Lala In Italia: An American Girl in Paris Part 1

So, I was fortunate enough to be able to make my way to Paris, France during the break between session one and two. I absolutely adore Paris! Not so much the French. They are a little cruel but Paris is beautiful. My friend Danielle Valdez is studying in Paris for the second half of Summer and I met up with her for a few days.

Like I mentioned in my last post, Saturday was a very rough day. I had to say bye to all my friends (some I had to say bye to twice) and that was really hard but I was also about to go to Paris and that was really exciting. I really liked traveling by myself and I wasn't really all that scared. I am kind of used to traveling by now and know how the system works but I did miss the conversations. I flew RyanAir again and my flight actually went pretty smoothly. I got into Paris 10:00p.m. Actually, I arrived at the Beauvais airport which is about an hour and a half away from the city. I didn't really know where to go once I got there but I saw a bunch of people from my flight get on this bus, so I went with my intuition and I hoped on too! I made the right decision because this bus took me straight to the city. Once we made it to the bus stop in the city, I found myself a taxi and went straight to my hotel. Let me tell you, my hotel was pretty amazing. I don't think I have ever stayed in such a nice place. I mean, I got free slippers? There were also amazing bathrobes to match, but I knew those weren't free. I had a double room for two nights because Danielle was coming on Sunday to stay there with me. It was so nice that it was hard to get out of bed on Sunday but I did and I was not disappointed.

Danielle took me to all the main Paris attractions on Sunday and then of course we did a little shopping. Paris is having this city wide sale going on right now called Soldes, so the shopping I did wasn't too bad :). Basically everything was on sale. The stores were way too crazy even for me though. Apparently, soldes happens twice a year and is where/why Parisians have such great style. They stock up on clothes for the rest of the year because the prices can be up to 80% off, even major designers. After our day of sightseeing and shopping, we went back to our hotel to relax a little bit because our feet were killing us. I have actually noticed the more down time I have the more my feet hurt because I'm finally letting myself feel the pain. So, it is better for me not to rest because then I just continue to have numb feet 24/7. After we rested and showered, we went to look for some dinner. It was weird because everything was closed. I guess it was a Sunday but in Rome there are tons of restaurants open on Sundays. We found a few places but there were super "pricey" (mom) and then we came across Dominos and McDonald's. I was craving McDs, like always, but this McDonald's almost ruined it for me. They were so mean I actually felt like I could have cried. It is almost too painful to look back on...

Monday was a little stressful. We moved from the Concorde Opera Paris to Dani's new apartment. She is studying with the program AIFS and living in an apartment/hotel type place. We couldn't find out the exact address to her new apartment, so we ended up taking a cab to the wrong place. Thankfully, we finally figured it out with the help of a very patient cab driver. Her apartment really is more like a hotel. It is kind of neat because all of the other AIFS students are staying in the same place, so it is kind of like a dorm. It is really convenient expect for the fact that it is actually outside the Paris city limits. It made me really love where I am staying in Rome and really appreciating how easy the metro system in Rome is.

That is all I feel like writing as of now, so enjoy :) and here are some pictures from my Parisian adventure!