The City of Lights

After our final exam for our Human Health & Disease class, a vacation was needed. We decided to go abroad while studying abroad; a trip to Paris and Amsterdam fit the criteria. Our travel group consisted of about 10 people, most of which were in my session 1 class. We had a short flight to Paris on Wednesday evening, followed by a small commute by bus and metro to our hostel. From what I've seen so far, the hostels are fairly nice, considering we would only be there for a few nights. Half of our group was at one hostel, and the other half was staying in another.
















For our first day in the city of lights, the plan was to go see the Notre Dame, talk a walking tour of the city center, check out the Louvre, and take a walking tour of the Montmartre District. So thats what we did. But along the way, we found numerous bridges that were covered in padlocks of different shapes and sizes. And they all had writing on them, usually the names of a couple. The story is that you and your loved one writes your names on a lock, latches it to the fence, locks it, and throws the key into the canal. This then symbolizes that their loves will always remain. So we all pitched in and bought a lock, wrote something on it, and put it on the bridge.














While on our walking tour, we got to see the glass pyramids that are inside the Louvre, which is always a cool sight. Also, it was raining during most of the tour, which is the reason for the lack of pictures from that timeframe. Later that afternoon, we headed to the Montmartre District. In the tour, we learned a lot about the history of the area as well as memorable landmarks, such as the apartment where Vincent van Gogh lived.

The next morning, we enjoyed  a nice European continental breakfast at our hostel before heading to our Versailles tour.  Our tour wasn't taking us inside the palace, but rather through the gardens, which were still incredible. The gardens have a very symmetrical feel to them, surrounding the scattered marblestone sculptures and ponds. Overall, the tour was a great experience and it was cool to see how the previous loyalty lived in Paris. 

The palace from the outside was very extravagant, with the large entranceway and detailed architecture. This was one of my favorite places that we visited while in Paris.

Towards the afternoon, we had one more place to visit: the Eiffel Tower. We had thought prior to arriving in France that we would have enough time to take the elevator to the top, but the line ended up being several hours long; this didn't stop me from getting partially up to the top. I decided to take the stairs to the first platform instead of the elevator to save some time. The climb wasn't that difficult, but it was definitely windy when I made it to the first deck. I told the rest of my group to go find a place to relax in front of the tower so that I could take a picture of them from a birds' eye view. I could see the line to go up the escalator as well, which looked like a bunch of ants lined up.

Later that evening, we had a nice italian dinner and talked about our plans for the train ride to Amsterdam the following morning.








Paris was definitely a treat to see and a great place to learn about. I'm sure that I will be back there eventually, so that I can finally get to the top of the Eiffel tower.