After a crazy week in Barcelona, Liana and I had to start making our way back to Munich to start our internship. We decided to take a two day pit stop in Paris before ending the first part of our summer adventure.
Because of how much fun we had had at the St. Christopher’s in Barcelona, we decided to stay at the same hostel in Paris. With the lack of sleep we had gotten the week before, we were thankful to open our six person dorm to find it completely silent and empty. That is, until we spotted a ventilator plugged into the wall, and then realizing that it was hooked up to our eighty year old roommate in the bunk bed next to us! Liana and I were not too thrilled about this. But after talking to him the next day we found out that his wife of sixty years had recently passed away and that he was traveling to all the places they had once visited together, with Paris being the first stop.
We started our first morning in Paris with crepes and cappuccinos at a local Parisian café. We decided that we would go explore the catacombs that afternoon, but did not realize that they stopped letting people in at 4p.m. We were four people short of making it in. So we decided to go and explore a local cemetery which ended up being the resting place of a philosopher whom Liana had taken a class on only months before. Afterwards we explored Notre Dame and had dinner in the Tibetan square to plan our night out on the town.
Unfortunately we still had our Barcelona-party-until-sunrise-mindsets. In Paris, people go out around 9p.m. and are asleep by 11p.m. So we decided to get a good night sleep and do a walking tour of the city the next day. It was on the tour that we met Amy and Claudia—two really sweet girls from Canada and Australia who were also staying at our hostel.
That evening Liana and I met up with Amy, Claudia, and another hostel-mate named Erin. The five of us headed over to the Eifel tower to have dinner on the lawn and watch the light show. With a selection of wine, baguettes, cheese, and chocolate, we soaked up the incredible Parisian atmosphere and the beauty of the Eifel tower. Before we knew it we had watched five light shows (there is one every hour) and bonded over our common love for Katy Perry. One of the coolest parts of the night was realizing that even though the group of us five girls grew up in four different countries we all shared the same outlooks on life.
The next day Liana and I made a day trip to Versailles! It took about three hours to walk through the palace, and the entire time I felt like I was in a magical fairy tale. The palace was absolutely beautiful! I was inches away from the exact door Maria Antoinette ran through to flee from the angry mob of citizens before her eventual death. I also got to walk through the Chamber of Mirrors—where countless ballroom dances have been held throughout the centuries. After walking through the palace Liana and I explored the gardens of Versailles as the sun was setting. We passed out on the lawn for an hour and watched a crew team practice on the water.
Paris was the perfect last stop on the first part of our trip. We were meeting up with Kyu back in Munich and we were eager to get some experience working in the corporate world in Munich for the next month and a half.
Panama Pancakes 