First thing on the list of activities was a class trip to Versailles. We have learned about this palace as an important place in the a few wars, including the world wars, because this is where many peace treaties were signed and I knew that this was the first palace Marie Antoinette lived in when she married Prince Louis, but I didn't know it was so big! It was ginormous! No wonder the French people hated the aristocracy, the poor had to live in streets that smelled bad and the rich go houses that were too big to fit into a picture!
This is me and Sarah Shepherd in front of the house.
Me and Calvin in the back gardens of the house. 
My favorite thing in the house was visiting the Hall of Mirrors. This is the hallway where royalty was married, where parties were held, and where the best light in the house is making everything sparkle and shine. The only thing that could have made it better (besides me wearing a fancy princess dress) was if there were not so many people. We did not come during tourist season and I would rather eat another raw egg calzone than come here during tourist season. You could hardly move in the rooms because of so many people and there was no way you could get a picture by yourself. Even the gardens which cover 15 miles were covered in people. But it is a gorgeous and important place so it is understandable, tourist season must be awful though.
After this lovely, crowded place, Mars, Sarah and I went to Le Mouffetard Market. This market was recommended as the best place to get crepes and chocolate. It took a little bit to find and we were starting to starve but we found it! Instead of eating the best savory crepes in Paris, we ate panninis!
If they had the best crepes they could not have been half as delicious as these panninis. True I have only had 2 panninis in my life but this one will never be beat it was so good. My mouth is watering just thinking about it! While eating our delicious heaven sent sandwiches, we walked the market and found the best candy shop ever too! Ever since my trip to Spain, the Spanish candy called chucherias(in England they are called pencils, didn't learn the French name) has been my favorite candy. They are delicious licorice (not nasty red vines, acutally yummy kinds) filled with a funky frosting like thing. This market had the best chucherias ever. Better than Spain's top brand (Fini) and better than the 12 different brands I have tried in England. They were expensive (4 sticks were 9 eros!) but they were so worth it. I would have a picture of me eating them, but I ate them too quickly :] these are what they look like though: 
The ones at this market were the bigger kind (red in the picture) but came in so many flavors I could only dream of what they all tasted like. I need to find a place that these are sold in America or the rest of my life will be void of the most delicious candy known to man. Maybe I'll just have to experiment and try to make homemade ones... that sounds fun actually! Anyways... Paris!Leaving the market, the three of us decided that we would go back to the hotel to drop off our purchases (I got cute purple high heels!!) and coats (it was actually warm here! No need for a jacket at all! This thought was almost incomprehensible we had worn coats for so long) and then climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. While riding the metro I saw a graffiti of my name!
the picture doesn't show it all but it's there! I was laughing out loud when I saw it because I can never find my name anywhere since it's a made up name. Maybe it's French and my parents just didn't know :] Finding my name graffitied in the metro was the only part of the metro that I liked actually. But it's alright because once we stepped off the Kalyn metro, we saw this: 
It was so strange to think that Napoleon is a hero here when in America and England think of him as a stupid militaristic failure. This landmark was made to commemorate his victories and is not the only memorial to him, but is the most well known. It was a long and dizzying climb up, here is a picture looking up the staircase from halfway up, so double this and that is how far we climbed up 
It was just another run of the mill exercise for us BYU-study-abroad-ers though. Seriously, if I had to sum up my program in two words, it would be stairs and scaffolding (look back at my pictures and see how many have scaffolding and stairs in them, most of them do) But at the top of these stairs was one of the best views ever. Check it out! 
The streets leading to the Arc aren't really straight on to it, they all one in from different angles to the round a bout around the Arc. One of these streets is the Champs-Elysees, one of the most well known shopping streets in the world. (In the top panorama it is the second street from the left) Sarah, Margret and i met up with two more BYU students on top of the Arc, Ali and Allyson, and we went to this street together. It was fun to walk around on and to see all the big name stores. We didn't buy anything except ice cream and the street's most famous treat, macaroons. This was the first macaroon I have ever eaten and it was yummy, I just can't figure out why people would be willing to pay up to 35$ for one tiny cookie (don't worry, the ones we bought were not that much) I mean, it's just a cookie. To each his own I guess.
After window shopping on this famous street, we headed back to the hotel to meet up with more people to go on a cruise along the Seine River. When walking to the place to meet the boat, I got my first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower close up!
Isn't it beautiful? It is much bigger than I expected, don't know why but for some reason I expected to be let down seeing it, i most certainly was not. It was so much better than I could have ever pictured it. We thought the place to catch the boat for the cruise was along the river right under the tower so we stopped and got dinner at the crepe stand at the base. I got a Nutella and coconut crepe and it was delicious!
It was my first crepe in Paris and was the best crepe I have had, I need to learn how to cook crepes like the French do. Since we thought there would be no problem catching the boat, we stayed and played and chatted for a while after getting our food. There was another carousel here and it was so old looking, it was precious. 
The reason the two pictures of the Tower have been in black and white, I have two reasons, 1-the coloring from my camera and the lights on it made it a strange color in those pictures but I thought they were too good of pictures to just throw away and 2-I think black and white photos are so much more romantic than color and Paris is all about love. Let me tell you, after 3 months of not being able to flirt or go on a date, I was feeling incredibly single here in la ville de l'amour (the city of love.) I could not help but be jealous of all the couples I saw (every where you look there was a couple kissing or cuddling, not even exaggerating.) All I wanted was a boy to cuddle with on the boat, but that did not happen...darn... :] When it was 15 minutes to the boat tour departure, we decided to make our way down to the docks. That's when we learned we were at the wrong dock. The real one was almost a mile away on the other side of the river. Crap was the word running through all of our minds (if not a stronger word meaning the same thing) as we followed Kellen's battle cry of "Let's Go!" We raced across intersections, hopped fences, darted through construction zones and raced down the gangway barely in time to make the boat! Sadly, though, we did loose a few people. What started out as a group of 15 became 11. Sad day, but they found other things to do after they missed the boat. I was so glad that I had been exercising while at the Centre that I could keep up to Kellen's long strides and make the boat, it was definitely the highlight of the Paris trip up to this point (and in the top two things of the whole week.) We saw such amazing things while on the cruise. The Eiffel Tower all lit up, Notre Dame, Embassies, castles, beautiful bridges, the Statue of Liberty (did you know there are more than one? I didn't until I watched 'National Treasure 2')I was practically tearful seeing all these beautiful things I had only ever before dreamed about seeing. This picture was exactly what I have dreamed about. This is the moment where I truly started loving Paris despite all of its bad smells and strange food.
Day two in Paris was wonderful, I could only wonder what the next day would be like! have a great day, sure I will too :]
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