Travel Week: Bonjour Paris & Versailles

     So I know that the several posts coming are very much overdue... by a month to be exact. (NAILED IT.) But I am determined to completely document the most fantastic adventure of my life. So get excited for four more weeks of posts. I’m also still writing these as if they just happened. So don’t be confused; I am in fact not still in Europe, much to my chagrin. Anyway, to the post! 

     This week I lived some more dreams. I traveled to Paris! Rome! Florence! AND Pisa! Technically you can count Beauvais, France as well, but that wasn’t exactly a tourist stop. But goodness me, I feel as if I lived five lifetimes these past five days. So here’s a rundown of what happened.

BONJOUR, PARIS!

        My first stop was Paris, France. I must say that since first discovering one of my most beloved movies, Midnight in Paris, I have become much more interested in visiting. The city has most certainly enchanted me.

This is your soundtrack for this portion of the post: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox8bPmgcQUQ&list=PL4384C518BE33455C

-          In traveling to Paris, I had my very first train ride. WAHOO! I was so excited. I was having flashbacks to all my favorite old movies like White Christmas as I stepped on. It wasn’t very appropriate to sing “Snow” though. 

- The hostel we stayed at was in a little suburb outside of the main city, a place called Villejuif. The hostel  was literally just a house in a nice neighborhood. When we would go out for the day we would pass playgrounds with kids running around before school, and lots of people out walking their little dogs. ;) But the hostel was a really fun experience - once I got a grasp of what to expect. I had never been to a hostel before. Breakfast was really great; we had baguettes with jam and butter, with  eggs, bananas, and oranges. Not the nicest breakfast in the world but there was plenty of it and it certainly served its purpose well. What I really loved about it though was that everyone had to sit at the same table. So you got to brush shoulders with a lot of people. It was great to hear people's stories; I think my favorite was this younger, sweet as can be latino guy who had just came to Paris from Cannes. He was just taking a break from school and just backpacking through Europe, going wherever he felt like at the time. He had been out for about 2 months at this point. There were a lot of guys like that, and a few girls too. Most were just backpacking for fun though some were doing some extra travelling while studying abroad for school, etc.

- We only had 1 day in the city of Paris itself (which was like most of our schedule) so we saw a LOT and did a LOT. Here's a very quick picture tour:

Stop 1: Notre Dame. One of the highlights of my trip. I was singing "The Bells of Notre Dame" so hard in my head. Once inside though I audibly sang "God Help The Outcasts." Multiple times. Not ashamed. I also looked for Quasi - no sign of him. Next time.

We just happened upon Lover's Bridge on our walk around town. (Couples will come, write their names on the locks, lock the lock on the bridge and toss the key off into the Seine to symbolize their eternal love.)

Stop 2: The Louvre Museum. It was really raining at this point (which I was thrilled about; "Paris is most beautiful in the rain.") We couldn't go in because something was filming there - go figure. So we went to...

Stop 3: The Musee d'Orsay instead. Which was honestly where I preffered to be. We waited outside for two hours in the freezing rain, we were completely soaked, but it was so worth it. I got to see my beloved Van Gogh among every other painter I've ever admired or loved. (No, really.) And I got to see my all-time favorite piece of artwork, Van Gogh's Starry Night Over The Rhone. Saying I was in heaven would be a bit of an understatement. 

Stop 4: Got to see the fountains from An American in Paris. Don't worry, I hummed Gershwin and walked through the monuments/fountains like Gene Kelly.

Stop 5: Walked up the Champs - Elysees eating a tart and a baguette and stopped at the Arc di Triomphe. There was some military service going on underneath the Arc so we couldn't walk through it, but we walked around and gazed for a while. It was beautiful; the gorgeous weather was certainly helping as well. It was a beautiful sight. 

As was this. 

Stop 6: The Eiffel Tower. I took a lot of pictures of this so here are a small selection of my faves.

     -

After taking lots of pictures around it, we went up into the tower.

     -  That night and watched the sun set and fall behind the city of Paris from the top. Truly an unforgettable and quite magical experience.

Me at the top :)

The lights of the Tower from the top. You could tell when the lights came on because of all of the flashing cameras from below.

 The city by night, from the lower decks. That party barge looked like it was on fire it was so bright.

 - After the sun went down we descended from the Tower and proceeded to eat another crepe before heading home for the night. (I believe this was our fourth of the day. We didn't eat much other than desserts.) 

It's a beautiful way to say goodnight, don't you think?

- Our second day was a quick day trip to Versailles before travelling to our next international destination. 

This portion's track:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvgZkm1xWPE

- This morning we said goodbye to our little hostel and adorable little man who took care of us the past two nights. We made our way out a bit later than we wanted, we missed seeing the fountains in the gardens, but nevertheless we made it to Versailles. Now Versailles was never on my "must - see" list; I would've been fine had I not gone but I figured it would be fun so being forced to go with the rest of the group wasn't much of a hardship. Oh my goodness. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Our first view - You can't even see all of the main building. It was unbelievably gargantuan. 

Everything was garnished with gold. It was quite ornate and undoubtedly very expensive.

 - We didn't ave a lot of time to spend, just a few hours to go through the main portion of the palace and the gardens (we didn't even consider going out by Marie Antoinette's place, etc), but I was determined to appreciate everything that was around me. So I did a lot of running, literally running, to keep up with my group. After about 5 rooms of attempts to keep up, I gave up the venture. I still ran, or speed walked from room to room, but I stopped to look and take a picture or two in each room. It was incredible. 

All of this is painted directly on the walls 

This is the palace chapel. Look at the people on the bottom right for a size reference. 

I absolutely adore all of the painted ceilings. 

The famed Hall of Mirrors! 

The view from the palace into the gardens.

- And into the Gardens we went! 

There was some construction work being done. 

Triwizard Tournament, anyone?

I really liked the fountains, if you couldn't tell.

- But it really was an incredible day. Just astounding. I definitely want to go back someday - I could easily spend a full day there. But after our quick excursion we grabbed a bite to eat and journeyed on towards Beauvais, the little town our flight was from. We took a train through the French countryside to get to Beauvais and I thought it was one of the most beautiful scenes I had ever seen. I ADORE all of the yellow flowered fields that carpet Europe! It was beautiful with the sun casting incredible light over the hills. I listened to the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack and it was kind of perfect. Plus - I made a friend while on the train! Her name was Bonnie and she was going to school in Paris for the year. She was from Australia, so it was really fun to talk to her. We chatted for a good 45 minutes before she had to go. It was lovely. But that about sums up my French experiences! 

Onwards to Italia! 

Guards and Guvnors

More quick snippets:

We had class and had another lazy day (of course lazy means catching my breath so I don't hyperventilate and so my head doesn't explode). We watched Star Trek, the first one, and it was fabulous. Made heart soar. I now say "I can do zat!" on a regular basis. And I need to watch more Simon Pegg movies. AND I need to see Star Trek: Into Darkness seventeen more times in the theater. But I love our movie nights. Just a great time to converse and spend time with good people in a great city.

Next day we woke up fairly semi-early so we could see the changing of the guards. It wasn't the greatest seat in the house, but great enough to see a lot of the processions. I took some great videos and decent pictures of the occasion. SO many people were there. It was fun to see that the Queen was there earlier that day. Met a couple from America where we discussed the insanity of all the terrorist attacks of late - like the guy who was chopped up by machetes. Fun stuff, right?

 Tons of people, right?

close up

The Palace (I kept thinking of John flying over it in the helicopter. Everything comes back to Sherly)

That night we saw One Man, Two Guvnors. I think people had built it up so much that I expected more than it gave me, but that being said I enjoyed myself and laughed a lot. There was some great slapstick! But I didn't like the script as much as I wanted to. I might have liked it more had I seen the original Francis because I really like the actor - James Corden. I think I may have been more sympathetic to him; I find him more endearing as an actor. Also - there was a ton of audience interaction, and two of the three interactions, come to find out, were plants! So basically I witnessed the Stooge. Sadly there was no Jerry Lewis OR Dean Martin. Dangit. But I must say I absolutely adored the scene changes - because it was a live skiffle band that played different songs, sometimes with cast members coming out for little cameos. The skiffle band was FABULOUS. We all picked guys we would date - I chose the adorable bassist who also played the spoons. Nailed it.

This guy kept falling down the stairs and getting hit by things. HILARIOUS.

Skiffle Band!

After the show we went Byron's for chips (I had courgette fries aka fried zuchinni) and shakes. We had some interesting confessions that would shock the others, and asked questions round the table. I shocked a lot of people by my confession about my feelings on Lion King. P.S. Byron's is still my favorite restaurant in London.

That's it for the days snippets!

Snippits of St. Paul's, Midsummer Nights, and the Blitz

     In an effort to catch up and keep going, I'm going to make quick little tidbits of the day, with a picture or two. You can check out the majority of my pictures on Facebook.  

    So this weekend was particularly emotionally draining; many hills and valleys. But, as someone once said that I can sadly not recall who said, "A bad day in London is still better than a good day anywhere else." I really believe that. So I was not very happy the morning of St. Paul's. I was honestly very excited about it, but the day and some other things have been weighing down on me so I was quite angsty. It was rainy and cold, we couldn't find the group, and I just wanted to get in to the cathedral. But eventually we did and it was giant and beautiful. I just tried to sit quietly by myself and let the cathedral heal me. As I've said before and I will express it again; I absolutely adore cathedrals. And I do find them quite healing. It was breathtaking and gigantically open inside. (Of course the entire time I'm singing Feed the Birds to myself.) We got to tour it so we went up and around, listening to the whispering wall and climbed over a thousand stairs to see the city from the tip top of St. Paul's. When I reached the top, all of my negative emotions were blown away by the wind at the top of the Cathedral. The view was spectacular. Sure it was windy, and not particularly warm, but I honestly could have cared less. I would have stayed up there the entire day - and night - that I loved it so much.

Walking around the Cathedral

View from the top

In the Golden Gallery

   After our trip we took a trip to Primark. Which is ALWAYS an experience.

Yes I wore these shoes

I was going to model but we got in trouble for taking pictures. Oops. 

 
    The next day was a bit of a chill day until that night where we went to the Globe for Midsummer Night's Dream. We got there super early so that we could be almost directly in the center of the stage. The fairies and such, which is what I was most excited for, were not at ALL what I expected. Much more animalistic and I thought some of the interpretations were questionable. HOWEVER - the players were some of the funniest things I have EVER seen. Each one of them were so indivudualized and they had a clogging bit that was recurring. Though Bottom was different than I had ever imagined, he was quite old (Gray hair!) and scraggly, it was the greatest interpretation of the character I have ever seen. I was crying with laughter during the "play"- which was the funniest thing I have ever seen. Ever seen. I will never forget it. Peter, Bottom, and Francis Flute stole the entire show for me. Francis and Peter were two of the most hilarious, fantastic, and adorable performances I have ever seen on stage. I wish I could take video of it; I would watch it as much as Singing in the Rain and Nativity!!

Midsummer Set

   The next day was Sunday, so I went to church which is always lovely. Though we were super super lost and super late. We met a super nice and quite attractive Englishmen that helped us get back on the right path. So we made it just in time for the second hour. Oh well, we honestly do try. It's all part of the experience.
   That night we had a visit from another member of the stake presidency - President Chittock. He is an adorable old Englishmen. I want to marry a man like him so my children can have an adorably wonderful grandpa like him. It was the perfect epitome of the cute old Englishman stereotype; accent and all. But it was such a fantastic and intriguing fireside because it was all about London in the Blitz. He talked about his experiences during the Blitz, he was six at the time, so he talked about what it was like in the bomb shelters and in being sent away to Wales. I loved hearing about the air force in the war and feeling very proud and lovingly towards my Grandpa Irby. I wish I could see him in the museum.

Saw this while lost on the way to church

Someone decided to take of the round parts of all the "p"s as a joke. I laughed. 

Saw this man on the tube. He was owning that outfit. And I loved it. 

Terrible picture but that's Pres. Chittock. And my knees. 

So those are my quick little snippits. On to travel week!