P A R I S 2010

Oh là là...PARIS La Ville-Lumière (The City of Light)

I have been to Paris three times and I never...never get bored of this city. It is such a beautiful, most-romantic, and fashionable city ever. The first time I went to Paris was in 2004 and I immediately fell in love with it. How can you not?

Iscia, one of my best friends, is French. She offered us to stay a week in Paris in her apartment. Without needing to think twice, I accepted the offer (duh... I mean it's P A R I S baby!) So, we (my two best friends - Catherine and Iscia - and I decided to spend the week in Paris! We invited Alessandra and Angela who then came to visit us after their trip around Italy and oh... Aldo and JR (another friends of ours who were backpacking around Europe decided to stop at Paris for two days and so they also stayed at Iscia's place). So many unforgettable things happened throughout our little adventure around Paris that week... :)

When we arrived in Paris, we had to take the train from the airport to go to the city. The train from the airport was so expensive (around 20 euros, if I recall correctly!) - I know... I told you it was expensive... I'd rather spend that much money on clothes than a train ticket... seriously. But oh well, we had to get to the city anyway :p So once we got to St. Germain des Prés, we had to find Rue Bonaparte number 3 (that's where Iscia's apartment is!) We...were three girls who were having our first trip alone (without parents) so as you can imagine, it was kind of a chaos. Iscia didn't know how to get to her apartment exactly. So we asked someone to show us the way... and the girl told us to go down the Rue Bonaparte. But then, the number was actually increasing rather than decreasing. So we were in Rue Bonarparte number 132 and Iscia was like "Yes Yes we are going on the right direction!" Catherine was super pissed because the weather was unforgivably hot and her suitcase was too heavy lol! I told Iscia that I think we should be going up instead of down. After 15 minutes of shouts and arguments with Catherine and Iscia, Iscia finally agreed and decided to walk up! We were sweating like PIGS. The heat was insane.... but whatever, we finally got to Rue Bonaparte number 3 (which was on the right side of the street cause that's where the odd numbers usually are!). But then, we couldn't find the apartment. (OH NO!) Iscia recalled the place but she couldn't remember where the house was. Catherine and I were kind of annoyed cause Iscia could have asked her parents where the apartment was before flying here. Then Iscia phoned her parents and it turns out that her apartment was not on Rue Bonaparte it was on this other Rue but somewhat close and attached to Rue Bonaparte. We basically wasted our first 2 hours looking for the apartment but... we finally found it. It wasn't that much of a waste cause we HAD to look for the apartment. Without it, we would be sleeping in the street for the week lol. So, that was our first (chaotic) adventure in Paris... but there were more......... :)

First Day:

To enter the apartment, we did not need to use a key. There was a code (very sexy right? I know!). We entered the secret code and the door would then open by itself. Then we had to go through this other door to get to the lift. Iscia and Catherine couldn't fit inside the lift and so they told me to go inside (since I was the skinny one -_-) with the 3 luggage because they wanted to run till the 5th floor (they called this...exercise lol!) Thank God I did not have to run... because hearing their pantings when they arrived upstairs, it did not sound like fun lol! Her apartment is so amazing... it is an apartment with two rooms, the theme of the entire apartment is dark brown. It's very modern...and the bathrooms? no words to describe it. :p 

After resting, we decided to take a walk around her area. Her apartment was a street away from the Seine River and not far from the Louvre Museum. We took pictures. We then passed through this long park across the Louvre (don't remember the name of the park!) And right after this, the most...most...most....most...most embarrassing thing happened to me. So, we wanted to cross this huge street to walk on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. But you know how French girls dress right? They are very fashionable. They would wear high heels to walk on the stony streets. Well, I was in Paris, I also wanted to dress very fashionable and so I decided to wear wedges to travel around Paris...(they are not as bad in comparison to high heels though!) When...we were about to cross the street, Iscia told me to run because it was Green for the pedestrians to cross. There were fences around the street...so as I was running, my foot got stuck into one of the fences. (very reckless of me!) and.... I dove in! I literally dove in...and fell in humiliation. How Embarassing! Everyone was staring at me... I didn't look at their faces. I decided to not get up. Iscia asked catherine "where the hell is Vita?" As catherine was looking for me, she started laughing "OMG, VITA FELL!" So, that very day... I decided to buy myself flat shoes...

Second Day: 

On the second day, we  went around the city again. Visited the Lourve, the park, the arch de triumph...nothing did really happen. I don't really remember but I remember laughing a lot :) Oh right.... we had to buy food. We needed stocks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. We went to a nearby super market. It was so funny...since we didn't want to waste a lot of money on food. We would buy the cheapest but eatable food :p So for instance, we went to the pasta section. There were a lot of different pastas with different brands, ranging from 5 euro to 0.90 Euro. Can you guess which one did we buy? 

the 0.90 Euro one. lol! Yep, we didn't want to waste so much money cause we wanted to shop....in PARIS 

Third Day: 

We continued our little adventure. This time we went to the eiffel tower... then, to notre-dame and at 2:00 we had to go back to the St. Germain de prés to meet with Angela and Alessandra!! We waited for them for about 30 minutes (cause their plane got delayed!) But anyway, we met with them and took them to the house. On the same day, Aldo and JR arrived in Paris. We phoned Aldo and he told us to meet him in St. Germain de prés at around 5 in the afternoon. So we were there...waiting for him and JR. But they never showed up. After an hour of waiting, we called Aldo and he said "Oh sorry, we were at a Bar watching the World Cup match. US was playing...." zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. We decided to go out after that in the afternoon...went to Lourve (again!) and stayed around the park till dawn. Oh...my pictures on my camera got deleted. I was super depressed that night! But then Iscia cheered me up and told me that we would go to the same places again and take better pictures. I love how my best friends are always there to cheer me up... that's what best friends are for right? 

Fourth Day:

We travelled around paris together this time. Went to touristic areas again. Don't remember where we went this time exactly but it was probably the eiffel tower..Again lol. Oh no wait, we did look for an internet cafe in the morning cause the Selectividad grade came out that day!!! I passed biology and catherine also did pass her Selectividad! 

We decided to see the eiffel tower at night and spend the rest of the night outside. You know...talking, chilling by the seine river. There was this bridge to cross the seine river to get to the Louvre from iscia's house and there was always "ambiente" because people would usually bring dinner to eat on the bridge. Very nice and chilling too :) then we walked around Paris and when we wanted to go back home at 1 am buuuuut there was NO more train. (great...just great!) so We had to walk back to Iscia's apartment and it took us 1:30 mins to get back home. At first we didn't know how to get back so we had to look at the map and figure it out ourselves. We got our way. The trip back to iscia's apartment was very very tiring but super fun though :)

Fifth Day:

JR's friend called him from holland and told him to meet him there. So, JR decided to bail us :p Anyway, Aldo stayed though. So what exactly did we do that day? I don't remember.  Oh we went to see el Barrio Latino and oh yes, we watched Espanya-Chile across the Eiffel Tower with Aldo and Angela! It was so much fun! there was this huge screen where everyone could go to watch the game. And of course, Espanya won (2-1!) Iscia and Catherine didn't want to come with us because they wanted to go to the cinema to watch this movie. They told me the movie was really boring! (See, they would enjoy the game more :p) We also went to notre-dame and around that area. We visited this contemporary moden art-museum. I didn't go inside but Angela did. Then... I think for dinner we ordered Chinese :D It was delicious! 

Fifth Day:

Iscia Catherine and I decided to go to the Versailles Palace. Since we weren't 18 yet (well iscia was 18 but she is a European Citizen), we did not need to pay to get inside. The line was humongous...we had to wait in the heat. But then, we got inside. We checked out the palace... it was very beautiful. The cravings on the ceilings were made out of Gold! I mean duh, the French were very rich back then. We went to see Maria Antoinette's room and there was this corridor where Antoinette passed through to run away during the French Revolution. After Versailles, we went to Sacre-Coure and met up with Angela, Alessandra and Aldo. There's this beautiful church up above and from there you could see the entire Paris. Trés trés jolie indeed! 

After Sacre-Coure, we went to the Operah. Then went to the most fabulous shopping center ever called LaFayette. What we did was pretty much window shopping cause we could not afford to buy anything there. Super expensive. 

Oh and, Aldo left that night. 

Sixth Day:

Early in the morning, Alessandra took a cab to go to the airport. She was leaving to go to Austria.  

Angela, Iscia, Catherine and I decided to have a little picnic at Luxembourg park. We were sitting down on the Grass but the police told us to get up because we weren't allowed to even step on the grass...(okay...?) After lunch, we slept for a little while at Luxembourg and Angela was reading while giving Iscia a body massage lol! After that, we decided to go to the Cemetery! It was kind of fun but a long walk! Once we got there, the Cemetery was closed......erg. So it was kind of pointless to walk that far to the Cemetery. So I wanted to go back to Iscia's crib by Metro. Nobody wanted to waste money to go with me and I didn't want to go alone. Iscia and Catherine have been walking laughing and talking together, leaving me alone. But thank God Angela was there. So I totally ignored them that day... Angela and I were walking super fast and (I) did not want to wait for Iscia and Catherine, since I was pissed at them. lol. But then once we got home, Iscia, Cath and I got into talking and well I told them how they have been neglecting me and I did not like that. So yeah we got back to normal :) 

In the evening, Angela and I thought it would be nice to buy something for Iscia's mum as a thank you gift. So we decided to buy her a pack of Macaroons from Laduree (the best macaroon shop ever!). And very expensive too. We also got iscia's mum a little thank you card! 

At Laduree, I bought myself 3 packs of macaroons. One for my family. One for myself. One pack for Tante Anggie's family :) There were variety of boxes that you could choose to put your macaroons. The prices depend on the boxes you chose. The prices range from 10 euros to 50 euros. 

After buying macaroons, Catherine, Angela and I decided to go to Champs-Élysées to do a little bit of shopping. I went to buy my mother's birthday present at Agatha then I went to disney store and bought myself a cute mug and bought my brother (Adny) a present too of course. 

At night, Iscia called her friend named Vincent to come over to her place for dinner and to go out afterwards. We decided to sneak into a park (the one across the Louvre). It was closed. So first we thought there were gonna be guards. But nah, we stayed there for two hours but there was no one. We ran across the park, we shouted, we laughed and did so many silly stuff but nothing happened.. until..we decided to walk deeper into the park. We saw swings and slides and decided to play there. We were laughing and shouting and suddenly.........we saw a flash light coming out from the dark. "Crap, it's the night guard! I told you it was a bad idea..." I said. So the night guard caught us and told us to go down. He said that what we did tonight was something that we could go to jail for. So he asked for IDs (thank God we brought ours that night!) and since he saw we had Spanish IDs, he let us go (phew!) Some adventure huh? He escorted us till we got outside. Then it started raining, so we decided to back to Iscia's crib. We weren't tired yet and so we decided to play cards! It was called Austrian Money. Really fun! 

Seventh Day (Last day in Paris!): 

Our very very very last day in Paris....

We woke up early in the morning to clean up the house. Vincent slept over and so when he woke up he sort of helped us clean up. He was so into it lol! Angela left to go and do last minute shopping and city-tour. I told her to buy me a panini (which she did!) After cleaning, we did a last minute packing and left to the airport. Vincent wanted to accompany us to the Airport but Iscia told him no cause then he would need to pay a lot of money. So we waved him a goodbye... and waved Paris a goodbye. But we promised that it wouldn't be a forever goodbye... cause we'll be BACK.

One of the upcoming many unforgettable trips. 

La.Vita.E.Bella