Blunt

Wednesday, February 15, 2012,4:46 PM

P for Pia, P for Paris

Paris, Je T'Aime

"America is my country and Paris is my hometown" - Gertrude Stein

There are some places that feel like home.

Those places, no matter how often or after how long you go, just feel like home.

Paris has always had that effect on me, and it still does.

This past weekend, my friends and I left for Paris.

Despite doing an exchange there in high school and visiting the city numerous times since I was a child, it felt like nothing had changed.

The warm sunshine and the cool wind welcomed me along with a French flag waving over a building across from the Nord station.

We embarked on our journey early Friday morning.

...and barely made our 8:31am train.

#win / Talk about cutting it close!

We arrived at 11:48am local time (+1 GMT) and made our way to the hotel Metropole Opera, located less than ten minutes away from the station Nord.

Expedia gave the hotel 4/5 stars, but after entering our rooms, we realized it must have been because of the location and not the hotel.

Not that there was anything wrong with it (brown water, smelly shower curtains, dirty floors), but the location was wonderful.

It was heaven.

The hotel is situated right in J-town, with Japanese people, stores, and restaurants all over the area.

Under a Korean sign #fail

As someone who can speak both French and Japanese, I couldn't have asked for much more.

We proceeded to explore Paris by heading over to the Louvre by Metro, which, excluding my prior experience, is very easy and straightforward as compared to NYC's. Since there were about 15 of us, we couldn't explore too much without stopping to pose and take pictures with the statues and iconic pieces of art, but it was marvelous none the less.

Outside Le Louvre

She's smiling!

Normal

"An artist has no home except in Paris" - Friedrich Nietzsche
My Art

Ravenous, our appetites guided us to a quaint French restaurant near the museum, Le Palais Royal.

French cuisine is definitely not vegetarian friendly, restricting vegetarians like myself to foreign cuisine (pizza), salades, and baguettes avec fromage.

Not to my surprise, there was mostly meat on the menu in all forms - soup, medleys, you name it.

After, we went back to the hotel and rested a bit, exploring the nooks and crannies of the streets and the fun local stores, where I not only got to exercise the flexibility of my languages by switching from French to Japanese, but also revive the days when I was a foreign exchange student, and not a tourist.

Favorite Band...Fangirl moment.

"Étant la plus saisissante manifestation de l'art des constructions métalliques par lesquelles nos ingénieurs se sont illustrés en Europe, elle est une des formes les plus frappantes de notre génie national moderne" - Gustave Eiffel

Blurry! But the tower was sparkling!

At night, we went to the marvelous Eiffel Tower.

Since it was freezing, literally (we couldn't go above the 2nd floor due to frost), we left quickly, but even the few minutes in the wind was so worth it!

View from the Eiffel Tower

After calling it a night, the next morning we set out to Notre Dame and Versailles.

Pictures are worth a thousand words:

Outside Notre Dame

Rose Window in Notre Dame. Breathtaking.

Outside Versailles

Hall of Mirrors!

London is so central and easy to travel from that even a two day weekend trip somewhere makes the whole experience so much more enriched. We left for Paris Friday morning and came back Sunday early afternoon yet accomplished so much.

In short, as said by Audrey Hepburn, "Paris is always a good idea."

I don't know where the wind will blow me, but I know I can always find a safe haven in Paris.

To the best valentine I could ask for, Paris - je t'aime!

Labels: paris holiday trip vacation weekend france louvre eiffel tower museum