I write to you now from Paris!! The fact that I have power on my computer to do so is in itself a feat, as I think all the plugs in our room are grounded, or at least they all have an extra silver thing sticking out of them that initially prevented me from plugging my adapter into them, but after I went downstairs the guy gave me an additional adapter. However now my computer power converter is really hot so I’m worried about the voltage but I think that’s just cause it’s more, since my computer is working and all.
Anyway, to backtrack, Monday we had class in Geneva. I’m used to getting up around 7 to have breakfast with my host mom, so I just went to Geneva early and did some reading in a café (my new favorite thing to do now, btw… I’m going to be really sad when I get back to the US and realize that cafés are non-existent, save Starbucks and Peet’s coffee… ugh). Class was unexciting, then I had lunch with friends in Nyon. That day for French class we all went to “Chocolate school” and learned how chocolate is made. Afterwards we got some delicious tasting of some pretty amazing chocolate. That night after dinner I slept over at Natasha’s. Her real family lives in Geneva, and we had to be at the train station really early in the morning so it was just easier. A whole bunch of people were over since we all live so far from Genève, and it was fun. We found a TCM movie to watch that was actually in English, lol.
Tuesday morning we left for PARIS and are here now J We got in around 11am and checked into our hotel. The rooms are small but it’s nice having a roommate and our own bathroom and stuff. I’m rooming with Beza. Our hotel is in Montmartre rather close to Sacre-Coeur. During the day me, Bez, Natasha, and Sara wandered around Montmartre, Abesse, and Pigall (which is apparently sex city… every other shop was a sex shop or lap dance bar… it was interesting, but we were there during the day). Everything is so beautiful. Then we took the metro with the goal of walking around the Latin Quartier before dinner and found Notre Dame when we walked out, it was pretty cool. We caught a little bit of the mass (which was in French!), and they were burning frankincense so it was pretty cool. I think we got there too late to walk up to the top, though. Then we did get to the Latin Quartier (or so I think) and walked around the restaurants until we finally decided to eat some Chinese food because we all missed it. Afterwards we wandered towards this dome-shaped building we could see up the hill. I can’t remember what it was exactly but there were lots of French flags and I took pictures, and we could see the Eiffel tower down the street and it was beautiful. Then we wandered around for a while trying to find a metro stop, that took a while.
We got back to the hotel and were going to go out with another part of our group, but for some reason they were in a hurry to go out when it was barely 9:00, and they left us while we were getting ready (we weren’t bitter or anything). It’s a rather unfortunate consequence of our group, we decided, that the dynamic is that “I’m going to go out and have fun and it really doesn’t matter if you’re there.” Anyway, Bez, Sara and I went out because it did matter if we were with each other, we found Sacre Coeur and of course everything is more beautiful at night, not to mention that there’s an amazing view of the city from there. Then we ended up in Abesse again and went to a bar. It’s rather difficult because it doesn’t seem like things are that expensive here when they are in reality. We were really excited to find cocktails for 5,50 euros until we realized that that’s probably closer to 8 or 9 dollars lol. The thing is in Francs that is cheap, and we’re so used to francs and things being expensive in absolute terms (20 franc dinner or 8 euro dinner… not as different as we’d hope). Anyway, that was my first day in Paris, it was pretty much beautiful.
No comments:
Post a Comment