Paris, France

Our journey across Europe began bright and early, at 4:00 AM. The train left Munich by 6:00 and we were in our first big city by noon. While researching hostels before this trip, I learned that the majority have peculiar and humorous names. Our first hostel: “Peace and Love”. Were we about to stay in a hippie shack with hammocks for beds and all vegan breakfasts? While that would have made for a great story, the Peace and Love hostel did not live up to its crazy name. I definitely enjoyed it, though. Besides the fact that they did not have an elevator and our room was on the seventh floor atop a narrow spiral staircase. Bit of a downer. But the staff was super friendly, giving us free coffee at check-in and cleaning the room daily. The “lobby” was a cute hangout spot that turned into an energetic and fun bar at night. The bartender, Oliver from San Diego, graduated with an engineering degree and started out his career making a solid six digits per year. Soon after his career began, he got bored. His solution: pick up and move to Paris where his parents have a vacant apartment and see what happens. Bartending a few nights a week just for fun, he’s having the time of his life. He is not the only person we met who up and left their solid life back in the states to take a chance on a foreign city. Our walking tour guide Kristen was from New York. Also having graduated with a few prestigious degrees, she decided to travel abroad before starting her career…and never went back. The tour she gave us and a few other fellows from the East coast, New Zealand, and England was awesome. That chicks knows absolutely EVERYTHING about Paris—history dates, people, numbers, hot spots, things to avoid, things to make sure not to miss…anything and everything. Her stories were compelling and amidst her sailor’s mouth (which I think just made everything she said funnier), I learned more than a history book would ever teach me. The tour went over by a few hours and took up the majority of the day. It was pretty chilly with on and off rain, but our third and last day there was sunny and comfortable. Great ending note. So, we toured all the major and some minor buildings and structures, the Louvre and another museum with works from Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Edgar Degas, and some beautiful parks. By the way, Paris has a museum for everything. There’s one for fruits, several for art, one where all the floral plans for the city’s parks are planned out to a T at least a decade in advance, one about money, another about their military…yeah you get the picture. Every night for the first ten minutes of each hour, the Eiffel Tower hosts a beautiful light show. It sparkles and shimmers and captivates everyone. With a cheap bottle of champagne and a couple plastic cups, Logan and I sat in the grass by the Tower and took in the beauty. Fending off all the merchants selling useless crap was inevitable and got old very quickly, but that’s all just part of the experience, right? Being on such a tight budget, all meals had to be just a couple euros, making any fine dining impossible. On our last night we did find a sit-down restaurant that didn’t break the bank. The French style salad I got was delicious, but I ended up with slight food poisoning and went straight to bed after a miserable ride on the metro back to the hostel. Nevertheless, Paris was beautiful, so fun, and an excellent start to our adventure. Oh, and I totally almost got run over. Apparently people don’t have the right of way, at least in France, and drivers would rather honk and hit you than slow down for a second to let you finish crossing the street.

Fitting In

"Center of the World"