Paris!

I forgot to write about my weekend in Paris....last weekend, after thanksgiving, I went with Erica, Anna and Alee to Paris for the weekend! It was good for the most part. Our hostel was awful but the actual seeing Paris part was really fun!!! Alee has friends in Paris so Friday night we ate at their house, but before that we wandered up and down the Champs and looked at all the lights, the window displays and the Christmas markets. It was soooo beautiful!! I took soooooo many pictures! I have 2 photo albums online and I didn't even post all of them! lol. So after the Champs, we went to Alee's friend's house and had dinner then back to the hostel. 

Saturday we got up and we saw Montmartre, Sacre Coeur -- which was really cool because they started putting up their Nativity Scene which was BEAUTIFUL. Then after Sacre Coeur we made our way over to Notre Dame and the Latin Quarter. Notre Dame was also gorgeous - it had a big tree with lights on it outside, and the inside had another amazing Nativity Scene. When we went to Notre Dame, actually, there was a service going on and they were singing Christmas carols and celebrating the beginning of Advent. After that we wandered around and then decided to go to Sainte Chapelle which was really pretty, but it wasn't super sunny so you couldn't appreciate it as much. Saturday night we went and saw the Eiffel Tower and night and took pictures - it was lit up blue with the EU stars on it because the French President Sarkozy is currently the head of the EU.  Then we went and ate dinner at this cute little restaurant nearby. Then we headed back to our hostel. 

So when we woke up both Saturday and Sunday we noticed that we had bug bites on us but didn't really think about it, until Saturday into Sunday when Erica and I woke up and had bugs all over us! it was DISGUSTING! We have since figured out that they were bed bugs and that all of us got bit even though we had our sleep sheets, our beds were apparently infested which is just NASTY! We all took really long showers and washed all of our clothes and now we're all paranoid about bugs. It was seriously GROSS. 

Sunday morning, we were going to go to the Jewish Quarter but it was rainy and gross so we decided to spend the whole day in the Louvre which was cool. We saw a lot of paintings we studied in Art History, the Mona Lisa, the Coronation of King Louis, and other cool paintings. We also saw Hamarabi's Code in the Egyptian exhibit which I thought was sooooooo cool! and we also saw Napoleon's apartments, Marie-Antoinette's last letter, King Louis' last letter and all sorts of really cool things. 

Here are pictures from Paris: album one and album two. 

ooh PS - I come home in 17 days! I love it here, but I'm excited to come home. It's weird seeing all of the Christmas decorations and trying to think of Christmas ideas for people - so if you have any ideas, please please let me know!!! <3