately Mont St. Michel turned out to be pretty expensive to get to so we only ended up doing Versailles as something different and still ended up doing all the touristy stuff anyway!

We arrived at Charles De Gaulle airport Friday night and found ourselves in a little bit of pickle. There were military guards guarding the entrance to the train station. As neither of us can really understand French, we're assuming there was some sort of bomb threat. We attempted to find other means of transportation into the city and waited at a bus stop for 20 minutes before going back to the train station to find the guards had left and the train station fully operational...

We ventured to our hostel with not much difficulty and by the time we checked in, it was about 9pm and we were too lazy to head into the centre of Paris to find something to eat. Our hostel was pretty much in what we would have guessed was Chinatown. So naturally, we got some Chinese for dinner.

The next day, we got up early and headed over to the Palace of Versailles. We couldn't have gotten any luckier because it was an absolute gorgeous day out. The palace itself is giant and the gardens are like 20 times bigger so by the end of it, Nicole and I were only able to do a small fraction of the grounds because the place is just massive. If you don't know your history, this place was for royalty in the mid 17th century and it's where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were dragged from by revolutionaries to Paris for them to be guillotined. This is also where the Treaty of Versailles was signed to end World War II. The palace itself was beautiful and there was lots of interesting sights inside including the Hall of Mirrors. However, the gardens amazed us even more. So many beautiful sights and the more further we went into the gardens, the prettier it got. There is only so much describing I can do but you will see in pictures just how stunning this place was. I would love to see this place in the summer time!

By the time we had decided to leave, we were already exhausted from walking around so much and the day was only half over. We made our way back to Paris in the late afternoon and the plan was to walk down the Champs Élysées and climb up the Arc de Triomphe. This however, took some time. The avenue was beautifully lit up with Christmas lights but was packed to the max with people! This was because they had Christmas markets all lined up along the avenue and it was a Saturday so it only made sense. Shuffling along like snails, we finally made it to the Arc de Triomphe and made our way up. Although it was freezing cold, the sight was breathtaking. A full moon, the Champs Élysées all lit up, and the Eiffel Tower sparkling. We could not have picked a better time to go up.

After that, we had some dinner and went back to the hostel to call it a night. We were so exhausted.

The next day consisted of returning to the touristy sights and eating French food. We went and saw the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, and ate food in the Latin Quarter. This day's food consisted of croissants, pain au chocolats, croque monsieurs, crepes, and macarons. Mmmmmmmm.

That was the trip, short and sweet. Even though I've been before, it was honestly more fun this time around ;)

This last week was a fun one here in London. On Wednesday, my friends and I went to this event called Winter Wonderland. Basically, they've turned Hyde Park into this massive carnival for Christmas and it has rides, lots of food stalls, Christmas market stalls, and an ice skating rink. It seems it's quite a popular thing to set up skating rinks in the winter time here as there's also one in Victoria Park and one in Canary Wharf, Although the rink at Hyde Park was actually quite tiny and the skates quite brutal, it was still a lot of fun to be skating around again. On Thursday, our work had our Christmas party at this super nice hotel called The Mayfair. We even got greeted at the door with champagne!! I've never ever been greeted with champagne! I think? Either way, it was still so nice and the dinner was really good as well. The night then carried onto the dance floor. The worst part was having to go to work the next day. How can anybody get any work done being hungover!? I don't know why they make these things on Thursdays.

Well, it's less than 10 days until I return home for Christmas and I couldn't be more excited! See everyone soon!