No Sleep Till Spain: Parlez-vous Espagnol? My Tongue-Twisting Weekend in Paris.

This past weekend I had the pleasure of traveling to Paris with three good friends from my little study abroad family in Valencia. I think I may have actually experienced more culture shock in this country than I did when I first came to Spain. I would say about 50% of the people I spoke with this past weekend spoke English, but unfortunately for them my first instinct has become to speak in Spanish. Luckily, my traveling companions were always there to laugh at me, & occasionally help me out, & we all made it through the weekend in one piece. I have to admit, I knew I would be traveling Europe throughout this study abroad program, but I never expected to go to Paris. I've never had a huge desire to go to France because whenever I think Europe I think of Spain as my go-to since I've been studying the Spanish language & the culture for so long. Paris is a whole different world from Spain, & not in a bad way, but I realized as soon as I got there that I knew next to nothing about the city, let alone the country. Every landmark we visited - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Couer - I knew of the majority of them, but not much else. I think by the end of the trip my friends were so tired of visiting new places with me because my signature phrase had become "Why is this significant?" But never fear, we are now Wiki-whizzes & well-versed in the history of all four of the previously named landmarks & a few more. I have also eaten so much bread this weekend I may just turn into bread. All of the flaky croissants, sweet nutella crepes, & scrumptious macarons (my mouth is watering just thinking about them) - the Francía 15 is definitely a thing too. Since Paris is such an expensive city, while we did enjoy the cheaper sweets, we also shared some less-authentic picnic dinners on the beds of our hotel rooms. After a long day of beignets, baguettes, & other delicious morsels, sometimes it's nice to come home to a pre-packaged salad, you know what I mean? The hotel itself was such an interesting set up I have to mention it here. If our hotel had been a home for sale, the real estate agent would definitely have described it as a "gem", very "quaint" & "cozy". There is a teeny-tiny elevator you can smoosh into with maybe one other person to get to your like-sized room in the very compact Hotel Royal Phare. Of course, not only was I situated on the top floor, but my roommate for the weekend was claustrophobic - a match made in heaven. Needless to say, we did a lot of walking up & down 7 flights of stairs, which was actually a great warm up for the Eiffel Tower! And while I did see many amazing things this trip, by far my favorite part was meeting up with two old friends I have known since elementary school, simply because we all realized Saturday night that on Sunday we would all be in Paris. To top it all off, I will be seeing these same two friends again this coming weekend to backpack through the South of France! Until next time (or next weekend) París!

Bonjour!