Paris, je t'aime!

 

 

Paris was FANTASTIC. I've been there once before, but didn't really remember much of it, so I assumed I hadn't been too impressed. Now I was; everything was quaint, charming and everyone was friendly. I was there with my three best friends and we had so much fun – in fairness, you could probably have dumped us in Siberia and we would have enjoyed ourselves :P

I flew with Easy Jet (€107e, return, including a check-in bag) for the first time, and found it ok, pretty much like Ryan-air: they charged for extra luggage, they don't assign seats, they sell priority boarding and don't give you any food or drink on the plane, unless you are willing to pay. The flight was about 1 hour and 50 minutes long and everything was on time. I flew to Orly (sud) and had to take three trains to reach our hostel, near the Bastille. That felt really complicated compared to Berlin.

Our hostel, Auberge Internationale des Jeunes, was really basic, you could even call it crappy, but it only cost us €17 per night for a four person room. You get what you pay for... A friend of mine worked there when she lived in Paris, and actually tried to persuade me to cancel our reservations. We had already paid a deposit, so we decided we could handle it, and it really wasn't that bad: the room was very prison-like and the bathroom door was open on the top and the bottom halves, but it was also clean and seemed very safe. It was probably a good time of the year to be traveling: the hostel was pretty empty and all the landmarks we visited were bearable and not overcrowded.

We did very little proper sightseeing and didn't go to any museums. My favourite sight was the Montmartre area. I wish it had been a little warmer so we could have had some wine on the stairs of the Sacré-Cœur church... But we did drink enough red wine to make up for it on other occasions. We also ate many pain au chocolats, baguettes and drank many cups of wonderful coffee – seriously, it was delicious everywhere! Everywhere we walked we saw people being served amazingly big looking salads, and particularly the goats cheese caught our eye. We tried desperately to find suitable salad places when we got hungry, but never managed. On two nights we even ended up settling for pizza. On our last night we were strolling around the Latin Quarters and Notre Dame, and finally found a restaurant that served a salad with warm goats cheese (€14,50) and without meat. La Fourmi Ailée turned out to offer us the best meal we had all weekend, and in a really cosy atmosphere, too. To top it all off, the waitor was cute and to our surprise we found tofu lasagna on their menu (€13,50)!


Now I'm a big fan of Paris and want to take A there as soon as I can! Although we just got an invitation today to a wedding in London next spring, so maybe Paris can wait...