Bienvenue a Paris!

So I'm not really a "big-city" kinda person when it comes to Europe - I tend to like the smaller, rural areas...but I loved Paris! It was so beautiful! It was different from all the other big cities I've been to in Europe and I really enjoyed it. We took the EuroStar (under the English Channel) into Paris Saturday morning, got settled into our hotel, and then took the long walk down to the Eiffel Tower - it took us about an hour and a half to get there (we stopped a few times on the way). I was completely enthralled with the tower - I just felt giddy looking at it! I have way too many pictures of it, but I figured it was necessary. We were lucky enough for the big rain clouds to blow away just as we got to the tower so we had perfect blue skies and sunshine for our pictures. We looked around there for a while, grabbed a little something to eat, and then met up for the Fat Tire Bike Tour. I had heard only great things about this tour from people I know who have done it, but I never imagined that it would end up being the best night of my semester! I had so much fun on that tour! It was a four-hour tour all around Paris with stops at major historic places and at an awesome ice-cream stand (it was like velvet ice-cream....so good!) It was so neat to be able to see Paris at night, and riding bikes was so much quicker and easier than trying to walk all over the place. We were pretty entertaining to watch, I'm sure, as most of us had not been on a bike since elementary school and our skills were a little out of practice. We were also trying to fight against the busses and taxis that we were supposed to share a lane with (whose idea was it to put little, inexperienced bikers in the same land as huge busses - we called them "sharks" - and angry taxis...?) Towards the end of the tour, we took a cruise up and down the Seine River so that we could see everything right along the River, including the Eiffel Tower and all the main bridges. That was such a fun night! Sunday, we got up and went to Notre Dame to go to a service, but the times were off and there were all kinds of tourists just walking through the service, so we decided not to stay. We went to the L'Ourve for a while (a short while...) where I saw the Mona Lisa and many famous sculptures. I'm not much of a museum person, so we didn't stay long, but it was neat to see those pieces of art I've seen all my life. Then a few of us went back to Notre Dame to climb the tower to the top - 400 stairs. We were pretty worn out, but it was an awesome view - definitely worth it. Monday, we found out that the Olympic Torch was going to be at the Eiffel Tower around lunchtime, so of course, we had to go. Well, apparently the French are infamous for their rebellious nature, and they tend to protest a lot. So, naturally, there were huge groups of protesters at the Olympic Torch run - they were supporting the freedom of Tibet, and since they don't like China, and the Olympics are in China, they weren't too happy. I've never seen so many police in my life - I think I heard that there were 3,000 there, and the Torch was put out 3 times by protesters in Paris alone - it was pretty crazy. We had a great view of people getting tackled by police and some innocent, very excited Chinese people who probably had nothing to do with Tibet, but they were still the subject of a bit of harassment. After all the chaos, we went to a chinese restaurant (in honor of the upcoming Olympics) called "Chez Tang" - I thought that was a great combination of French and Chinese! After that, we went back and rested for a while and then went to dinner. Tuesday morning we went shopping/sight-seeing on some streets near our hotel - I finished up my gift-buying (get excited girls!) and bought a few souvenirs for myself including a bag and some paintings. After lunch (probably nutella banana crepes - I had a few of those while I was in Paris) we went to the Musee D'Orsay. Unfortunately we were a few minutes late and missed our group going in, but we werent about to give up, so after trying to talk to about 6 different French people at the museum, we finally managed to convince one of them to let us in to go find our group - I was so proud of us! I got to see a lot of French Impressionism there which was neat, because a lot of it was familiar to me. Monet is still my favorite and they had lots of his work there, along with Van Gogh, Degas and Renoir. After we were done in the museum, we went back over to the Eiffel Tower to go to the top! It was a long ride up (thank goodness we didn't have to climb the stairs), but it was an awesome view of Paris! It's so neat to look at pictures of the tower now and think, "I've been on the top of that!" Then a few of us girls decided we wanted to have a nice, French dinner, so we found a nice cafe near the tower and had some awesome French food. I had an omelette with ham and cheese, and the best creme brulee of my life for dessert! Finally, on Wednesday, after a long, tiring week in France, we did some last minute shopping and walking around, got some last pastries and one last nutella banana crepe, and headed back home. We got back to Oxford last night, exhausted and excited to see our familiar beds.