So, I’ve never really been much of a fan of Valentine’s Day nor have I been someone who is extremely spontaneous. However, I’m living in Spain for four months! It was time for these things to change.
With less than a week’s notice, I decided that I wanted to see Paris for Valentine’s Day weekend with my boyfriend. Since I am always the careful planner, I think this surprised him and probably everyone else. We booked our flights (or so we thought…let’s just say I will not be using a specific airline ever again), and we were in the air a few days later!
Even though we both had/still have pretty bad colds, the weekend in France was amazing! It was my first trip outside of Spain, so it was very different from what I have been experiencing throughout the last month. The minute we landed in Paris, I realized that I would be totally useless in trying to communicate with my knowledge of about three French words. My boyfriend knows a little French, but definitely not enough to get by with for the whole weekend. Everywhere we went, we asked if they spoke English or Spanish, and luckily many people understood English (or at least a lot of gesturing and pointing). What was both strange and really cool was that Spanish was the first language that came to mind during my entire time in France. Whether a Parisian was speaking to me in English or French, my instinctual reaction was Spanish. I can’t tell you the number of people that just looked at me with a confused expression when I asked for things like milk with my coffee in Spanish. Also, two different French people assumed we were Parisian and asked us for directions! I guess I just look very European and like I somehow know where I’m going…which I hardly ever do here.
We arrived in Paris Thursday night and attempted to find where we were staying. The public transportation system in Paris is very impressive. You can quickly move anywhere in the city with ease. Our problem, however, was getting lost for an hour with all of our stuff on what was supposed to be a nine minute walk from the metro stop to where we were staying. That was fun.
On Friday, we asked the receptionist for an inexpensive place to eat lunch. We were directed to the photo below. Now I love eggs, but this was so gross. If you like really runny, practically raw eggs in the middle of your pizza, then this is the lunch for you! And by the way, I would not call this inexpensive.
After lunch, we spent hours at the Louvre. It was gorgeous inside and out, and I had my picture taken with the Mona Lisa! I was such the tourist. Here is one of my photos taken outside of the Louvre.
After the museum, we decided to take the long walk over to the Eiffel Tower. We sipped coffee and shared a baguette in a park next to the Eiffel Tower as the sun set behind it. This was our view from the park bench:
The next day, we went back to the Eiffel Tower to go up to the top since the line was kilometers long the previous night. Here is what we saw from the very top!
Later on, we met up with some friends from my program who were coincidentally in Paris during the same weekend. We ended the trip by having a great French dinner with them. Dinner wasn’t complete though until we bought crepes filled with nutella, bananas, and almonds from a street vendor…soooooo good!
I would love to see Paris again some day. One weekend just wasn’t long enough 🙂
Location: Paris, France
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