Wednesday + {Day Thirty-Seven: Paris to Iceland to Seattle}

Today was the big day! We got up early, dressed in our best PNW grunge hipster fashion, and headed off to the airport. We had to take the metro to a more central location, then catch a train out to the CDG airport.

We spent a lot of the day waiting and sitting. We made it to the airport with an hour to spare before check=in began. The CDG airport has these cool futuristic tubes to take you up to the security area!

On the planes, they had all these cute little sayings.

Personally, I think it was a ploy to distract from the fact that they don't serve food on their flights, even if they're 9+ hours. Hmm.

They did serve very delicious soda, though.

With more cute napkins.

And then we saw it.

The glowing beacon of home! The flight home was the longest of my life. The last three hours in particular crawled by. But I read Margaret Atwood's entire The Year of the Flood, so it wasn't entirely wasted time.

My dad picked us up from the airport! And he brought the dog! It feels so unreal to be back in Seattle. After a quick stop to see Gooligan's family, we went out to eat at a decent Thai restaurant and headed home.

Tuesday + {Day Thirty-Six: Paris}

So after lazying around yesterday, Gooligan and I decided to spend our last full day in Paris going back to Versailles. Sure, we could have experienced something new, but we had both enjoyed Versailles so much and, frankly, the place is so big that it takes more than a single day to explore.

But first: breakfast! Since my dad had asked us previously if we'd had a truly fantastic croissant yet (sadly we hadn't), I felt obligated to scope out the best croissants in Paris. All the reviews told us to go to Blé Sucré because their croissants are simply incredible.

Unfortunately the map we were using on the TripAdvisor app listed their location incorrectly, so we had a lot of trouble finding it. But Gooligan asked a really nice pharmacist who looked the address up on our computer and helped point us in the right direction. From there, Gooligan found it! My hero!

Blé Sucré was as cute inside as it was on the outside. It was busy and all of the desserts, sandwiches, and pastries looked like they would be perfect. Because it had taken us so long to find the place, we decided to buy two sandwiches for lunch (that's how long it took), and also five croissants.

After we finished eating our sandwiches, we hightailed it to the metro to go to Versailles! With a brief stop at Starbucks, since we were falsely lured in by their Pumpkin Spice Latte sign. We didn't get Pumpkin Spice Lattes because they had sold out in all of Europe, apparently. But we did get some coffee for the road.

Happy coffee camper!

Since we saw the chateau itself last time we decided to just go to the gardens. Which involved getting back onto Le Petit Train.

Technically you can just walk, but the gardens are huge, and it's really nice to have a train ticket back after you're done exhausting yourself exploring!

The hamlet was just as beautiful as we remembered it. We ate one of our croissants while surrounded by this beautiful nature.

Totally worth it.

 
We explored the same area, but also went further this trip! It turns out that there's a farm with animals!

Gooligan befriended this donkey. My donkey friend, naturally, was so much cooler.

We took a lot of silly photos, too.

And then headed back to Paris! The line to buy tickets was crazy and chaotic and when we got all the way up to the ticket machine we realized that they only take coin, so Gooligan had to run and quickly break a bill. Very stressful!

 

After a grocery store dinner, we packed and hit the hay early, since we have a long, long day in store for us tomorrow.

Monday + {Day Thirty-Five: Paris}

Back in Paris! We arrived around nine in the morning and got hideously lost trying to find our Airbnb. But we found it eventually, thankfully! Upon arriving, our lovely host gave us some slippers!

We didn't do much today because of the long night on the night train (Gooligan didn't sleep as well as I did). And then there was the little deal with the train giving us all-day motion sickness! Fantastic! All kidding aside, today was great. Our host recommended this pretty good Chinese buffet!

After the buffet, we came back to our place and kind of hung out while I wrote more of my novel and both of us watched television. Then we headed out to find some groceries for dinner and snacks for the rest of our trip.

We ate in the living room and talked to our hosts who were both home from work. I was shocked to learn from our hosts that they have never been to the United States because it costs too much even for a transit visa to somewhere in South America. (Just to have an hour layover in Miama would set them back almost two hundred euros each!) It really made me think about my American privilege. We have been to something like eight or nine countries (including brief transit stops, such as Iceland and Wales) and we never once had to pay for any kind of visa, even for longer trips. It's like no one thinks that we'd have any interest in immigrating anywhere but everyone thinks that the rest of the world is so eager to move to the United States. Like we don't have a lot of problems that make us a really unideal country at the moment.

But anyway, enough rambling. Our hosts fed us all these delicious Parisian desserts and then I collapsed onto the bed unable to move because I was so full! We went to bed early because we want to go to Versailles tomorrow!

Sunday + {Day Thirteen: Paris}

On our last day in Paris, we went to Versailles. It is really far away from Paris (around an hour on the train, at least), but completely worth it! It is one of Gooligan’s favorite places ever. We got there right as it opened.

We snapped a few photos inside, and then Gooligan went to get a free audioguide, while the rest of us headed into the gardens to look for coffee. Just as we stepped outside, a torrential downpour started. It rained and rained and rained. We ducked inside this covering to wait it out and wait for Gooligan.

I even went out into the rain to find Gooligan, but no luck. It turns out that when we leave the main part of the palace, and go into the gardens, we cannot get back inside. Gooligan had to surrender her audioguide to join us outside in the rain.

Miserably we made our way to a nearby café outside of Versailles and ate some breakfast, then regrouped and headed back to Versailles. It had stopped raining by now, but unfortunately a long line had formed. Our passes, unfortunately, did nothing to let us skip the security line.

Luckily the security guard took pity on us and let us cut the line. Personally, I feel like the exit should be marked a little more clearly. If we hadn’t had our passes, and had only bought day tickets, then we would have been out of luck.

Anyway, this time around, we decided to split up. Sarah and Shannon headed to the Hall of Mirrors and then chilled in the café, while Gooligan and I both picked up audioguides and took a long tour around almost the entire palace. I took a million photos of Gooligan and all the rooms.

Then we tracked down Sarah and Shannon and we headed out into the gardens for real this time. It was raining very lightly and we were all tired by this point, so we decided to hop on Le Petit Train, which tours the gardens and lets you off at five different points to explore if you want. Then you just hop on the next train whenever you’re ready and continue.

Since Gooligan really wanted to see Marie Antoinette’s hamlet in the gardens, we disembarked the train there and walked about fifteen minutes out to the absolutely stunning hamlet! It was beautiful. There were several little hamlets, since it was park of a working farm, and she frequently had visitors. After we explored, we headed back to Le Petit Train, since we wanted to see Notre Dame.

We made it back to the city with over an hour to spare, but the guy working the Tower entrance said the stairs had already reached their max capacity for the day so we were out of luck. Disappointing to be sure, but the cathedral was beautiful both inside and outside. We walked around the inside twice, then left to get crepes.

While eating our delicious nutella crepes in the park by the cathedral, we accessed enough free wifi to get a scoop on a good bakery nearby. On our way home, we stopped to pick up a baguette for dinner and croissants for breakfast—accomplishing our goal of having both a croissant and a crepe while in France!

At home, we ate dinner and packed up our bags for our early morning taxi! Booking the taxi itself was a bit of a struggle, since the first taxi tried to charge us about three times the going rate. Finally we connected with the English-speaking operator for a reliable taxi, though, which meant it was time for bed.

We definitely squeezed every ounce out of our time in France, although to tell you the truth, it was not exactly one of my favorite food stops so far.

Saturday + {Day Twelve: Paris}

We had already decided a long time ago to invest in a two-day Paris museum pass. For 39 euro each, we get access to sixty museums and can skip lines at many of them. You can’t see 60 museums in two days, of course, but even just three or four museums makes the pass worth it—especially if it helps you skip any lines, which ours did. It also lets you go to a museum and then leave and go back if you get hungry or accidentally leave (true story).

After a lazy morning (it took us awhile to get our stuff together), we headed off on the metro to find the Louvre. Using a Rick Steves guidebook, we figured out where to buy our passes and also found an entrance to the Louvre where we didn’t have to wait in line at all.

We swung by Mona Lisa, then spent the rest of our time at the Louvre just kind of popping in on whatever exhibits people wanted to see. Gooligan got to see her favorite painting again (of a girl floating in a lake with a halo over her).

I really love statues and even ditched the group for a moment to hike over to a different area to see the statue of Venus on display. While the bodies sculpted are incredible with their realism, what are most impressive to me are the statues with wings; the sculptors’ ability to create these thin detailed wings out of marble is unbelievable.

On our way out of the Louvre, we stopped to take photos by the pyramid. They had these blocks people can stand on and then put their hand out and pretend to touch the top of the pyramid. We each snapped a picture, which took a few minutes, considering that you had to have someone else tell you how to move your hand just right. They are some of my favorite photos of our trip so far, though.

After the Louvre, we popped into the Orsay museum, this amazing collection of Impressionist art, among other things. Shannon loves the impressionists and I am really glad we got to see them!

We stopped to eat dinner and were planning on swinging by Notre Dame, but it closed earlier than we expected. So instead we walked through the park and took pictures of us posing like the various statues we passed. Best impromptu moment of our trip.

Friday + {Day Eleven: Paris}

The good news: our taxi arrived on time! The bad news: apparently it was cash-only. We didn't have any cash, of course, because we were leaving the UK for the EU, so after he dropped us off at St. Pancras train station, Gooligan had to run inside and find an ATM to pay the man. Lesson learned for the future: ask ahead of time if taxi cab takes cards. This will be less of a problem from here on out, though, since we're going to be in the EU and dealing with euros for the rest of our trip.

The train to Paris was lovely. Taking the train is a nicer way to travel than flying: less panic over your bag because Eurostar doesn't have weight restrictions, less security, less hassle in general. Once we got on the train and it started moving, our ears popped from the pressure of going underground. In order to get to Paris from London, we went under the channel!

I slept through most of the train ride—which was actually an hour shorter than I thought it would be due to traveling into the next time zone—and when I woke up we were in Paris!

The Paris’s metro system is quite similar to England’s underground, which we had become quite proficient at, so finding the correct stop was relatively easy. Once we were there, we called our host. His brother came to meet us, walked us to our place, gave us our key, and told us to call him if we had any problems.

Since we were ravenous at this point, we Yelped a place to eat and headed off after a few minutes. The place we ate at—Bistro 31—was delicious. It was also filled with almost exclusively French people. The food was perfect. Gooligan and I split a delicious pasta dish.

After eating, we made our way to the Eiffel tower! Sometimes famous tourist attractions don’t live up to the expectation, but the Eiffel tower is amazing. I can’t believe that it only took a little over two years to build; it’s so huge and the idea of people climbing up so high in the air and building this giant metal structure is incredible.

Anyway, we bought tickets to go all the way to the top. For youth (under 26) it was only 13 euros a person. Not a bad deal at all, considering there are several different observation floors and you can walk all the way around the tower on each of them.

It took a lot of time to see the tower, though; we waited in line for several hours collectively, probably, but it was definitely worth it. The view of the skyline was so beautiful. The only shame, of course, is that by viewing it from the Eiffel tower, the Eiffel tower is missing from the view.

We wanted to go up at night originally, but we originally got in line at four and by the time it was getting dark (around 7:30) we were getting hungry and tired. So we stayed through the beginnings of dusk, saw a few lights around the city from the tower, and then came down. By the time we arrived at the bottom, the entire tower itself was lit up. Beautiful. We stopped to use the bathroom and when we came out, there was a rotating light display that made the tower look like it was sparkling.

Then, happy and content, we made our way home, stopping to pick up some wine. When we arrived home, we discovered that the nearest grocery store was around two miles away. Gooligan and I put our shoes back on and headed out again. Luckily being without a car is fine in Paris: we walked a few blocks to the Metro, hopped on one line, got off it about nine minutes later and walked a few blocks to the store! So convenient.

At home, we dined on salami, Brie, baguette, tomatoes, and wine, while swapping stories about how we met our respective partners. A great end to a great day!