After spending 4 days in Belgium, we headed to Paris to say goodbye to 2012. We were lucky and got to stay in the apartment of Louise's friend, who was away for the holidays (and so were her roommates). We left Brussels in the morning and stopped in Lille on our way to Paris because our friend Marie is from there. So we went to lunch with Marie, her sister Sabrina, and their friend. They took us to lunch in a really popular restaurant in the center of town called La Chicorée, where we got to try some typical northern French dishes!
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| I got the dish called "L'assiette du Nord" which included: a piece of savory tart, aspic, charcuterie, and toasted bread with cheese on top |
After lunch, they took us to one of the most famous pastry shop in the north of France, called Aux Merveilleux de Fred, where they specialize in this one pastry called a "merveilleux" (literally translates into "wonderful"), and it was absolutely FANTASTIC. It's made of two meringues, one on top of the other, and they swath them in delicious amounts of buttercream until they're in the shape of a large gumdrop, and then they coat in chocolate flakes...So. Delicious. It actually
melted in my mouth when I bet into it. I've never had meringues that good.
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| The outside |
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| The inside was so fancy! |
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| My white chocolate merveilleux |
Once we bought our merveilleux, we parted ways from Marie and I headed to the train station with Louise and Natalie, where I devoured my merveilleux.
Since we got to Paris at night, our first night there was pretty uneventful. We just had dinner at a restaurant close to the apartment and watched some TV. However, in the middle of watching TV, we hear this slight cracking sound, so Natalie looks into the dining room, and her face drops. Then she says, "Was the ceiling...always like that?" Louise and I look and our mouths fall open, because the ceiling literally had dropped down a little, as in, it had cracked and part of it was dipping below the level it was supposed to be at. So basically...it was barely clinging on. We didn't really know what to do, so we just moved everything from underneath it and hoped that it wouldn't completely fall in. Unfortunately, that night while we slept, it did. Well, okay, Louise woke up when it did, but I kind of slept through it...haha. Anyway, that was pretty crazy. Couldn't really do much about it though.
On the 31st (New Year's Eve!), we headed into the city (the apartment was technically outside of Paris) and did some sightseeing. We went to the Louvre (but didn't go in because we didn't have enough time), the Pont des Arts, Montmartre and Sacre Coeur, the Red Light District and the Moulin Rouge, and the Tour Montparnasse because that's basically where the club we were going to was.
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| In front of the Louvre |
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| Guy playing ukelele on the Pont des Arts |
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| Pretty self-explanatory lol |
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| Tour Montparnasse |
We actually found out in Belgium that the three other American girls were going to be in Paris for New Year's, so they ended up buying tickets to the same club that we had chosen and we spent New Year's Eve with them! We went to Mix Club, and...well, basically spent the entire night there. We didn't leave until 6 in the morning, haha...that's NYE for you. It was a lot of fun, but exhausting...needless to say, we didn't wake up until very, very late the next day.
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| Yes, we got there when it opened...because we're cool that way. |
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| Full! |
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| Us and the other girls (left to right): Ayla, Louise, Natalie, Sarah, Maile, me! |
On the first day of 2013, however, we did still go into the city to do a little more sightseeing. We had dinner in Saint Michel at a place called Crêperie des Pêcheurs, which was pretty good, and then "flâner"-ed (strolled) around some more. Here are some places we hit:
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| Notre Dame, of course |
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| Hôtel de Ville with the ice skating rink! |
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| Centre Pompidou |
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| Look who we found! =D |
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| We also found this AMAZING gelato place called Pozzetto...I think it's actually supposed to be one of the best ones in Paris. |
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| Place de la Bastille |
The next morning, we went and had a good ol' American breakfast at this diner called Breakfast in America. It was pretty amazing, considering I hadn't had real American food in quite some time. Then we went and actually saw the inside of the Louvre!
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| The esteemed lady herself, of course. |
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| With the Winged Victory of Samothrace! |
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| The Da Vinci Code, anyone? Haha... |
We bumped into our friend Sebastien there, who is also a teaching assistant in Nîmes. Small world, right? We went to the Musée d'Orsay afterwards but he didn't join us because he had to meet his Colombian friends. We actually got to see this really cool exhibit called "Impressionism and Fashion", but they didn't allow pictures so I don't have that many from the Musée d'Orsay, unfortunately.
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| Got this one though! Isn't the roof so gorgeous? |
Well, that was the end of our Paris excursion, and I went back to the apartment once we had finished with the Musée d'Orsay to get my bag (Natalie had brought hers with her), and then went back into the city to catch the train. Louise stayed an extra day so that she could actually see her friend. But yes, quite the vacation! I definitely had a blast. =)
