I can’t even tell you how long I have wanted a stamp in my passport. Well, just recently I decided (on a whim. Like LITERALLY the day before :O) that I just couldn’t wait any longer. I had to get a stamp in my passport. So on Monday night, my roommate and I sat on the couch and booked our trip to Paris, France. You are probably thinking, “Good Gravy that must have been like $3,000.” Well it would have been, but that is one of the many perks of our job: you can book a flight pretty much anywhere and not break the bank. Even the day before. So we booked our flight and at 6:00pm the next day we were headed to Paris.
I managed to get first class on the flight over the pond. Don’t ask me why or how, because I have no idea why the airline gods smiled down on me and made me royalty for eight hours. And yes.. they literally make you feel like the Queen of England. I was in awe, as I reclined my seat all the way back, put on my Bose headset, and watched the new Fantastic Four, as I ate my four-course meal. No judgement it was vacation! And yes. I ate every last bite.
There is something magical about getting off of an airplane, and being in an entirely different country. I don’t think I fully realized that I was in Paris though until I looked out the window from our hotel room and saw the Eiffel Tower peeking through the fog. It was a take-your-breath-away kind of moment.
We had planned for two days in Paris, so Dominique (my roommate) and I decided to spend our time doing all of the “touristy” things. On the first day, we visited the Arc De Triomphe, the Louvre Museum, and we spent the night going to see the Eiffel Tower in all of it’s shining glory.
The Louvre Museum is a must see of Paris. It was incredible, and it was only 15 euros! It felt like walking through history to me and it was worth every penny.
One thing that I never knew about the Eiffel Tower is that at night, every hour on the hour it sparkles. It literally sparkles. Dominique and I were walking up to it on the first night and it just started glittering and stopped us dead in our tracks. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It ended our first night in Paris on the perfect note, along with the incredible crepes we ate at a corner cafe afterward. It was all but a dream… A sparkling, sugary Parisian dream.
What they don’t tell you about international travel, and travel in general, is that it changes you. It takes everything you already know and it adds new sights, sounds, interactions, etc. until you are a totally new person. Even on that first day in Paris, I felt like I just became a whole new person. The world grew in my eyes, and that in itself is a beautiful thing. I will leave you there because I have meringues to bake, but there is way more to come where that came from! Day two was even better than day one so just wait for it…… 🙂
Au Revoir,
Megan
