Paris - Part 1

Background

Gearing up to write a post on my brief day trip into Strasbourg, France, I realized that I have never talked about the first time I went to France. And trust me, you never forget your first time in France! Plus it's kind of an interesting story...

Back in 2007 my amazing parents took me to London for spring break of my senior year. (Yes my parents are awesome, no none of my other siblings got to do anything as cool, yes I'm a spoiled brat.) We talked about possibly taking the chunnel over to Paris for a day. My sweet parents had of course already been there, but they wanted me to have that experience as well.

SIDEBAR: How cool are my parents? I know I already stated that above, but seriously I begged to go to London. They had already been there, done that. Then I begged to go to Neuschwanstein, again they had already been there and done that. But they are awesome enough to go do these (REALLY EXPENSIVE) things with me all over again anyway. I love them.

Anyway, the Paris thing didn't really work out. Spontaneous trips in Europe are often quite pricey. So when I went to London in 2010, I knew that I really wanted to go to Paris! I was determined to make it happen...but not by myself. No way was I doing this one alone, so I waited until I made some friends to plan it out. Well as it turned out my best friend on the trip turned out to be a boy. We got along so well people sort of assumed we were brother and sister. (Which is incredibly weird because we look NOTHING alike. And also incredibly weird because we ended up having the exact same birthday. When we announced this oddity to the group they thought we were twins....)

My "twin" Ryan and I in Paris! 

Anyway I had to call Andrew and make sure he was cool with it. Not that it was any more than a formality, no way would he have any kind of problem! This is an adventure and a great opportunity! (Yeah he still talks about my romantic trip to Paris with another man....) Once I had the green light we had a choice to make.

Oxford vs Paris. Which would you choose?

The only weekend I could schedule a trip was during the weekend we were supposed to go to Oxford. What a dilemma! Another passport stamp? The city of lights? Or to see the famous school, which we all know Hogwarts was designed to look like. After talking it out with Ryan, you know my twin, we decided we had to do Paris. So being the take charge leader I am, I went ahead and booked everything.

Next time Oxford! 

Would you ride a bus for 9 hours?

For about 30 euros round trip we booked a coach (one of tour-like buses) to Paris. This involved getting on the bus in London, driving to Dover, riding the bus onto a ferry which crossed over into Calais, and then driving into Paris. We arrived in Paris with enough time to figure out the Metro, get stuck trying to exit the Metro (apparently we bought the wrong ticket so we couldn't get out of the gates. It as like a Metro jail, but somehow my French and the attendants English helped us figure out what we did.), and find our fancy hotel rooms. We called it a night and planned to meet up the next morning for our Paris adventure!