I Wish I Knew French!

Ok, I know that you have all been waiting with baited breath for a rundown of my weekend in Paris.  Well let me start with Friday, which we spent seeing Paris in 12 hours!  We arrived after our twoish hour train ride and headed straight to the Louvre!  Here is the Louvre in an hour and a half:

Mona Lisa

Winged Victory

Venus De Milo

Got it?  Good!  Tip…Don’t try to do the Louvre in an hour and a half if you want to see more than this.  However, it was a good introduction to the museum and now I know what is there and what I really want to see the next time I visit Paris!  

During our trip around the Louvre I came to the conclusion that it is very difficult to be in a museum and not be able to read any of the information that goes along with the item…this was when I decided that I needed to learn some French.  My classmate Kalyca took on the challenge of attempting to teach me a little.

I failed miserably.  I kept trying to turn the French words into a word that it looked or sounded like in English.  Heres a couple examples:

Merci (Thank You) – Mercy

Sante (Cheers) – Saltie or santae

Rivoli (Name of a road) – Ravioli

Musee (Museum) – Muse

Some of these I did finally get the hang of but I still said Mercy today to a waiter as we were leaving the restaurant we were at for dinner before getting on the train to head back to London.

But continuing with our day…after our speed viewing of the Louvre we moved onto a sightseeing bus that took us all around Paris.  This was a great way to spend one of our first hours in the city; I got to see a lot in a short amount of time but I also was able to make note of the sites that I really wanted to come back and look at throughout the weekend.  It was also great because it brought us right to the foot of our next stop…The Eiffel Tower.

Eiffel Tower

We spent a bit of time here just enjoying the site and also getting acquainted with the people trying to get some money out of you by having you sign a petition.  There were so many people there but it was an amazing sight to see!

Boat we took on the River Seine

We hopped back on the bus after seeing the Eiffel Tower to catch a boat ride down the Seine!  This was also another great way to see the city in a short amount of time.  Dr. Everhart popped a bottle of champagne to santé (cheers) our visit to Paris!

Sante!

Us at Dinner!

 

Our final stop was an authentic French restaurant, where I tried to perfect my saying of Sante! (Ok so I said saltie a lot, my classmate Aubrey was sitting across from me and kept catching me saying it wrong).

I tried snails!  They were amazing!   

The musicians were great…they had a few of my classmates stand up and dance to the Macarena!  We had unlimited wine!  That’s all I am going to say about dinner ; )

Snails!

 

After dinner those of us that were staying in Paris headed to our hotel, where we promptly fell asleep!  It was a very busy but perfect day in Paris!  More to come about the rest of my weekend tomorrow!