Late Nights in Paris

 Kristina was in Paris for the weekend and it was great to get some more time with her. To start with we went to a typical touristy restaurant that I had heard a fair amount about. Its a fondue restaurant, but the main catch being that they serve you wine in baby bottles. So naturally we had to go. It was a fun experience and a fun environment. The owner of the restaurant was playing with us the whole time and the experience was lots of fun and very quirky. Along with doing that with K, we spent some time wandering around the Louvre and taking pictures. Inevitably we saw the Mona Lisa.
and took obligatory pictures of it. The Louvre in general though is just way too big. It was daunting before you even step foot inside. I honestly didn't have much patience for it. I'm not typically a huge museum person, but when it is that insanely big it just kind of turned me off in general. I will probably going back (free entrance with my student visa, hell yes.) and maybe try to just do a wing of it or something, but I honestly think the whole thing is a little unnecessary. Though the architecture and building itself are pretty incredible. 

 Beyond kicking around with Kristina, I have the week off school and head to Barcelona tomorrow. So I've just been trying to get some school work done and exploring some. I wandered into a bookstore that was relatively close to my house and discovered an art installment in one of the rooms that was all about LA. It was kind of weird, but also pretty cool. It had some highways, roads and neighborhoods roughly mapped out and painted on the ground as well as a lump of "tar from LA" in the corner. I thought it was pretty fortuitous that I stumbled into there. They also had really cheap books. I'm not sure why I would necessarily need books in French that cost only 1 euro, but good to know where I can get them if I want them.

 Now to the main point of the blog for the day, our biking adventure! Last night myself and 4 other exchange students finally utilized the rent-able bikes that are all around Paris. We decided we would do a little night tour of Paris all on bikes. We ended up biking all around Paris, approximately 20 km worth, and saw a bunch of the sights at night, which was badass.

We figured out how to properly work the system too. You pay 1.70 euro to get a code and have unlimited access to the bikes for 24 hours. Everytime you take out a bike, you get the first half hour free and you get charged a certain amount for every subsequent half hour. Therefore we (tried) to bike for about 25 minutes, dock the bikes, wait 5 minutes and repeat the process. Pretty good plan over all! Highlight of the night? Biking around the Arc de Triumph traffic circle then down champs-Elysee to the louvre! I think that's about all I have to say, but I had more pictures I wanted to show off, so check em out!

Londres!

I spent last weekend in London with my dear friend Kristina, and man was it awesome. I am pretty sure Kristina and I could have a ridiculous time with a card board box, but getting to spend time in London was pretty great. I don't think a weekend was nearly enough time though. I will definitely have to go back and spend much more time there, though I'm not sure it will happen on this trip.

We managed to do some of the bigger touristy things. We, of course, went to Harrods. I have memories of my mom bringing me back things from there so felt that I really needed to go. Beyond that the place is insane. It was like going through a shopping mall, except it is all one store. There were probably 4 or 5 distinct sets of escalators/stairs and at least 2 or 3 restaurants on each of the six stories. So naturally we settled on a really great frozen yogurt place. It was awesome. I don't think I have had frozen yogurt in a long long time and it was wonderful.

Over the course of the next day we also went to see Buckingham palace, without royal sightings, Big Ben, the parliament building, the London eye, and the church where all the coronations occur, which inevitably I can't recall the name of. I also managed to do some typical things like taking goofy pictures in a telephone booth. They really are everywhere. I wasn't sure if that would be like Plymouth rock was for me (read: incredibly disappointing because it is pun) but they were truly everywhere. That and I had the experience of riding on a double decker bus and a taxi cab there. These are also very funny looking. I'm sure I have a picture somewhere, but not sure where.

The weather was absolutely beautiful one day and the typical London grey drizzly the other day, which was cool. I'm glad that I really got to experience London as it is. Other than that it was a spectacular weekend, and I'm excited to get more time with Kristina this weekend. We are currently also trying to work out making our way to Istanbul in April.

Beyond that, I find myself continually happy to be returning to Paris. I really enjoy it here, and am always glad to be coming back. I had a wonderful weekend, but there is nothing quite like getting back to your own bed.

My small Paris anecdote for the day: I realize that Paris is the city of love or some such, but seriously I don't think it is necessary to sit on your loved ones lap. I cannot tell you the number of people I have seen sitting on each others lap while waiting for the metro and what not. Its truly bizarre. Its not even out of necessity. Typically there is a vacant seat right next to them...

The past week

I think I need to practice taking level photos.

Alright, so I'm clearly already becoming less consistent in my postings. This is where you all pretend to be shocked. I had a pretty busy weekend though, so we will blame it on that. It was my birthday on Saturday and Julia came in from Prague to celebrate. Along with a nice birthday dinner and drinks at a pub, we spent the day venturing around Paris.
We made sure to do some typical things like getting crepes and macaroons, because I clearly don't do this things otherwise. We also walked from my apartment to the Bastille and on to Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a pretty incredible church, especially when the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame is being recited by Julia as the real history of the church.
The church was very beautiful and I was surprised to find out it was celebrating its 850th birthday. Makes my 21 years seem pretty damn insignificant. The tower you can climb was closed to visitors, however, due to cold. Additionally, having attend USC for the past 3 years has caused me to say Notre Dame consistently incorrectly. It isn't a french term to me anymore, it is a rival school.

Nerdy Picture of the week: LED pars and ellipsoidals in ND.

This is the main problem I have pinpointed with my time in France so far. Sightseeing is a ton of fun, and its awesome to just walk from point to point in Paris because even the everyday architecture is beautiful, but when its cold it makes it so much more difficult. I really can't wait till its nice enough outside to wander the city until you get tired then sit down and enjoy a picnic lunch. That sounds so ideal. Because as it stands now, I wander around until I get either too numb to continue or I'm just tired and then spend an awkward amount of time in a cafe trying to re-gain feeling in my limbs. This is dually bad. First, you start to get awkward looks when you've been sitting with the same, now very cold, cafe au lait in front of you for an hour. Second, as someone who already relies too heavily on caffeine, I am now consuming insane amounts of it.
Either way! Sight seeing has been fun and I really do enjoy just walking around.

As a completely unrelated side note, it amazes me what people do while bicycling here. They have these rental bicycles all over the city, so a lot of people use them to commute. I am still shocked when I'm walking down the street though and see someone smoking a cigarette while biking, or, eating a baguette while biking. Its pretty great. These certainly aren't sorority girls sipping on their starbucks or talking on their phones (both of which I am equally guilty of on occasion). 

Berlin!

 The sign is true! I was, in fact, in Berlin this past weekend, and despite the freezing weather, I really enjoyed it. I got to meet up with Julia for the weekend and that was just about the best thing ever. There is something so wonderfully comforting about seeing a friend that you have known for so long.

 We spent the better portion of two days just wandering around the center of the city, and not doing much else. Except eating, we did a fair amount of that too.

I guess I had the wrong impression of Berlin to begin with. I had just naturally assumed that it would have been much like Paris or the other cities in Europe I had been to, but it was so distinct. The architecture really set it apart for me. It had some of the stunning old architecture that I've seen plenty of in Paris, but it was nicely dichotomized by very modern buildings as well. I had definitely not expected this.

 On the left is a church that we climbed the stairs of and it lead to a beautiful view of Berlin. We climbed all 254 stairs, and counted each and every one.

Other things to note from our trip was our slight obsession with the Berlin bears. I don't honestly know the history or value of them, but for some reason they have bear statues all over Berlin. They were rather like the cow statues they have in Calgary, but either way we made it our mission to take pictures with all the ones we encountered. Which turned out to be many.

Besides eating and bear photos we also tried to do the occasional historical thing. We went to the Holocaust memorial which turned out to be pretty close to our Hostel (which was an awesome place to stay). The memorial seemed pretty simple to begin with but turned out to be pretty incredible and quite overwhelming.

 Additionally, we spent quite a while walking down the East Berlin Gallery. This is a portion of the Berlin wall that is still intact, but has now been covered in murals, artwork, and incredible sayings.

 Overall, I really enjoyed Berlin and would certainly love to go back, but preferably during summer. The 9 degree F weather was a little ridiculous....

A little random.

 This post doesn't really have a theme, just a bunch of random pictures that I've taken off my phone because I found them funny. That's pretty much what I use my phone for, to take photos of things I find ridiculous.

I've been further adapting to life here and just starting to get into the flow of life here. It's definitely different from home, but I am really enjoying it. I think part of the big difference is the fact that I am in Paris, but I think a lot of it is just simply having free time, as I don't usually have much of that back home. Between work and school and interning in LA I tend to be pretty constantly doing something, and when I don't have anything I lay in bed watching hulu. That's definitely not the case here.

Cigarette pack wall in the student bar

I have classes 4 days a week, which will turn into 3 at the end of February, which leaves me a lot of free time. Thankfully, I haven't been spending any of that on hulu. This is probably because they don't have hulu here... I have spent some time watching crappy american TV on my laptop (it really is my guilty pleasure), but not too much! I spend a lot of time sight seeing, which you have seen the picture results of. I also spend a lot of time walking around, but mostly because I like to. The metro is an amazing way to get around, but you get to see so much more of Paris when you are above ground. I think it was Jesse Friley who gave me the idea, but when I have extra time, or I'm not in a rush I will walk places. I've also really been enjoying having time to buy groceries and actually cook meals. I haven't had the time to do that type of thing in a lonnggg time.

The Line up to get into Abercrombie & Fitch on Champs-Elysees. I'm not even kidding you. I think I puked at the sight of it.

It's been fun getting to know a new city and figuring everything out. For example there was a building on my walk to school that every time I passed by had a group of young people standing outside it. Literally, every time. I was also intrigued by the fact that there were two rooms visible from the first floor windows; one was a really nice looking library/office and another was a sitting room. But there was no real signage. After some googling I discovered that it's actually an acting school which rather explained a lot.

 On Monday night, three students and I rushed out of our class ending at 8 pm and hauled ass to make it to the eiffel tower. It turns out that they set up an ice skating rick on the first floor of the eiffel tower every winter from Dec. 1 to Jan 31. We, of course, got the idea to go skating which sounded fun then realized that we were running out of time. Either way, we made it to the tower and after some waiting in lines we got to go ice skating. The rink was pretty tiny but we were still skating on the first level of the Eiffel tower, which was pretty insane.

I'm pretty excited for the month coming up. It'll be pretty busy which I'm stoked for.  On top of a few group projects for school, I have already booked trips to Berlin, Barcelona and London. It's also my birthday on one of the two weekends I'll be spending here and on the other Kristina will be coming to visit.

It's pretty incredible to look at my calendar and realize that I already feel like I don't have much more time left here. I know it sounds crazy, but I know this time is going to absolutely fly by. I'm just trying to absorb as much as I can, and I'm loving every minute of it. (Minus trying to set up a bank account. That is a massive pain in the ass.)