Paris, France

This weekend I went to Paris, France with Ann, Liz, and Derek. I absolutely LOVED it! Brad and Jake went to Germany to visit Josef and his family. Josef was an exchange student that came to live with Jake's dad years ago. He has a farm and his family owns a hotel and beer garden. Another large group went to Cologne, Germany this weekend. I will talk about my weekend though.

On Friday morning I woke up and packed my backpack for Paris. The four of us rode our bikes to the ATM to get euros and then to the Leuven train station. Our train was a little after 10:30. We rode from Leuven to Brussels Midi. From Brussels Midi, we thought that we could catch a train 7 minutes later to Paris Nord that would get us there shortly after 12:30. However, it was a high speed train that required reservations (which we didn't have!). So, we were informed that the next high speed train with seats available was Saturday morning. So we were stuck riding regular trains all the way to Paris. It only ended up costing us 3 euros though instead of 36. But, we didn't end up getting to Paris until after 4 PM. We rode from Brussels Midi to Mond, Belgium. We had a 20 minute layover there. We bought wonderful Belgian waffles at the train station. They were warm and super sweet. Liz and I got plain waffles, and Ann and Derek got waffles dipped in chocolate. We all loved them. Then we rode from Mond to Lille Flanders. We had an hour and a half layover in Lille Flanders. Liz and I had to use the bathroom so we were willing to pay the 50 cent charge. But, when we went to the bathroom, there was a lady in there that was bleeding from her nose. She had been snorting drugs. The bathroom attendant had set off the alarm so that the police would come get this lady. Four police showed up. The lady ended up throwing punches at them. They escorted her back to the train floor level and then ended up letting her go. A few minutes later was our first view of the French army walking around with machine guns. We ended up seeing this 5-10 more times throughout our weekend in Paris. It was super wierd how their army just walks around the country with machine guns to keep the peace. Nevertheless, we went out into France (Lille is on the Belgium-France border) to a small cafe. I had a Cola Light which cost me 2,80 euros! So expensive. Liz and Derek both had omelettes with fries and salad. Omelettes are a very popular dish in French cafes. Then we rode from Lille to Paris Nord. When we arrived in Paris, we walked out of the train station into the street. The first thing we saw was a sex shop directly acorss the street from the train station. We navigated our way to our hotel after 30 minutes or so. It was located on a pretty bad side of town and was extremely hard to find. However, once inside, it was very nice and cozy. We had 2 rooms, each with a double bed. Ann and I shared the "smurf room" which was completely blue! It was on the top floor though (6th) so we had an awesome balcony. The hotel ended up costing each of us 55 euros for both nights. Not too bad. It had free sheets, towels, toilets, toilet paper, and showers. We had a hard time finding the shower though because it was inside a room labeled "Douche." Weird, huh? After we checked into our hotel and left our backpacks in the room, we set out for the Arc de Triomphe. On the way we saw lots of awesome monuments and churches. After taking pictures and being exhausted from a 2 hour walk across Paris, we headed out for the Eiffel tower. It was beautiful! We finally got there an hour later and went up and took pictures of it. We realized that we were allowed to ride to the top of it. However, we were starving. So, we went and ate at the Eiffel Tower Cafe. The four of us each had delicious food with 2 bottles of wine. We also had chocolate crepes and creme brule for dessert. Even though our bill was well over 100 euros, the food was delicious and I LOVED my salad. Then we went back to the Eiffel tower to wait for it to light up in the night sky. We got in line to ride to the top. Halfway through the line, they announced that the top floor ride was closed. So, we were able to ride to the second floor which was halfway up the tower. While waiting in line, a African man came up to me and starting making me a bracelet out of string. I tried to escape him, but I couldn't. He made me wait until he finished and then asked me to pay him for it. I did not pay him and walked off. It was very scary. We found souvenirs at the Eiffel Tower as well. Being halfway up the Eiffel tower at night was AMAZING! It was hard to capture the beauty of the city in my pictures. At the end of Friday night, Ann and my cameras were both showing low battery. We were all 4 exhausted from the long day of travelling and walking. So, we decided to get a cab to take us back to our hotel. Our cab driver drove us in circles to increase our mileage and ended up dropping us off at a huge church called Sacre Coeur. It was on top of a giant hill and was populated with lots of teens drinking alcohol and smoking and looking over the city. We had to walk down lots of stairs and about 15 minutes through the dark city to get back to our hotel. We all crashed.

We woke up around 9:30 on Saturday morning and prepared for a long day of siteseeing and walking. I think we ended up walking between 10 and 15 miles on Saturday. We went to the train station to try to get tickets for the high speed train on Sunday. We ended up having to get the same tickets for the same route we took to Paris back to Leuven. Then, we decided to walk toward the Notre Dame. On the way however, we mapped out a route so that we could see as many possible monuments as we possibly could. We saw lots of beautiful churches, fountains, and magnificent architecture. We stopped at a small chocolate shop on the way to pick up some souvenirs for our family and friends. We finally reached Notre Dame and we were all in awe and amazement. It was huge!!! We were able to walk inside and tour the church. We spent around an hour inside it. It was soooo amazing. The stained glass was outrageous. We all bought souvenirs from Notre Dame. Ann got a roseary for her mom, Derek and Liz got things for their family, and I bought a bracelet. Then we ate lunch at a cafe near Notre Dame. I FINALLY had tap water and a sandwich. It was good food, again. Then we stopped by some Paris souvenir shops and made our way to the Palais du Luxebourg. It is basically a huge castle in a large park. There is a pond where people bring their miniature sail boats and there are lawn chairs everywhere. People come sit there and read or eat or just relax. It was gorgeous. Then we headed to the Louvre. Liz and Derek were super excited to go there. It was gigantic! And beautiful of course. I loved the glass pyramid that you have to walk through to get into the museum. Ann and I decided to go wait for Liz and Derek in the lawn outside the Louvre. It took them over 2 hours to view only about 1/10 of the museum, if that. But, they saw the Mona Lisa! Ann and I passed the time by relaxing and eating an ice cream cone. We also people watched and watched a nearby ferris wheel. Then we walked by more monuments on our way back to our hotel. It was after 6 PM and we were all exhausted, once again. However, Ann and I wanted to go by and see Moulin Rouge. So we walked there and saw it. There is a wind mill thing on top of the building that turns. It's pretty amazing. The cost is 150 euros for dinner and the show at 7 PM. I would love to go one day; it seems like a pretty cool event. However, the street that it was located on was pretty bad. It was nasty and filled with strip clubs and more sex shops.... ugh! But, we finally made it back to our hotel. I bet we had to walk 5 miles or more just to get home. We decided to eat at a pizzeria near our hotel. I had a ham and cheese calzone with tap water. It was delicious. We got back to the hotel around 8:45. Ann took a nap while I finished reading Three Weeks with my Brother by Nicholas and Micah Sparks. It's a great book! Then Liz and Derek came to visit us on our balcony. Liz brough her bottle of wine, hehe. I visited with them for a while, went downstairs to use Ann's laptop in the kitchen area where she could get wifi service, and then took a shower. I went to bed around 10 PM.

We woke up at nearly 11 AM this morning. We slept 13 hours!!! And my legs were super sore when I woke up. We got to the train station around 11:30. I did some last minute souvenir shopping in the train station. Then we all got sandwiches for lunch. We boarded our train to Lille Flanders at 12:58 PM. However, when we got to Lille Flanders, our train to Liege (we were getting off at Tournei) was cancelled. It took us a while to realize that though because we didn't know what cancelled was in French. By the way, everyone speaks French in France. It was hard communicating. Ann speaks quite a bit of French though, so she got us by. While in Lille, we met 3 boys who had just graduated from Highland Park high school in Dallas. One is going to be an Aggie in the Corp of Cadets beginning in August. We talked to them while we waited for our train and exchanged email addresses. They have been backpacking Europe since last weekend when we were in Amsterdam (they were there too). We finally caught a train to Tournei and then to Brussels Central. Ann and I bought some Belgian White chocolate while in the Brussels train station. We met up with some other students on the trip that had been in Amsterdam at Brussels Central. Then we finally rode the train back to Leuven. We got our bikes and then headed back to the house. I went up to Brad's room to give him a souvenir I had bought for him. Then we went out to dinner at De Rector. We chatted about the weekend and had a nice evening together. After getting back here to the student house, I uploaded pictures to Facebook, graded a set of homework assignments and recorded the grades, submitted my time sheet for working as the student grader, unpacked all of my stuff from this weekend, talked to my parents on Skype, attempted to talk to my sister Kayla on Skype (her phone is messed up and our call kept dropping), and now am writing my blog. I need to still take a shower and then go to sleep because we have class tomorrow.

This week we have class on Monday and Tuesday. We have a seminar speaker on Tuesday. On Tuesday evening we have the "Welcome to Leuven" dinner provided by our program at Dynasty Wok. Professors and students from K.U. Leuven will also be invited. Tuesday evening many students are participating in a beer pong tournament at a local bar on the square. Then on Wednesday is a National Belgium Holiday. So, we have no class. Ann and I are planning to ride the train to Oostende (the Belgium beach) for the day. Then Thursday we have another field trip. A group of 7 of us will be spending Friday through Monday in Munich, Germany. Wow, this study abroad trip is flying by! Love from Belgium to all of you back in Texas!!! And a special shout out to my parents who drove to College Station this weekend to mow and weed-eat my grass and water all my plants and the grass. They are soooooo wonderful!

I only posted a few pictures from this weekend here because it takes so long. But, my entire 208 photos that I took this weekend are on my Facebook under my album called Paris!!!