Hey ah guys! This four day weekend was the best yet, a very cliché statement, but the absolute truth. We spent 2 days in Paris and then spent the weekend in Normandy seeing the WWII tours with my Uncle Sean.(To the left is a picture Joe made on his iPhone haha)
Thursday
We left for Paris Thursday morning at 6:35 a.m. and arrived in an airport that was no bigger than the Dixon city airport at 9:05 a.m. This airport was called Paris-Beauvais; it should have been called Paris-oblivious because we had NO idea where we were. Luckily, Courtney and I researched what we were supposed to do. We took a 15 euro bus to Paris, this was an hour bus trip to the city, thanks Ryan Air. So everything went flawless getting there. We got off the bus and took the metro to the girls’ hostel; Bill, Pete, and I stayed in downtown Paris with my French roommate from last semester, Josselin Petit-Hoang. Possibly one of the nicest and kind people anyone could ever meet. He took us three in, gave us all a bed to sleep in (keep in mind that his apartment is a studio apartment in downtown Paris, so it was crammed), took us to an authentic restaurant, and so much more. Josselin made the trip 100 times better just because he knew everything that we could do and made it fun for us as well. Thursday, after we had dropped our baggage off at the girls hostel, we immediately went wandering the streets of Paris (that’s the only way to learn your surroundings isn’t it? Walking around aimlessly hoping to find something you’ve read in a book and/or heard about). So we began walking, and found Notre Dame (the only medieval cathedral in Paris) about 40 minutes from their hostel. It was awesome! I took 138 pictures in 2 hours, it got to the point where Pete and Bill were telling me to quit being a mom and asking to have pictures taken together. After we left Notre Dame we walked over to the Louvre Museum. But, the girls started freaking out and were like “OMG, look it’s the lock bridge!!” Us guys looked at each other like who the hell cares, what is it? And they told us it’s a lover’s bridge, where the guy buys a lock, writes his girlfriends name on it, and locks it to the bridge. I told the girls that this bridge is dumb because statistically speaking 50% of the people who have locks on here are divorced or never got married. So once we were done with that great experience, we finally made it to the Louvre. As students we got in FREE which was awesome because otherwise it was a $25-$30 admission fee. We walked around in the museum, after taking photos outside the infamous glass pyramid that it is known for. The most interesting part for me was seeing the Mona Lisa, and realizing how small the thing is. I thought it was a normal size painting, but it was not bigger than 2ftx2ft it was TINY! Something I found funny was that directly across from the Mona Lisa was a picture from an artist I cannot remember, but it was a painting of the Wedding of Cana. This painting had ridiculous detail. It took the artist 2 years to paint the entire thing. The painting was at least 20 feet high and more than that wide. It was awesome. After we had seen the Louvre museum, we were pretty tired, seeing that we had only had 2 hours of sleep (the plane ride). So, we went back to the hostel and got a quick nap in before Allie, who is a friend from school studying in London with Mike, arrived. Once Allie arrived, around 6:30 p.m. Joe called me from work to tell me that he would be off work at 8 and that we were to meet him at the metro at 8:30 because he had made reservations for a restaurant for 10. We got there to the restaurant, and it was extremely small (very European). The dinner took 2.5 hours, but it was the best meal I’ve had since I left the states, sorry senora. The meal consisted of appetizers, four bottles of French red wine, and a huge entrée. The service was subpar according to Joe, but it was very good food. After dinner, Joe took us to the Sacre Basilica, the second highest point of Paris aside from the Eiffel Tower, to get a nighttime view of the city. As we were walking up, we noticed that the Eiffel Tower was lit up. Joe explained to us that it lights up every night at midnight. It was a pretty cool scene. After we left there it was late, around 1 a.m., and Joe had work in the morning. So, we booked it home and stayed the night.
Use this link to see ALL 253 Paris photos I took (just copy and paste it to the internet) :
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150839169928327.506032.517268326&type=3&l=9bae7b134d
Friday
Woke up the next morning and went to a pastry store. That stuff was amazing as well. I don’t not remember the name of my pastry, but it was dough with cookie dough spread between it. We left there after breakfast, and met the girls at the hostel. When we got there we were surprised to find that Mike just got in from London!!! So Mike traveled with us the entire day as well! Like us, he had only a couple of hours of sleep so he was running on fumes. We went to the Eiffel Tower (this is Friday) and went up in the tower. Pete was suffering from some vertigo walking up the steps, seeing as he is not very fond of heights. The pictures I was able to get were pretty good, some were crappy though unfortunately. We all were hungry from walking around all morning so, we decided to grab a Heineken and a pastry in the Eiffel Tower café. This was pretty surreal, as we were conversing it set in that we guys were hanging out in the Eiffel Tower, in a bar within the Eiffel Tower, and in Paris together. It was awesome. So soon after we finished shot gunning our beers, we walked across the street to what I want to say is the north? Anyways, we walked across a busy main street of Paris and got another view of the Eiffel Tower. After a brief photo shoot we managed to navigate ourselves to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a rather dull, but equally important monument in comparison to Paris. I enjoyed grabbing a few pictures of it, and finding out that the French’s equivalent to the American Tomb of the Unknown Solider was placed underneath the Arc itself. Skipping ahead to that night, Josselin (Joe, my French roommate from last semester) was celebrating his birthday on Friday night! So, we organized a party for Joe at his small, studio apartment invited some of his French friends and all of the American SLU students that were in Paris. Imagine 15 people crammed into a normal sized kitchen, while all have been drinking. You can imagine the mess we woke up to the next morning, but I’ll get to that in a quick second. Joe took everyone to a Paris club, that he said is one of the most clubs in Paris. It was AWESOME! It was along the riverside, nestled into a side wall of the river wall. We stayed there until 2 or 3 then headed home anxiously awaiting our train trip with Uncle Sean to Normandy the next morning.
Saturday
We set our alarms that early morning when we got back to Joe’s for 9:30 a.m. because I knew Uncle Sean would be calling me once he arrived in Paris. Well, long story short my phone is a piece and couldn’t receive calls in France. This would have been great information the impolite Spanish woman who sold me the phone the 1st week of school could have provided me with, but I guess I cannot expect a woman as kindhearted as she was to tell me details that would have helped me. So, luckily I got on Josselin’s phone and say that he had texts from Courtney saying Uncle Sean was trying to get a hold of me. I called Uncle Sean, and we made the 2nd train out to Normandy at noon, missing the first one because of our phone troubles. Live and learn applies here I think. We arrived in Normandy around 4 pm, 1.5 hours later, and were met by our hardly censored tour guide Edward and his dog General Plato. The first thing that came out of his mouth was “Who is the bloody dumbass that missed the train, and has gone and fucked out tour up from the start.” Good start.
Hanging out in a machine gun post from WWII.
Uncle Sean!
Bill, Pete, Uncle Sean, and I on Omaha Beach. The site where the Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy.
The rest of these pictures are from the American Cemetery in Normandy where 9,000 + soldiers are buried.
Well we immediately got to know Edward, who turned to be out the coolest, most knowledgeable tour guide a person could ask for. He was a great tour guide and friend to us Saturday and Sunday, we were lucky to have him showing us around. He was able to add humor to all the history we were seeing, which made it manageable to not only take in all the facts we were getting, but also to enjoy ourselves and never feel bored or lost. He also had an interesting live hailing from Ireland. To explain, he has lived on 5 different continents, holding jobs in all these places, studied Organic Chemistry because his mother told him history would not get him a job, knows German, French, Italian, Chinese, and English, and knows every second of the happenings in Normandy during WWII.
Right away he took us to Omaha beach, the main location of the American attacks on the Germans. He told us the minute we got in the car, that he was going to set the story right and change our American opinion that which “is based on the most historically inaccurate film of WWII –Saving Private Ryan.” Saturday night after a long day of touring we arrived at our hotel and then left our bags in the rooms and went to grab some food. At this point Uncle Sean was being a trooper, jet lagged and tired. We went to a restaurant, the three students got steak and Uncle Sean ordered fish (he didn’t use the butter Aunt Dawn, promise!). Dinner was great, although, the service in France is equivalent to a snail’s pace. We finished a bottle of wine and a bottle of beer before we even looked at a menu. After dinner, we all walked back to the hotel and had a nightcap glass of wine. It was the perfect end to the best day of my life. I also was lucky enough to talk to Megan, Bridget, and Aunt Dawn on the phone. Unfortunately, I had called Grandma and Grandpa Long since I haven’t heard or seen them since the day before I left in January, but they were out soaking up the sun living the life : )! So Grandma and Grandpa Long if you are reading this I love you both and look forward to speaking to you over Skype when Megan gets down there!
Sunday
We woke up early Sunday around 8 and went downstairs ate breakfast, and then hit the tour trail again. We toured the American cemetery where the scene from Saving Private Ryan was filmed. This was an emotional experience because we say 9,500 American graves of men who were our age. It was amazing though. There are 41 fathers and sons/brother combinations buried this cemetery, while 174 Jewish-American soldiers are buried there, too. An interesting fact about this place is that the American government owns it and employs French people to take care of it. We left Normandy today at 3 or so and arrived back in Paris at 5, in time for us to take a bus to our airport at 6 p.m. We arrived back in Madrid at 12:35 a.m. and senora had dinner for us still at 1 a.m. Prior to us leaving we had told her that we would be arriving back in Madrid too late for dinner, and she told us we are never too late for dinner and that it would be ready for us whenever we made it home Monday morning.
Again, included is the URL for all the 200+ photos I took in Normandy:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150839274363327.506052.517268326&type=3&l=e09629330d
SHOUT OUT: Due to the amount of generosity we were shown from Josselin and Uncle Sean, I wanted to thank them for all that they did for us this past weekend!
Josselin was way too welcoming to all of us and was the best host we could have asked for. Love that kid and cannot wait for him to come visit Saint Louis again.
Uncle Sean…I don’t know what to say other than THANK YOU! You were way way way too generous this weekend, and you made the entire trip possible. Without you planning this trip, finding Edward, and everything else in between, we probably would have 1) not gone at all and 2) been lost and just looking at beaches. I’m glad my friends and I were able to share this experience together with you! Thanks again for everything; I hope you had as good of a time as we did. Love ya Uncle Sean, don’t know how I will ever be able to repay you for this weekend.
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