Lopez Travels: Oui, parle francais!

Ok, not really, but I was amazed how much French I retained from the all of 2 years I took of it in high school. I definitely knew enough to get by, although there was this one incident with a taxi driver, where I pronounced the last of part of my street incorrectly and he had no idea what street I was talking about, go figure, bah, those lousy French, just like those lousy Democrats, just kidding. [Simpsons Reference]

Anyways, I arrived in Paris at 10am, local time and had only slept 3 hours the night before, and no matter how hard I tried, I could only muster an hour of sleep on my flight to Paris, including a layover in Frankfurt. Once there I had to wait a ludicrous amount of two hours for my shuttle to arrive. Welcome to France, eh? Once I got to my hostel, I checked in and immediately when to get some food since I had not eaten in a while. I stayed in a quaint hostel in the 5th arrondisement or “district” of Paris, also known as the Latin Quarter. Lucky for me it was only a few blocks away from the Cathedral du Notre Dame, which meant I was also close to the Seine.

My very short two days in Paris, I concentrated on exploring life along the Seine. Needless to say it was amazing to see the energy that exists along this famous river. Old-fashioned steamboats are converted into restaurants, various boats cruise up and down the river given fancy excursions or simply providing an additional means of transportation for the people. The banks of the Seine also constantly have people walking all along, all age groups of people, at all times of the day, including senior citizens. Most people seemed to be out for a quiet stroll with their significant other, while others were walking with open wine bottles, having lots of fun.

While Paris is an extremely huge city, and lots of places sights, museums, attractions to visit, I was quite surprised to find a huge quantity of these places right along the Seine, and if not, no more than a 10 minute walk from the banks of the river.

Alas, my stay in Paris had come to an end, two days is obviously not a whole lot of time and it flew by as expected, but I was also anxious to move onto the next city.