a valentine's day in paris

I was reunited with Melissa this weekend! We met up in Paris on Thursday and it was magnificent. It had a minor panic attack on the train because I hadn't read my ticket properly so I arrived at a different train station than I had expected, and that was much further from where Meliss was, so I hopped in a cab and booked it over to la Gare de l'Est. Once I found her, all was fine.

Hostel!

Our hostel was fantastic, great location in the 10e arrondissement, and we even ended up with a room to ourselves.

We spent the first night just hanging out in a restaurant, having long dinner and stretching out a bottle of wine, topped off with a round of free shots on the house. Friday morning, we got up early and did a ton of sightseeing around the city. Checked out place des Vosges and Victor Hugo's apartment. Then Notre Dame, where we saw them in the middle of mass. Then walked to see Sorbonne university, and then the Pantheon, which was the coolest. It has a huge pendulum hanging from inside the highest dome that keeps the time. Then we lurked around inside the crypt and looked at people's tombs (we got shushed a couple times for laughing). That night, we hit up the Louvre.

Notre-Dame de Paris

Pantheon

Saturday, we spent the afternoon in Montmartre, saw Moulin Rouge and the Montmartre Cemetary (and lurking around peoples' tombs). But then we came across this basilica, and on the long stretch of steps in front of it, a couple guys were setting up for an impromptu little concert. So we sat down and hung out for a good hour in the sun listening to them play. The steps had the most fantastic panoramic view of the entire city. It was incredible.

Do I even need to caption this?

Montmartre concert... overlooking the entire city.

Once that was over, we headed down to see the Arc de Triomphe, took a walk along the Champs Élysée, and then to the Eiffel Tower. It was Valentine's Day, so the line up to the top was nuts, but of course, well worth it. We saw our share of smoochy, kissy couples to last us a good while. I had my fingers crossed we would witness a proposal or something, but no such luck.

Sunday morning, I had breakfast at the hostel and overhead two girls saying they were from Manitoba. I chatted them up and we of course discovered we had about 10 mutual friends. Oh Winnipeg. Then we headed off to Versailles and took our time just meandering along. It was a great weekend that could not have gone better. The only snafus were the train rides there and back. We ended up missing our train to Montpellier, but we had a very nice ticket agent man who did his best to save us our money and get us on the next one :)