Summer Sequels: Rome and Paris

After our three-day-long adventure in Barcelona, we took a 15 euro flight to Pisa, Italy. In Barcelona, we had been part of a bigger group of my friends from Bonn, but after Pisa, we went separate ways--some to Rome, some to Milan, and some to Cinque Terra.

Rome and Paris are two of the most beautiful cities in the world. Tourist filled? Yes, but with good reason. They're definitely two of my favorite places, and when my friend visited and wanted to see "Europe", they were at the top of the list. Having spent a summer in Rome when I was seventeen, I was happy to go back and see if things were really as magical as they had been when I had my first travel-abroad experience.



After seeing (read: taking 1000 terrible photographs with) the Leaning Tower of Pisa--and deciding that whoever is running that place is making a killing--18 euros just to walk up into the tower?!--we strolled next to the Arno river and I stereotypically sang the line from "O Mio Babbino Caro" about throwing myself into the river. We then took a four or five hour train ride to Rome where we were staying at a guesthome of some sort of a family that didn't exactly speak English. Adventure! After asking a man standing next to the gate of the address where we were supposed to meet (we were an hour late because trains...) [IN VERY BROKEN ITALIAN] if he was the husband of the woman with whom our Italian friend had been communicating to help us set the whole deal up, we found the place and bought pizza from a little restaurant next door.

I had forgotten how...inefficient... transit in Rome is. The city is large and spread out, and being "close to a metro stop" could still mean that you're a mile away. We got to see everything that I had already seen, and then some. I hadn't seen the Roman Forum [meh, all except for a recently excavated dining room of the emperor Nero] or Raphael's tomb inside the Pantheon [cool], or a place called the Capuchin Crypt [even cooler] [[no seriously, read this: Capuchin Crypt]]. I got to eat my beloved Crema Fiorentina Nutella gelato again from the Frigidarium near Piazza Navona, which really would have made the whole trip in itself worth it.

After leaving Rome, however, my friend revealed to me that there had been some confusion about which Italian artifacts were where, and that really, it would have been cooler to go to Florence because that's where the famous Italian art is... Oops.

Next, we flew to Paris. We found our hotel (near Sacre Coeur) relatively easily and were excited to see that there was both a Subway restaurant and a stand selling burgers nearby. The first night, we went to take a walk near the Seine, and we ended up realizing that we could be at the top of the Eiffel Tower for sunset [best. decision. ever.]. Though a bit on the price-y side, the view of the city was so beautiful and magical and everything cliche everyone has ever said about it, I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

To make life more interesting, and because we had no TV and mediocre internet, we decided to read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code aloud as a bedtime story. In doing so, we created a plan of things that we wanted to see in the Louvre, as well as a couple of other buildings and monuments around Paris. We did visit the Louvre, but even more fun was the Musee D'Orsay, which houses much of the famous French artwork of the Impressionist period [Monet, Manet, Degas, van Gogh, etc.]. I didn't get to see this museum my first time in Paris, but it was definitely a great decision.

We also visited the Catacombs, which is an underground collection of apparently more than 6 million skeletons [extremely cool, but also the part where you realize that people have no shame... I'm talking about you, teenagers taking selfies in front of the burial sites].

Concluding our 'Morbid Paris' tour, we saw the Paris Parthenon, which houses the remains of famous French people like Emile Zola, Marie & Pierre Curie, Louis Braille, Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, etc.