Paris: Days 1 & 2

I'm going to be a little more succint about my Paris trip than I was with Berlin. It was twice as long, so I don't want to bore you. Here we go:

Day 1
Mostly travel. We got to Paris as the sun was setting - the city looked beautiful, all lit up with just a little bit of light behind the west side as we landed. We got completely ripped off on a taxi to our hostel, but we made it. The place is nice, and our room had an amazing view of the city.

The neighborhood is cute, and definitely cheap for Paris. The Moulin Rouge is a 15 minutes walk. That night, we found a great pizza place and sat on the steps, drinking huge 75 cl beers we'd found for 2 euros. All the French people that passed us were so nice, smiling or telling us "Bon Appetite!" That crap about all French people hating Americans is just that - crap. Throughout the whole trip, everyone was really understanding about our limited French, and almost everyone was really nice to us.

Day 2
Today we wandered around the Latin Quarter for most of the day. It's a popular neighborhood with tourists, because there are a lot of really cute shops and cafes. Street vendors line an area around the Seine and sell art posters and postcards and Parisian knick-knacks. We visited a church across the street from the Louvre. The stained glass inside was beautiful. As luck would have it, though, my camera ran out of battery power less than an hour into our day. At least my friends were there to take pictures, too.

We saw a palace with some beautiful gardens called Les Halles. It really made us aware of how freezing Denmark is and how beautiful and sunny and warm Paris is. The flowers were so nice. Then we got hustled into having lunch at this cafe. Seriously, we're walking aimlessly, this guy talks to Jenn & Emily in French (b/c they speak some French). He hands them a flyer, is chatting with them, and the next thing we know we're walking down some street, and then we're being shown to a table in a cafe. It was a nice lunch, though, so I'm glad we got hustled in. We went to Notre-Dame later. It was sad how none of the tourists (and there was a hoarde of them) seemed to remember that it was a church which some people still used for worship. Total disregard for anything holy in that place. It was beautiful, though. I really liked the gardens in the back. There weren't many flowers - just trees and a fountain, but it was beautiful. There were very few people there, so it was quiet and relaxing. I enjoyed just sitting and writing for awhile. Next we walked through the Palais-Royale. It, too, was relaxing and really nice. A fountain in the center was lined by trees forming a long walkway, and chairs were set out for people to sit and read or relax or people watch, whatever they liked. It's nice to chill in a place surrounded by beauty, and since this plaza was surrounded by a palace, it was great. After a little more Latin Quarter wandering, and stumbling upon a few centuries-old churches, we went back to Montmatre for pizza and beer again. It's cheap and good! And sitting on the steps in the wonderfull weather is so nice. After dinner, three of us walked down to see the Moulin Rouge. While waiting on a street corner for the other two to get back from the bathroom, I was accosted three times by immigrants. None of them spoke English, so I couldn't understand what they wanted. One group said something about a boat. I was really getting scared by the time the other girls got back. The Moulin Rouge isn't in the best neighborhood, and it's obviously not a good place for a young woman to be alone at 10:30 pm. So we hustled down, took pictures, and got back to the hostel.