Paris!

It has been a long time since I last posted, so I apologize to anyone who has been eagerly checking for new posts ;). Several notable thing have happened in the last two weeks, so I will break this into two posts.
Last weekend, I went to Paris! I had been to Paris before when we did the Bosch/Lilly family tour a couple summers ago, but we were only in Paris for a few days so did not do/see everything. Of course, I was only in Paris for a weekend this time, but I had my own personal French tour guide. I've decided that I like the city of Paris a lot, and will probably return at some point, but before then, I will have to learn some French. Since I was with Francois, there was obviously no problem, but I still noted a few snobbish looks while we were speaking English.

I got there thursday evening, and walked around Paris at night (really an enchanting city in the dark). My Spain accustomed self was surprised to see people going to sleep before 12, but as Francois reminded me several times, the French actually work, unlike the Spaniards (hehe). Then Friday morning he went to class and I went to the Eiffel Tower because I wanted to go up to the top. I would have to say, it was very much worth it. And because I got there early and before it opened, I was in the first group up. Even though it was cloudy, and not peak tourist season, there were still quite a few tourists there. Next to the Eiffel Tower, there was a huge exhibit of the "United Buddy Bears" honoring the anniversary of some sort of friendship between Berlin and Paris. The bears were all pretty big (between 6 and 7 feet tall) and painted in cool ways each representing a different color. I posted pictures on Facebook, but here is one for you to visualize the bears better:


Anyway, I also wanted to see Moulin Rouge because I love the movie and it is a pretty famous place. So I went there/walked by and took pictures which was pretty cool. Then Saturday, we got up really early to go to Versailles and see the Louis the Sun Kings palace. That was pretty fun because the palace is gorgeous, huge, and very impressive. Also cool because I had been to Ludwig's "copy" of Versailles, so it was interesting to see some of the differences and also striking similarities. We did a lot of other stuff to, but these were the key things.

Getting to Versailles was also an adventure. I used one of the standard Paris metro tickets to enter the train, and Francois used his student metro pass (because the train ticket is a little more expensive). But then once we were on the train, they checked our tickets so we both played innocent and pretended to be American tourists. This was particularly funny because they were speaking French to each other about what to do with us, and apparently noted but did nothing about the fact that an "American tourist" would not be likely to have a student metro pass... Never a boring moment. Before going to the palace, we looked up how much everything cost, and EU citizens get in free, which of course I am not, but I did have my jank University of Granada student ID card (which doesn't actually say that I'm from the U.S.), so Francois did all the talking and I pretended to be a European student and got in for free. Wooo! We didn't end up really going in the gardens because there was special event going on so everyone had to pay a lot, and it started raining so wouldn't have been worth it, but we did get to see them from inside and, wow, our friend Louis lived pretty well!

My flight back home left Saturday night and got to Malaga late that night, so I then had to wait in the airport for a while to take the morning bus home, which was a while, but I made a friend who was on the same flight there and back as me, so she stayed with me until the last train into the city of Malaga and we got burger king. I asked them if they could make me a burger without the burger and fries. The guy was like "Okay, okay, I will make you a very good sandwich." And it was indeed a very good sandwich with lettuce, tomato, cheese, pickles, onions, and some sauce. The best part was, he didn't charge me for it! So my meal was like 3 euros and my friends was 9... (yes fast food is much more expensive here). To add to my luck, a flight was delayed, so they were given a 30 euro credit to some of the restaurants in the airport, but most of them were closed so someone gave me his which was really great because then in the wee morning I "treated myself" to 30 euros of Starbucks, including a travel cup that says Spain! It was also kind of fun travelling by myself and I've decided that I kind of like waiting in airports (when they are clean).

Anyway, my weekend was really awesome and I was so glad that I was able to go. Also, I almost forgot, the Apartment that Francois lives in is really nice and big (especially for Paris) AND the person who owns the apartment and lives there part time has a cat. I spent most of the weekend wishing I could trade Luna for Bill. This cat was fluffy and adorable and so much nicer than Luna. He enjoyed being picked up and playing and didn't even mind being chucked across the room (not that either of us would ever do that...). So basically, Luna is lucky I even like her at all.