last thursday began karnival. i know i talked about it in my last blog but just as a reminder, karnival is known as the "fifth season" of germany. its 5 solid days of germans dressing up in outfits that don't make sense, parades, candy, and alcohol. in other words, pure chaos! that thursday, we all went into bonn in order to see what karnival was all about. first thing to note: it was FREEZING that day! we were all dressed in ridiculous outfits but it was worth it. we ended up walking across the rhine river to see a parade which was unlike any parade i've seen before. the people here have so much spirit!
after the parade, we walked back across the rhine and went bar hopping of course. all of the bars & streets were pretty packed so it was definitely fun people watching. here's some of us in our costumes.
oh & here's mine in all it's glory.
so hawt, i know.
anyways, the very next day a small group of us went to paris! the group consisted of teaghan, jeff, alli, chelsey & i. we woke up at THE crack of down to catch a train to cologne and then another train from cologne to paris on the thaylls. by crack of dawn i mean we woke up at 430am. you jeally? i slept the entire train ride so i can't really tell you much about it. i do happen to know that the train was delayed an hour because someone committed suicide on the train tracks. eeeehk :(
anyways, as soon as we got there, i quickly realized i hadn't planned what to do once we finally got there. getting there was enough of a task as it was! like seriously, it was frantic. once we rolled up in paris, we decided to take a taxis to our hostel. worked like a charm. we checked into the nasty, gross, disgusting, i'mneverstayingthereagainbecausetheshowerswereterrifying hostel & decided to go grab lunch and walk around! and walk around we did...8 solid miles of walking around. after all that, we quickly decided that we were figuring out the metro the following day. but yea, we ate at this delicious french restaurant! having lived in germany almost a month, you get really really sick of bratwurst and bread. my tastebuds didn't know what to do when i ordered duck. i think they cried of happiness. here's the before and after shot of the meal.
***breaking news! we were supposed to book tickets with our eurorail pass from florence to munich over easter break today. my lovely boyf lost his pass so we couldn't..
as of 5 seconds ago, he found it!
in the trash can.
i can't even. okay i'll continue now.
after that meal, we walked to the eiffel tower. it was sunny when we got there so i was extremely happy. here's my observations on the eiffel tower:
1)it really isn't that pretty
2) it doesn't matter because it's the eiffel tower
3) there was lots of asians there taking selfies of themselves with the tower
4) i wanted to climb it
after that, we continued to walk/take way too many pictures of the eiffel tower. like now that i think about it, its embarrassing. my phone has at least 50 photos of it. it was one of those days where i really need an off button. we walked 23947 miles then to the arc de triomphe! it's huuuuuge. we had learned about it in art history but i honestly never realized how massive it truly was.
it sits in the middle of a giant traffic circle, which is kind of odd now that i think about it. all bunch of famous streets are connected to it, such as champs-elysees. speaking of traffic in paris, it makes dallas traffic look calm. people here literally don't follow any rules. it seems like there's no distinct lanes and motorcycles and cars just zoom in and out of whatever they please. talk about stressful. we walked down champs-elysees, shopped a little, watched some cops and street dancers get in a fight, and made our way back to our hostel. later that night we grabbed dinner & walked back to the eiffel tower. every night on the hour, it lights up and sparkles. like seriously, it's so cool. everyone go.
the next day teaghan, chelsey, and i woke up/figured out the metro(shoutout to chelsey for being our navigator the whole trip)/and went to visit notre dame cathedral! it's in a pretty touristy part of town but it was still really neat to see it. all i really knew about it was that the whole hunchback of notre dame stuff and that it involved gargoyles.
hi gargoyles.
notre dame is absolutely beautiful! i'm so glad we came to see it. i could talk about it, but it won't really do it justice so here's another picture!
after notre dame, we went to visit sainte-chapelle cathedral because it was close by. this is one of the oldest buildings in europe that was directly involved with parisian royalty. it also houses the oldest painting in paris!
it's a horrible picture, but the paintings are on the wall! if i remember correctly, they were painted there in the late 1100's. the upstairs portion of the cathedral is even more stunning. its filled with stained glass windows that literally are from floor to ceiling.
gorgeous, right? architecture from history fascinates me. it's hard to believe that people back then had none of the tools that we do now but still made more beautiful & ornate things. can we make it come back in style? :)
later that night, we all met up to go see a comedy show. it was called "how to be parisian in one hour." it was funny! (obviously). the guy basically made fun of americans the entire time which was pretty entertaining. we then went to the moulin rouge, which was pretty cool. also that night, the guys got tired of paying for the metro so they concocted this plan that chelsey & i would buy tickets and they would just follow us through the gates. nothing went according to plan and somehow they got through with the tickets and chelsey & i were stuck inside. needless to say, i ended up climbing all the way up and over the gate while chelsey literally hurled herself through it on the floor. and then we ran away. fast. because we didn't want a fine. haha. so rebellious, this group. the following day alli&jeff left to go back to germany to finish up karnival. chelsey, teaghan, & i went to the louvre. that place is like a maze! there's three different sections to it, all with different levels. it's unlike any museum i've ever been in before as well. it was in a building that looked like it was once was a palace of some sort. (maybe it was? no idea).
as soon as i saw the huge glass pyramid out back, i immediately freaked out and wanted my life to go all da vinci code on me. (annnnd nobody in my group has read the books and didn't really care. tragic)
anyways, we toured the louvre, which took about half a day. it was actually snowing that day and being able to look at all the amazing art and glance out the windows to see snow swirling around made it an amazing experience. i felt like i was in a different time period! actually, i felt like i was at hogwarts. and i didn't want to leave. later that day, we went to a bookstore for chelsey and eventually made our way to a cafe to escape the snow. teaghan & i tried escargots! it was funny because he was freaaaaaking out. escargots are delicious though! to everyone back home in tejas; go fry up some snails & lemme know whatcha think. we also got crepes that night which is basically a pancake filled with whatever you want. i prefer nutella & bananas. heaven. later that night, we went back to our hostel. we stayed in paris a later day than planned so we ended up going to a new hostel. it was SO NICE. private bathrooms, a hairdryer, free sheets, cheap towels. it made me appreciate the little things. not all hostels are bad, people! the following morning, we woke up to catch our train back to cologne from paris. we assumed the train left at 844am so of course we were just eating breakfast at 7am, chilling, taking our time, etc. luckily, chelsey told me to check the tickets & i quickly noticed that our train left at 8:01am. enter panic mode. we all FREAKED out because we lived on the opposite side of town from gare du nord, the main train station. the metro was no longer an option & missing the train meant that we would have to spend probably about 150 us dollars to get another train ride back. we decided to call a taxi. luckily, it only took 5 minutes to get to us & we made it to the train station with ten minutes to spare(the taxi driver drove so fast and did a bunch of illegal stuff that i was convinced we wouldn't live). we caught the train & headed back to bonn! it was a whirlwind of a weekend but i'm so glad i got the opportunity to go. living in europe for such a long time makes you forget that you're in EUROPE. you get used to it. traveling to another country was a huge wake up call that life is pretty awesome right now. i'm so grateful!
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