Euro tour: day 4

Je suis a Paris! What an incredibly beautiful city. We started the day with a bus tour through the center part of the city, and got to see and learn about a lot of the big monuments and old buildings there. We saw the Opera house where the Phantom of the Opera was made, the Court house, le Louvre, and of course the Eiffel tower! It’s actually quite surprising how different all the areas of Europe are. Paris, for example, has a lot of gold incorporated into the architecture. Many of the big, old buildings have ornate designs in gold on them or are partially plated in gold. It really makes Paris feel like a city for kings and queens. We took a few stops where we got to get out of the bus and look around for a bit. For one of the stops we took an elevator up one of the tallest buildings, and had an amazing view of the whole city. Paris is so huge! Our second stop was.... can you guess?!  Eiffel tower, of course!!! I don’t know what it is about this huge metal structure, but walking up to the plaza below the tower was such an incredible moment. Pictures never do justice the sensation of really seeing the Eiffel Tower. You can’t help but stare up at it in awe, and think, "Wow, I'm really in Paris!"

After our tour we had free time for the rest of the afternoon. Wandering around Paris is really overwhelming. A few girls and I tried to go shopping but between our lack of a map and some other problems we ended up not finding much. But still, we got to see a lot of the inner city which was really beautiful, and experience what daily life in the heart of Paris is really like. I'm a city girl, but i couldn't do that everyday. It's just so big and busy! 

We also got a bit of free time that night after dinner. A bunch of us went back to the Eiffel tower again to see it sparkle at night! I decided not to go up it since it was so expensive, but I met up with a bunch of the rest of the group and we had a little photo shoot under the tower. I'm sure we looked pretty interesting laying on the ground, trying to get the right angle, and yelling at each other how to pose. We headed back to the hotel as a massive group. Everyone was in pretty high spirits from the beauty of the city and everything. 

That's when it happened. The fact that we were all speaking English so loudly, and were so unaware of anything happening outside our perfect little exchange bubble, probably made us all really easy targets. but as I was getting onto the metro I put my hand over my bag and in a terrible second noticed the zipper was open. Someone had stolen my wallet! I got a hold of my mom right away to cancel all my cards since everything had been inside that wallet. Luckily I had left most of my money at the hotel so I only had about fifty euros stolen. The wallet part was really sad but otherwise it was a pretty amazing evening. 

J'aime Paris.