I. Love. Paris.

I don’t know how to express this better.  I just freaking love Paris so much, and I can’t tell you exactly what it is about the city that makes me love it so much, which I think only makes it better.

We arrived relatively late in the day, checked in to our wonderful hotel (graduation gift from my mom!), and set off pretty quickly to go on a Fat Tire Bike Tour of Paris at night.  It was so much fun.  The guide was awesome, and he took us straight to the best ice cream in Paris, with a view of the back of Notre Dame.  Berthillon ice cream is amazing, it is truly the best ice cream I’ve tasted.  I had dark chocolate and vanilla, and I have never had such flavorful vanilla or such rich dark chocolate ice cream in my life.

From there we saw am amazing sunset from a bridge, and then to the Louvre to see it lit up around sunset.  Incredible.

Towards the end of the tour, they put you on a boat on the Siene and pump you full of free wine.  HELLO!  Amazing.  What a perfect effing start to our Parisian experience.

After the tour was finished we got a sweet recommend on a place to get some quick food to take to the Eiffel Tower.  Went to this amazing crepe stand and each got one mushroom and cheese crepe and one chocolate.  The mushroom and cheese was one of the best things I’ve eaten in my life.  I actually went back and got another.  NOTICE: I did not go get another chocolate one.

We consumed our crepes on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower, just before it started to sparkle at midnight.  It was fantastic.

The next morning we got up, ate a deliciously free breakfast thanks to my mom’s platinum status, and went to meet up for the Fat Tire Bikes city tour.  Another amazing choice.  We were able to see so much of the city, and the guides (both nights - Matt and Andrew) were so fun and so full of great tips.  For example, Andrew narrated a gypsy scam for us as it happened, and then gave such great advice as:

if a gypsy approaches you, just ignore them.  don’t be rude, don’t be kind. gypsies are like bees, if you ignore them, they’ll leave you alone.

He also told great stories about taking tours into the roundabout around the Arc de Triomphe (not a typical tour, this is possibly the most dangerous roundabout ever).

We went to so many amazing sights I can’t even name them all, but I’m sure they’re the typical ones you can think of, and then some.  We began and ended the tours, appropriately, at the Eiffel Tower.  Here’s Alex and me with my bike, “I Whip My Hair Back and Forth”:

After that we went to see the Arc de Triomphe up close.  Then we walked the Champs-Èlysèes, and made our way to the Jardin du Luxembourg.  (Shout out to my French-speaking cousin Robyn for providing a detailed list of what we should do, I think we covered it all!)

After a rest at the hotel with some awesome free wine and snacks, we went to the Montparnasse Tower to watch the sun set (another great tip from Fat Tire Bike Tours). Montparnasse is huge and ugly, as opposed to the rest of the city which is low-rise and gorgeous.  But if you go to the top, you get pictures of the whole city without the ugly skyscraper in them!  And at sunset, oh my.  You watch the sun go down, and then you watch the whole city light up.

The next morning after another awesome free breakfast, we went to the Catacombs. My cousin recommended them highly and it sounded interesting and was right near our hotel.  Now I don’t know much about them because I hate audio guides, so all I know is that it’s a series of tunnels that hold exhumed remains of people from when Paris’ cemeteries got too full in the 1700’s.  Sick.  Literally bones piled up for what feels like miles but is probably about 500m.  Not a fan, but we can say we did it!  (Robyn’s always been into way grosser things than me.  Like scaring me with plastic bugs.)

From there, we checked out Notre Dame.  Free!  Yes!  It’s cool, you saw it in that Disney movie.  But up close it’s much smaller than you’d expect.  But still super cool.

It was staying sunny despite rain in the forecast, so we went to another Robyn Recommendation, Ste-Chappelle.  At first, I’ll be honest, I was like “really, we paid €5 for this?” because she said it would be super pretty stained glass, and you walk into this tiny room with some stained glass but nothing all that impressive.  Oh and then you go upstairs.  Much better.  Gorgeous, maybe not the most amazing I’ve seen, but definitely worth seeing.

From there it was lunch time at a FTBT recommended creperie, which was amazing again.  I think the sugar crepes are my favorite of the sweet variety.  So delicious.  Then the Musee d’Orsay before heading back for free wine at the hotel.

Musee d’Orsay was great.  Manageable size, and full of some of my favorites like Degas and Monet.  Degas Ballerinas, I’m sold.  The upstairs I was not so fond of, but it’s one of my favorite museums I’ve been to.

After the free wine and a rest for our feet we dared to go to the Louvre.  On the impeccable advice of FTBT we went after 6, since it was Friday and the Louvre is open til 10 on Fridays.  It’s less busy at that point, and also cheaper.  So much cheaper in fact that because we are 25, we got in free!  Best thing ever.  A quick breeze through to see Venus De Milo, Winged Victory (which I’ve never heard of but Alex was excited about), and the Mona Lisa, and we were out.  That museum is ginormous and I was not about to try to sift through everything there thankyouverymuch.  It’s estimated that it would take 9 months just to glance at everything in the Louvre.  No.

Off to dinner at another Fat Tire recommendation (no failures on their part whatsoever).  It was a neighborhood-y cafe on the street that was so French and lively I could have sat there forever trying to guess what everyone was saying.  I had duck confit which was great, and also of course Creme Brulee.  Add some wine and I’m in heaven.

And then it was one last goodbye to the Eiffel Tower as we walked back to the Metro, and off to bed for an early wakeup for our flight back to London.

I could have stayed in Paris forever.  I have a feeling my next trip may be a couple of weeks to go all around France.  I can also say at this point that Paris has been my favorite city that I’ve visited all year.  And that’s out of about 24 cities in about 11 countries.

And now I’m back in London to pack up my room and say some final goodbyes.  I can’t believe how fast a year goes.

This was not a favorite for me, unfortunately.  But if there had to be a low point, I’m glad Rome wasn’t a let down, or Santorini.  I’d heard mixed reports on Barcelona, many love it, some aren’t big fans.  Me?  Not a big fan.

We started out with an irritating flight and some hotel issues.  We stayed at a “nice” hotel here, but they didn’t live up to my expectations.  It is nice, it’s clean, we have a giant room and a view.  But the service is terrible.  For instance, we arrived a little bit before check-in and our room wasn’t ready.  The lady said go have a welcome drink and I’ll come get you in a few minutes when it’s ready.  Well over an hour later I finally got up to see what the deal was.  Oh, the keys had been ready forever and they didn’t know where we were.  Really?  because we were in the bar, where we were told to go.  MAD!

We had barely enough time to get settled in and get to the meeting point for the Fat Tire Bike Tour.  These tours are amazing, and I was hooked from my first one in Berlin.  This tour was one of the very best parts of this trip.  The guide was informative, and it was also a lot of fun.  We saw a lot of the major sights, and also stopped for some food and drink on the beach.  Pretty awesome.

The next day, Alex and I decided to go do our own things.  I went on my own personal Gaudi tour of Barcelona, while he had some banking issues and kinda had a shitty day unfortunately.  While he was doing that, I went down to the beach for a little while, then had lunch around the corner from my first Gaudi house.  I started at Casa Calvet, which is pretty tame by Gaudi standards.  It’s his first apartment block, and it won him his only award in his lifetime.

After Casa Calvet, it was time for my favorite of his houses, Casa Batllò.  This is one of his weirder looking buildings, and I love it.  Some people think it looks like a house of bones or a dragon house.  So cool.

From there it was up to La Perdrera or Casa Milà, which is made to look like a cliff face sculpted by waves and wind.  It’s huge and also super awesome.

I went to Park Güell next, which was far more of a hike than I was expecting.  It’s on a huuuuge hill.  I don’t even really know how to describe it.  It’s got Hansel and Gretel style gate houses, a mosaic lizard, and some crazy cool wavy stuff going on in the main building and terrace.

Since there was one more house nearby the park, I decided to do one more before going back to the hotel to rest for a little while.  Casa Vincenç is interesting but not my favorite.  It’s one of Gaudi’s first commissions, and has a lot of color and ceramic tiling.

Back to the hotel to rest after that, and I ended up helping Alex find a way to call his bank because they locked him out of his card for some reason - even though he did tell them he was leaving the country.

Once that was done, we went to La Sagrada Familia, which was by far my favorite thing of the trip.  It’s a giant church that Gaudi started, but is still not finished (and he died in 1926).  It’s so different looking outside, and the inside is about the most strikingly beautiful thing I think I’ve ever seen.  One side tells the Nativity story, the opposite (where the entrance is) tells the Passion, and the side currently being built (which will be the main entrance) tells the Glory.  Each side is very different in styling.  But the inside is where it was at for me.  It’s like being inside a tree from the Lion King.  So colorful and full of stained glass and interesting shapes.  Loved it.

Yesterday we started off at Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, or the MNAC.  It’s full of, you guessed it, Catalunyan art.  Romanesque, Baroque, Renaissance, Modern…  interesting, but I was thanking god they had very limited English plaques to read, because it really hurried Alex along.

From there we went to lunch.  A little bit over tapas by then, so we went to a place in my book that’s run by people from Naples, serving obviously Italian food.  It was great, the people there were so funny – the waiter made fun of Alex for how he pronounced “pizza funghi” – and it was just a lot of fun.

I decided we should probably check out La Boqueria, the main market in town.  It was super cool, full of so many colorful fruits and veggies, and scary meats.  Then we tried to fulfill the churro experience that I needed, getting churros from the best place in Barcelona and then to a “milk bar” a few doors down to get chocolate to dip the churros in…  didn’t work out, the milk bar was closed.  But the naked churros were still delicious and light and amazing.

And that was pretty much the extent of our Barcelona trip.  It was not either of our favorites at all.  But we had some good experiences and saw some very cool things.  I think the only thing I’d ever think to come back for is to see La Sagrada Familia finished.