Our Adventure in Paris, France

Adventure: Participation in hazardous or exciting experiences (as defined by Websters dictionary)...I'd say our weekend trip fits this definition just perfectly...


Paris, France. There is so much more meaning behind those two words than anyone who is reading this will ever know.


Disclaimer: The following is open and honest. We had a some great experiences, and some scary ones, and if I don't praise the city of Paris, forgive me.


So packing, talking with my mom, and the excitement lasted until 11pm, and my alarm rang at 2:30am. I was living on a prayer throughout this whole trip...literally...starting with my sleep. Girls hadn't even gone to bed yet seeing as it was Friday early morning and everyone else had the option to sleep in. A quick shower and pulling myself together got me out of the door by 3:30 to catch the bus down the street at 3:40. Okay...I have to say. Out of the 9 girls that we went on this trip with, there are some strong personalities (they know I am writing this and its all honest, no gossip). I was totally fine with the other girls taking charge, because I had 1) never been to Paris before, and 2) directions in Europe...not my thing. The girls called up very stressed out about making the bus on time, so I grabbed my stuff leaving my bed light on and my alarm set for 2:30am the next morning (sorry roommates, love you). I run outside to see everyone running up the street expecting to see all the girls ahead of me. I always seem to be the last one ready for everything...just ask my entire family...but 3 of the girls were missing. I ask where they are and Elise turns around and in here stress of the moment says, "they aren't coming we had to leave them they weren't ready and they were going to miss the bus."...that is how our trip started out. Cute Elise gets physically sick if she is not early for things...lets just say if I was her, I would be ill all the time. Love you Elise!! She saved us with directions and her and Carly got us through the weekend!

The bus was 10 minutes late, so we all met there and the 9 of us were ready to start this trip off right. Surprisingly I remember thinking that the weather was actually nice outside. It wasn't super cold and the city was beautiful all quiet so early in the morning. The bus pulls up and all of us check in using our Oyster (tube) cards. Ironically, Sharon's card doesn't work and the spot right outside to add money to it is closed. With the mercy of our tired bus driver, he let us pay in cash and we were finally on our way to make our 5:13am train.
On the way to the train station the boys in the bus in front of us decided to moon us. Elise was scared for life seeing as she has never been mooned before in her life...don't worry there were more bare bums to come. We arrived at King's Cross train station where platform 9 3/4 exists (for all the Harry Potter fans out there), but there is a bus, train and Eurostar station that are all called King's Cross we found out super quick. We asked for directions and luckily we made it to check in on time for our train. The Eurostar chunnel is a train that transports people within Europe, but is kind of unique from London to Paris. The train travels under the English channel and its a boring ride completely dark underneath the water. You come up the other side and you are officially in another country. Check in and security ended happy with another stamp in my passport, this time saying France :)
The Chunnel is a great ride. I loved the large seats and smooth ride. I put in my headphones and slept the entire way there. Two more hours of sleep was needed.
I woke up to dark, misty weather out the window. Cold weather in the "most beautiful city in the world"...kill me now.
We bundled up and got out of the train and into the station. The other girls pulled out euros from an ATM and we had our first struggle with the language barrier asking where the bathroom was. In France you have to pay to go to the bathroom. So 70 cents pents or whatever they call it there later we were ready to hit the ground running. We bought a book of 10 Metro tickets for the weekend and headed on our way to our first stop: The Louvre.
For those of you who haven't been to Paris, the Louvre is overwhelmingly enormous and was too expensive and overwhelming to go into. But we walked around outside and took pictures of the entrance, which are pyramids. The Louvre is huge and beautiful. Fun fact: if you were to see every piece of work for one second a piece you would be inside for over a year. That is how big it is. The Louvre is not only the buildings below, but underneath the ground as well. I will go in and see the Mona Lisa when I go back with my Mom!


The fountain out front in the courtyard

The Pyramid entrance

Pictures out front




After we finished taking pictures and seeing the outside of the Louvre, we walked down through the gardens and past the Farris Wheel up and then up the river to see the Eiffel Tower.







We strolled down the river with the intention to see Notre Dame next, but we ran into the Sainte Chapelle. It is one of the oldest cathedrals in Paris and is covered in colorful stain glass windows. We paid to look around and secretly we were all excited to get warm inside. The Sainte Chapelle was much smaller than I imagined. It was a much more intimate feel than the other cathedrals we have seen. It was fun to sit and just look up at the stain glass windows and take some pictures. Definitely recommended for anyone planning a trip to France anytime soon...











After we finished warming up and taking pictures at Sainte Chapelle, we continued to head towards Notre Dame, only to find ourselves with two additional detours...gotta love it :) It was great to have a semi-game plan, and just enjoy finding new things. Before Notre Dame, we decided that we needed two essential things: food and a bathroom (or a toilette) as they call it in France. Up to this point we had paid for a bathroom, so finding one that was free was a real adventure. Down by Notre Dame we were successful in finding both. The bathrooms that are free are right on the street. The door opens and shuts and sanitizes in between. Weirdest thing you have ever seen, but it was really nice to have something close, and not have to pay to use the toilette.




We walked further down the street and found a great crepe place...soon to be the best one the entire weekend. We all got Ham and Cheese and it was delicious. I have never had what they call a "savory" crepe. I have only had my mom's breakfast crepes, so it was definitely an experience to never be forgotten. We all enjoyed every bite :)



Eating and bathroom was a must...so after that we finally made it to Notre Dame. Going inside was beautiful but I felt like it was just the same as every other cathedral we had been to. We then decided to hike the 400 stairs to the top, and this changed my opinion of this beautiful site. At first, hiking 400 stairs with a heavy pack on your back and ten layers on doesn't sound fun, but it was so worth it. The view of the city was breathtaking, and I really felt like I had arrived in Paris. Though it was cloudy, you could see super far out. We hiked all the way up to the tower to see the bell and went through the little doors of the tower...perfect picture opportunity.

The Notre Dame Cathedral

Hiking up the stairs



The tiny doorway into the tower

The Bell

View from the top
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Hiking down the 400 steps was harder than hiking up them. We sang songs haha and had a good time keeping our mind off how claustrophobic it was and how tiny the stairs were. Outside we had the opportunity to see the "zero point" of Paris. This point is where all the distances for the city are measured from. We couldn't resist taking a picture...





The fake Catacombs: So we heard that the catacombs were a neat thing to see. The catacombs are where people were just thrown into mass graves during the French Revolution because they had no where else to put the bodies. We heard it was something not to be missed, and we thought we had found the entrance. We were stoked to look around only realizing after paying that we were in the wrong place...so our adventure to see the catacombs turned into old ruins found in France. Makes for a good memory...



We signed the guest book documenting us in Paris!


We walked and got up close to the Eiffel and got so excited to take pictures. We were blocks away from one of the most famous sites in the world?!?! How did we ever get this lucky? The photo op was too good to pass up. Here are some fun ones.







Walking up to it was incredible. I can't even describe it. It is even better than everyone talks about. The Eiffel is so large and beautiful. You don't feel like you have seen Paris until you have seen it. We were all SO excited we could hardly stand it. We spent a long time in this area. Around the Eiffel are shops and places to eat. The lift taking you up the tower was only going to the second floor, so we decided against paying the 13 euros to see just halfway up. We had two days and figured we would give Saturday a shot...It was definitely tourist central. London is a very diverse place with many mixtures of backgrounds. Paris on the other hand I feel like it more just French. Here you do not here British accents all over the place. Many different languages are spoken, but in France all you here is french UNTIL you come to a tourist site. At the Eiffel Tower, there were people from all over the world. It was neat to see people from all over gather to see this incredible landmark. The one thing that surprised me was that it was brown. In my head I always thought it was black, but I was mistaken. It is a dark dark brown and you feel like an ant when you stand next to it it's so big. It was fun because you can see the tower from pretty much where ever you are in the city. It obviously gets smaller as you get farther away, but it is always in the distance somewhere. Seeing the Eiffel Tower in person: check.









With shops and food close by it was getting dark and stomachs were again growling. Dinner was a must and we decided to do it French style...we walked to a bakery and all grabbed a 98 cent baguette and bought cheese to share and had bread and cheese for dinner on the go. After dinner we met up with some students from the BYU Paris Study Abroad! They took us to a crepe night for a YSA activity and it was interesting hearing about how their experience differs from ours. Lets just say I am grateful that I am on the London study abroad. First of all there are only 9 of them total. 8 girls and 1 boy. They live split up in homes that only speak French and are forced to speak the language...which would be OK for someone who has a desire to be fluent in French. They have class together, but do not live together and some have to travel almost an hour to get to the building where classes are held. Let's just say it is not the program for me...I am very content living together, speaking English, and enjoying getting to know 40 other people, even if it is close quarters.
We traveled on the Metro and then literally ran for probably close to 45 minutes. The girls that were leading us were bookin it because we were late. But what they didn't think about was the fact that we all had heavy backpacks on. We decided it would take to long to dump our stuff at the hotel, so we carried it around all day and by 8pm we were tired.
The Metro: Very similar to the subway or underground, but unlike the tube here in England, the Metro is dirty, smells like urine, and is FILLED with sketchy people. Any time we took the tube we held onto our belongings for dear life. Everyone, including the locals, has to watch their back and make sure that no one has false intentions...again, I am grateful for London and the easy to use, safe tube system.





By 10pm at the YSA activity we were physically exhausted. We had been walking since 3am and we were all running on 4 hours of sleep! We had sat down for probably no joke 5 minutes all day long. We even ate standing up! So we were dying to go home and the Metro was the last thing that sounded good. But we picked ourselves up and tried to put on a smile as we navigated our way to our "hotel".
This is where things got interesting. Though we were in a group of 9, some of us felt comfortable with hostiles and some of us did not. There were 5 of us that decided to get a hotel room to be on the safe side. The hostile and hotel were not anywhere near each other (bad sign #1) so we split up for the night!
We took the metro for a long long time and we switched several lines before arriving at our stop. No one in our group knows Paris very well so when we came out of the station it was 10:30pm and no one had any idea where we were going. We knew we had to be quick and smart about getting to safety quickly. After asking several people and no one having any idea where or what our hotel was (bad sign #2), we found ourselves wandering around. 5 American girls with backpacks and a map wandering the streets of Paris at 10:30 at night...not a good thing. It took us 45 minutes to find our hotel, but it felt like an eternity. We walked up several streets that were scary and I felt very unsafe. Lets just say Friday night was the most scared and unsafe I think I have ever felt..oh it gets better just you wait.
We were in a very sketchy area and we pulled a cab over to pile in and just hope that he knew where our hotel was. He laughed in our faces pointing us back the way we came telling us it was a 5 minute walk in broken English. All of us girls were praying in our heads that all the men on the streets would leave us alone. We looked around and saw that there were no women on the streets. Rightfully so. We kept our heads us and did not look anyone in the eye for fear that something would go terribly wrong!
We finally got directions that were right from a local, but they took us down a very dark street. In my head I just kept saying to myself "the minute we get into that lobby I will feel so much better". We walked into the lobby through a wide open door and found a little, musty and smokey desk. I immediately looked at Paige to my right and said, "should we even be staying here?". I did not feel the peace I was expecting for the last 45 minutes I had spent walking to the streets.
The man showed us up to the top of the stairs on the second floor. The place was a ghost town. No one was staying there and the only one working there was the man at the desk. We were all skeptical and exhausted.
We open the door to find the following: beds that would not fit the length of our body (probably 5'0"), nasty blankets, black mold, scratches on the walls, wallpaper falling off the walls, a phone that didn't work, boards screwed into the walls to cover holes, and open piping, not to mention the windows that did not lock and the walls that were paper thin. But it wasn't the site of it that scared us, it was the feeling we got! At this point I lost it. For those of you who know me super well, you I am sure saw this coming. I threw myself down on the tiny bed and Annie says to me "Should you even be laying on that?". She was right. Tears poured and I told the girls that I was no way in a condition that would allow me to make a rash decision. I was emotionally and physically exhausted. All I desired was a bed in a safe location where I could get some sleep. I knew if we decided to stay in this hotel I would be up all night worried and sleep wasn't an option. Well, one of the girls decided that we should pray about it and see how we felt. Maybe we were just out of our minds from running on such little sleep. At some point in the night everyone fell apart, and Kinsey could not get through the prayer without breaking down crying. We were scared and tired of not feeling safe! After a few minutes the most level headed girl in the room, Elise, said that she thought it would be smart to move. We all jumped at the chance to get out. Phone calls were made to parents back in the USA to help us get our of our situation. Only those with iphones had cell service. Everyone else had nothing.
Annie gets her mom on the phone and she asks where we are. She looks up the hotel and finds this, which describes the hotel perfectly. Why we did not read the reviews to this day we are still not sure...


“A PLACE FROM HORROR MOVIE”
Hotel de Hollande
ms-84 1 contribution
...st.petersburg
Jul 21, 2010
I booked this hotel via internet. On their website it looks small but clean and bright. I was really scared when I saw IT myself! It is one dark stinky hole in the wall! Everything is old and dirty! Floors and stairs are falling apart. Rooms (including superiors) are little closets with shortest beds I ever seen and with old yellow wall paper, that come off the walls, and with cracked ceilings, and with black mold in the bathrooms! On top of that everything is so dusty!
We didn't stay there. After we saw THAT we ran away. We found another hotel near there and it was nice.
Don't let Hotel De Hollande spoil your trip to most beautiful city in the world!!!

Our hotel was the Hotel de Hollande and I would NEVER recommend staying there. So congrats...by making it this far in this very long blog post, you now know one hotel never to stay in if you ever in your lifetime make it to Paris.
It was given a 0.1 star rating and online it got reviews about the area being the most unsafe in Paris. The city of Paris is broken up into districts, and we found ourselves in district 9...the most unsafe district in the city. Five inexperienced Americans with a flimsy lock on the door to keep ourselves safe?: An easy target.
Kinsey's dad saved us that night. He worked quickly to get us out of there as fast as possible to be safe. As girls were on the phone we sat on the bed eating chocolate for comfort! I was not going to step one foot out onto the streets again so we called a cab and with the address to the Marriott downtown we piled in a cab. We should have known it was bad when the it took 20 minutes drive to get to the good part of the city. We were way out there...
We didn't think it was a good idea that we tell the man up front that we were leaving. We had already paid for the hotel and just left quietly and when I shut the door to the taxi I breathed a huge sigh of relief. SO..to give you an idea of where we were during the scariest night of our lives...this is what the hotel was supposed to look like...








This is what it did look like...






We were so incredibly overjoyed when we stepped into the safe, Marriott hotel. The pictures do not do the Hotel de Hollande justice. It was awful...it wasn't so much that we wanted a super nice place to stay as we wanted a safe area and a good feeling.
We almost kissed the ground when we stepped outside onto the main drag in Paris in front of our little slice of heaven...a safe hotel. We checked into two rooms! In paris there are certain hotels that have strict regulations about the number of occupants and everything is super tiny so it was 2 to a room. We snuck a third into the elevator so that all 5 of us would have a place to stay. We were beaming and Kinsey cried out of relief when we shut the door to the room. We then get a knock on the door and Paige comes to tell us that Elise has fallen apart because she couldn't find her wallet. She had looked everywhere and came to the conclusion that she had left it in the taxi which in any big city means it is gone. The people at the front desk just kept saying "wallet left in taxi? No good. No good. Cancel credit card!" We looked through all of our stuff to find it in the side pocket of Annie's purse. It ended the night with a bang, and we should have expected that arriving at the hotel wasn't the end of our adventure.
Yes, it is very comical now and we are able to now laugh, but for all of us it was a bit traumatizing and we were so grateful for the protection we were given and the prayers by all of you for our safety. By the time we hit the pillow that night our eyes were red and swollen from crying, we had been up over 24 hours, and I did not move the entire night making it the best night of sleep I have gotten since leaving home.

What a difference, huh?!












In the end...moving to London made us appreciate the United States, and Paris made us appreciate London. I always wondered why everyone I talked to said they liked London better than Paris, because to me, Paris just seemed so magical. I now understand. Paris is beautiful do not get me wrong, and if you haven't been there, you need to go. It has many beautiful historical sites that take your breath away, but it is also a very dirty and potentially unsafe city. I just feel much safer and cleaner here in London, England, and at the end of the day we were all just grateful to be alive.

Saturday morning we slept in. The rest of the girls who had a much nicer experience in the hostile, got up early and saw more of the city. The 5 of us had not gotten to bed until 2:30am and were so tired and needed sleep. Paige and Elise got up earlier than Kinsey, Annie and I did so they went and got all of us breakfast to eat in the room. We then got ready and headed out to see the rest of sites for the day.

Our first stop was at the Arch de Triumphe just down the street. We took pictures and some of the girls took the 250 stairs to the top to see the view of the city. Kinsey, Annie and I had our eye on some macaroons down the street and some food from the best bakery in the world...Paul's, so that was our next stop for the day...

The Arch :)



The Macaroons!




After the Arch de Triumphe, we headed towards the river to get on a River Cruise. These are so fun and I would definitely recommend them. They not only give you a chance to see all the major sites in Paris, but also a chance to sit down and just take in all that Paris has to offer.
Just as I promised, there was more mooning involved. This time it was from 2 Scottish men in kilts! They were at the top of the stairs on the side of the river. Oh what an experience...we also took the time to take some fun pictures while we were all together laughing and talking on the boat.









We got off the boat and only had several hours before we had
to head back to the train station to catch the chunnel back to London. We decided that the one thing we wanted to spend more time at was the Eiffel Tower! We went over and spent some time in that area and get some dinner before we left. Kinsey, Annie and I found a little cafe where Kinsey got a sandwich and we got bread to share. We ran across the street to get some cheese to go with it. When we came back in the French woman started screaming at us in French. This went on for quite a while and we had no idea what she was saying. Annie finally looked at her and said "english", and she stopped and walked away. From best we could tell she didn't like it that we had purchased cheese from another store and wanted us out. Back on the streets...I am telling you, we never had the chance to sit down, minus our boat tour.
The girls decided that as it was getting dark and closer to the time to go, we needed to do two things: have one last great crepe, and get a souvenir. The best place to do both of these things is back at Notre Dame, so we got back on the Metro.
We ended the night grabbing chocolate, one last french crepe, and sweatshirts for each of us to commemorate our visit to Paris.
Despite the danger we had felt the previous night, Paris was good to us and is a city everyone needs to experience once in their lifetime. We made so many memories and between the site seeing were jokes and many laughs between all of us. But my friends the story does not end here...
The 2 hour ride home on the chunnel was not so peaceful this time. It was 9 at night, and the locals were just getting started. A group of people in our car decided that drinks and bread were to be the choice meal for the way home, and they were loud and obnoxious. No one got any sleep, but it was good to set down our things and get off our feet. It was a joy to hear English instructions when we pulled into the station, and they even told us to "mind the gap" which is a phrase you never hear in Paris. Welcome home :)
Several things came to mind that we love about London:
The clean tube
The people
The language
Three simple things we take for grated every day here in England.
As we were walking out of the train station, more Scottish men, this time in their 20s were singing and being super funny. One of them dropped their hat, and lets just say it was fun to go up and give it back to him. We hardly ever seen men our age and we only live with a few, so it was fun to talk with them...not to mention their cute accents. Long story short they insisted I keep the hat. I am sure he will regret it sooner or later, but I now have a souvenir and something to remember the end of our trip to Paris by...I was lovin it!

I LOVE London, I am happy to be here studying, and seeing Paris was a great experience, and something none of us will forget. The memories, tears, laughs, tired feet all contribute to the success of this 48 hour, adventure of a weekend trip!