Happiest Easter on Earth!

I feel like the luckiest person ever right about now. All my weekend excursions have been unforgettable, and France did not disappoint. I went to Paris this past weekend with some friends and could not have asked for a more amazing trip! It started out super early Friday morning (as well as Monday morning), and didn’t slow down anywhere in between. I’m not sure there is one part of Paris we left unseen. On the first day, we hiked to the Basilika Sacré-Cœur that had a beautiful view overlooking the city and climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe which had an amazing view of all the streets leading up to the giant round-about where the Arc stood and of the Eiffel Tower. We walked down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, past the Place de la Concorde, to the Louvre, were we spent almost 3 hours looking at all the major works of art. On Saturday morning, we rode out to the Palace of Versailles. It was kind of a cloudy, windy day compared to the beautiful sunny weather we had on Friday, but it was still well worth it. We headed over to Notre Dame after that and walked around inside. They were preparing for Easter Sunday service while we were there, so that was pretty neat. The only downfall of these places was the “ques”! They were ridiculously long but fortunately moved rather quickly. After the cathedral, we finally went to go see the Eiffel Tower up close. I didn’t realize just how big this massive structure was! After taking lots of pictures, we met up for a Fat Tire Bike Tour for the evening. Despite it being a little cold, it was so fun! We rode around Paris at night with a group of about 20 other people and saw all the major sites in “the city of lights”. After the tour, we bought tickets to climb to the second level of the Eiffel Tower. It was an exhausting and jam-packed day, but still so much fun. I can’t believe we did all that in just a day and a half! But the real fun was still to come…

We had originally planned on taking Sunday slow and visiting any places we had missed, but where’s the fun in that when DISNEYLAND PARIS (!!!!!!) is right around the corner?! Cliff and Jake mapped out a highly strategic, maximum roller coaster-riding plan, and we headed off! This was by far, one of the most fun days I’ve had on this entire study abroad trip. The sun was shining bright all day and we literally ran like maniacs all over the parks to ride all the best rides: Tower of Terror, Rockin’ Rollercoaster, Space Mountain, and much more. It really was the happiest place on Earth for the four of us haha. After an awesome firework finale and 13 hours later, we came home, slept for 2 hours, and headed back to Bonn. Time for a little schlafen, then back to studying.