This update is coming quite late in the game. Over the Easter Weekend, I traveled to Paris to reunite with one of my best friends, who is currently studying abroad in Dublin.
I arrived on Friday around noon. After roaming around aimlessly for what felt like an hour, I finally stumbled across my hostel, where I met my friend a bit later.
We decided to kick off our weekend with a visit to none other than Notre Dame Cathedral. Being Disney fanatics, my friend and I were looking forward to following in Quasimodo’s footsteps.
Unfortunately for use, my friend and I both forgot that it was Good Friday, which meant there were huge crowds of people assembling all around the Cathedral. While waiting in line to see the inside of the Cathedral, my friend and I had numerous opportunities to take photographs of this amazing structure. Although I knew I would love it, I never would have expected it to be just so incredibly extraordinary. And the inside was even better. The benefit of it being Good Friday was that we actually could see a church service taking place inside the Cathedral. It was definitely something to cross off the bucket list.
I tried to take pictures on the inside, but none of them did the Cathedral justice.
After touring the inside of the Cathedral, my friend and I knew we couldn’t actually leave without a climb to the top. Alas, so did everyone else. We ended up standing in line for over 2 hours waiting for our chance.
Fortunately, we found a crepe stand across the street to keep us entertained while we waited.
After our 2-hour wait, we finally got to climb up. And I was definitely not prepared for that journey. There were so many stairs to climb and, of course, they were made of marble. If you didn’t know, marble is a terrible surface for stairs, especially in a historical cathedral. They were worn down and incredibly slippery. I had to give myself a pat on the back for not falling down on the way up or on the way down. But, in the end, the view was so worth it. There’s nothing quite like the Paris skyline.
After spending essentially the entire afternoon at Notre Dame, my friend and I headed over to visit the Lourve, which was free for students that night. I really didn’t know what to expect, except that the Lourve was huge. And, indeed, it was.
Naturally, when we first arrived, I had to take a clich� photo.
Once we were inside the Lourve, my friend and I first decided to seek out the Mona Lisa, as most do. We ended up walking past where she was about 4 times before finally realizing where she was. Once we found her, I couldn’t believe it took us so long to find her as people surrounded her. But we weaseled our way to the front and took a selfie, of course.
Then we decided to just walk around other portions of the Lourve. We went through the Egyptian exhibit and then found some statues, which were all too fun to imitate.
At the end of our visit, we went to the Middle Ages exhibit, which ended up just being a bunch of stone walls that formerly made up a castle that stood where the Lourve now is. As my friend said, those stone walls pretty much summed up what happened in the Middle Ages.
After concluding our visit to the Lourve, my friend and I took an evening walk, and it was beautiful. First, we spotted the Eiffel Tower, lit up in all its glory.
Then, we just walked. We found the Bridge of Locks by accident and walked along the river. It was the perfect ending to a perfect first day in Paris.
Up next, Day 2:
A Journey to Versailles.
Emily .xx
Location: Paris, France
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