Baguettes

It's been a couple days now since I got back from my adventures in
Paris, sorry for the delay but I've basically been sleeping since I got
back.

Paris was absolutely amazing, I spent two full days there. I wish I
could've stayed longer. We got off our 8 hour bus ride from Amsterdam to
Paris at a little before 6 AM. This was great because it was still
pretty dark and we couldn't check into our hostel until 4 PM and we had
no idea where we were. Even better, we hadn't slept the entire time so
we stepped off the bus completely refreshed and ready to take on Paris.
Don't even get me started on the last time we had showered.

Luckily, the girls we had traveled with in Amsterdam had taken a night
train to Paris and got to their hotel at around ten. They emailed us
their address and room number so we could go to their hotel and nap and
shower. GOD BLESS THEM.

After that we headed over to our hostel which turned out to be very easy
to get to and only a few metro stops away from our friends' hotel. Our
group had two 6 person rooms so we were able to drop our stuff off in
the other room which had been allowed to check in in the morning. Since
there were so many of us we split off into a few group to go sightsee
around Paris.

We spent some time at and around the Eiffel Tower as our first stop. It
was the coolest thing ever, I've seen pictures of it everywhere but
seeing it in person was incredible. Some of the kids we were with wanted
to climb it but we didn't really want to/were so exhausted we probably
couldn't have even climbed it if we had tried. After we split, we went
to a French cafe and got sandwiches, this is where I experienced my
first real French baguette and it was the greatest thing ever. My entire
diet in France was bread so I definitely did Paris right. When we left
there we headed to the Louvre to check out the Mona Lisa. I hadn't
realized how massive that place was, we actually got lost trying to
figure out how to get out of it. There was so much there that I hadn't
realized, I didn't know how big the actual museum was. The Mona Lisa was
super cool to see but much smaller than I had expected.

It was getting late by the time we had finished everything so we went
back to our hostel where we met up with some of our other friends. We
walked around the area near our hostel and eventually found a really
cute outdoor French restaurant for dinner. It was kind of expensive, but
I'm trying to go out to one nice dinner at each port. Hopefully I don't
run out of money before the end of the trip. The food there was so good,
I had escargo, a shrimp and avocado salad, and some French beef
thing...and of course more baguettes.

The next morning Sydney and I split off from the rest of our friends who
wanted to do more sightseeing around the city. We went to the Longchamp
store in the morning because when in Paris, gotta buy a Longchamp bag (I
got a great deal I promise) then we went to Lauderee to get macaroons.
After that we headed back to our friends' hotel that we had stayed at
the previous morning because we wanted to go to the Palace of
Versailles. We took the train there and met up with some other girls
from the ship that they go to school with.

We spent the whole day touring the Palace and the gardens, which was so
nice. It's definitely an all-day trip, you cannot do that with other
stuff too. I ended up not being able to go to Notre Dame because we
didn't have enough time but I'm okay with it. There's not enough time to
do everything and I don't think it'd be enjoyable to half ass all these
really cool places. That night we went to a market and got deli meat and
cheese for sandwiches (hell yeah more bread) and hung out with our
friends in the hostel. We then went to the Eiffel Tower to see it all
lit up which was so damn pretty.

The next morning we woke up pretty early to get our train out to Le
Havre. By that point we were so dead from 6 straight days of traveling
that we instantly went to the ship. Overall it was such an awesome
experience, I've now been to 7 (8 if you count the US) countries in one
month. I feel like I've been gone for ages.

Definitely missing you all at home, but not ready to come back just yet.
Next stop: Dublin on Wednesday for four days. Let me know some cool
places to check out in the comments!