Oh, Pariiiiii!!

Bonjour!

We all had a great time in Paris... big surprise, I'm sure! Our entire group left on Thursday after class to catch the FASTEST TRAIN IN EUROPE (347 mph) directly to the City of Love. It was a great ride- the countryside was absolutely beautiful. We arrived in 4 hours and headed straight to check into our hostel that overlooked the humongous Sacre Coeur Basilica. In no time we were across the street buying wine, cheese and bread to take to the Eiffel Tower. We decided to have a little group bonding night. The Tower has a sparkling light show that goes off every hour on the hour and our group got to see it 3 times as we sat right under it in the grass. It was so surreal! Overall, a great kickoff to a fabulous weekend!

The next day we met with Herr Becker and our Art Professor, Herr Springer at Notre Dame at 11am. We walked through and were surprised to see the University of Wisconsin- Madison choir singing! Small world... After hearing a little bit from Herr Springer about the church, he directed us to Le Louvre (one of the most famous art museums in the WORLD). Each person in out group was assigned a painting to present on, so 5 of us gave backgrounds while the others waited until we hit the museum where their paintings were located. Herr Springer knows SO much about art and all of it's history... we are so lucky to have him! Next, our group kind of split up- and you know all of us girls headed straight for the Champs Elysee (one of the most famous shopping streets in the WORLD). We walked the streets for 2 hours until our group reunited at Chartier, a traditional French restaurant. We ordered such food as escargot to sea bass (with the heads still attached...). It was quite an interesting meal, I must say :) Standing with tradition, we hurried from dinner, got ready and headed for the meeting spot for a Paris Pub Crawl. It was a great night. We hit many different French bars and ended at a hoppin' dance club. I think we all burned a million calories from the dance moves we were pulling :)

The next afternoon we met up with Herr Springer one last time at the Musee d'Orsay. The other 5 people presented their descriptions and he added bonus comments that made the art so much more interesting than I ever thought. Then, we sadly said goodbye to him and we were off again on our own. Most of us fell in love with nutella and banana crepes, so obviously that's what we headed for! Personally, I just couldn't get enough of them :) To spend our last night in Paris, we decided to repeat the cheese, wine and bread night. This time, though, we added a night boat cruise along the river for an hour. It was amazing to see Le Louvre, Notre Dame and all of the other sites lit up at night.

We got to spend all day Sunday at Versaille, the huge palace that sits about an hour outside of Paris. The gardens were unbelievably huge/ pretty and the inside was so intricate and full of really cool rooms. We are so glad we got to see this! You hear people talk about all of these things all the time and now we can say we've experienced them first hand! What a life we are living at the moment :)

Enjoy the pictures of us girls under the Eiffel Tower on our relaxing nights! Hope you are all still enjoying the blog as much as we enjoy writing it! This time over here is going to come to an end before we know it and we're so glad we are still documenting it... but already starting to get a little sad about leaving!

Have a good day :)

Anna & the girlies!