This was our first weekend with not taking an overnight train, or leaving on Thursday! We all decided to take the night off and we would leave early on Friday morning since Paris is so close. We left bright and early at 9 am and arrived in Paris by 11:30 AM. One of the best decisions we made during the whole trip was right when we got off the train we spoke with visitors information and they told us to buy a metro pass. So for 18 euro we got unlimited metro travel. Considering how much we wanted to see in such a short time, this came in handy! It saved us a lot of time from always buying a new ticket and it payed for itself on the first day we were there.
We went first to our hotel and found out we couldn’t officially check in until 3 pm. It was around 12:15, so to waste time we sat down at a near by restaurant that was delicious. We had a choice of a variety of things like pizza, lasagna, salad etc… Josh was sneaky and somewhere on the menu found a 4 course meal for a good price and was sitting there eating the most tasty looking foods in front of us while we enjoyed our simple pizza. In most places we go, our lunches and dinners are much longer than in the States. It is much more relaxing, the waiter leaves us alone until we are ready and then we have to flag him down to get our check or he will assume we will sit there all evening!

After lunch we went to the Sacre Coeur Cathedral, which happened to be around the corner from our hotel. It was beautiful. It sat up on a high hill with a million steps ready for us to climb up. Everywhere we go in Europe there are people trying to sell us something, anything! Anyways, at the church when we walked in there was a group of very persistent men who grabbed as many of us as possible and put bracelets around our wrists and started talking a mile a minute. somehow myself and some others got out of it, but two of the guys finally gave in a gave a few euro to these men. That was the only the beginning of the constant nagging by salesmen in Paris!

We walked back to our hotel, waited a few more minutes and finally they had one room out of three ready for us. We dropped all of our bags in the one room and headed to the Louvre. From 6-9 on fridays the Louvre is free for 18-26 year olds! We were able to see the most amazing pieces of art for free. We spent 3 hours in the museum, seeing the Mona Lisa and the countless Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. After three hours, the museum closed and we had probably been through maybe 1/4 of it. It was the largest museum I had ever seen! This will be put on my list of things to go back and finish the entire museum one day!

We left the museum super hungry and found a kebab place nearby. Disclaimer: Kabob’s are EVERYWHERE in Europe, they are the fast food of this continent. After dinner we ordered our first crepe of the trip, Josh and I shared it… it was delicious!!! We split up after dessert and half of us went on the ferris wheel in the city and got to see the city all lit up, beautiful sights. I discovered that my camera doesn’t take pictures well at night, but i had to work with what I had. After the ferris whell, we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe to see it at night, lit up. It was massive!!

Finally the night was complete, we had finished our first day in Paris and I had already fallen in love with it. We checked into our final 2 rooms, and fell asleep with plans to wake up early for the Eiffel tower.