Friday, March 18th:
We left for the airport at the unholy hour of 4:30am. Bleary eyed and excited, we spent our flight planning our detailed itinerary. Upon arriving in Paris, we had our first encounter with the Parisian metro system - let me tell you, that thing is ridiculous.
With 16 metro lines, 4 tram lines, and 4 train lines, we floundered for a while trying to navigate to our couchsurfing host's house, but at noon we finally made it.
This was our first time couchsurfing, and I was really nervous yet excited about it - what if our host was too weird? What if we had to sleep on the floor? What if they didn't show up? So many questions, but with our Paris host all of my worries were for naught.
Yannick has a dog named Lana, and she is the absolute sweetest, most well-behaved dog I've ever met. That afternoon, we sat in Yannick's living room chatting and eating a delicious tuna/tomato salad that he had made for us (he was so nice!). The one thing about Yannick's apartment that could be viewed as a downside was that it was 30 minutes away from Paris - technically in a suburb called Alfortville. Luckily for us, the public transportation system in the city is amazing, so it wasn't an issue!
After a nice lunch, we took the train back to the city center and explored. Our host recommended a walk that started near Saint Chapel and went along the river (the Seine). Immediately, I started growing fond of Paris. Despite the weather threatening rain, the city was magical. The bridges were beautiful, art was every where, and the entire city had a quiet atmosphere that was somehow also buzzing with energy.
We stopped at a iron-rod bridge with hundreds and hundreds of padlocks on it. I didn't know this before, but apparently it's a tradition for lovers to lock a lock on a bridge - it represents the couple's eternal love for each other. It was fun to read the inscriptions and spy the wacky locks amongst the pack (there was even a steering wheel lock!).
All the while that we were walking around, the sky grew darker and darker. I firmly told the sky to not rain, but I guess it didn't want to listen, because at about 4pm, it started pouring! Because the weather guide online had not foretold rain, neither Laurie or I had an umbrella, and we ran for cover under an archway of the Louvre Palace.
In Rome, there are street vendors who sell umbrellas, so I looked around, praying that there would be something similar here. Luckily, there was one lone vendor towards the end of the walkway, and I walked up to ask how much an umbrella would be. His response? "Nine euro."
There was no WAY I was paying that much, so I said, "Well, I study in Rome and in Rome you can get an umbrella for 4 euro."
After much debating and an intensely nonchalant attitude on my behalf (I pretended that I'd rather get soaked than pay the 6 euro that he had offered the second time around), I finally got my umbrella for 4 euro. Smug and satisfied, I thanked the man and walked away with my new umbrella. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and there was a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it! I had been expecting a plain black umbrella, but this was by far a cooler souvenir.
(We saw a store called "The American Dream" with figures of Elvis, Reno 911, and the Blues Brothers, we were so amused that we had to take a picture.)
Not wanting to spend a lot of time in the rain, we then headed to a shopping street to buy a few things. Originally, we wanted to buy striped shirts and berets to wear biking, but after seeing all of the other tourists wearing the same thing, we decided to just buy something "French-inspired" instead. I ended up buying this really cute dress from Zara:
In the evening, we headed back to our host's house to have an apertif with him (basically little snack foods with wine). It was nice because he taught us about different French white wines as well as traditional home-style French foods.
Although he did not like to eat sweet things, he remembered me saying that I liked to bake, so he picked up a special French dessert called Mille-feuille or, "Thousand Leaves" in English. It is called such because of how many wonderful flaky layers of pastry dough there are.
Let me tell you - French pastry is AMAZING! Never had I encountered a pastry so light and airy. Despite the crisp, tender layers, it wasn't overly buttery or heavy, and the cream mixture between the layers was heavenly.
At the end of the day, I was ridiculously tired (since I had been up since 4!), so we went to bed somewhat early, ready for our next day in Paris!
Note: I apologize for how few pictures were in this post. I didn't take many on this day because the weather was so foul, but once the weather started being wonderful (basically the remainder of our trip), I took loads! So please look forward to some epic picture posting in the near future :)
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