I enjoyed seeing this painting especially since it is so closely related to my Catholic faith as well as having medical significance. The city of Colmar itself was very nice, we didn't get to see too much of it though because we were only there for a few hours.
After Colmar, we got back on the bus to head to Beaune. We went there to see the Hotel Dieu. This was an old hospital that was used to care for the poor. The architecture of this building was absolutely beautiful.
After Beaune, we were on our way to Paris and I could not have been more excited! As soon as we got there we went to the Seine River and Notre Dame. It was surreal to be seeing both of these places that I had heard about for so long. It was incredible!
The next day we went to the Versaille palace and had a picnic at the gardens. We were so lucky to have such great weather. I loved walking through each of the rooms in the palace. It was crazy to think that people used to live there.
After the Versaille palace, we headed to the arc de triumph and Sacre Coure for our free afternoon. It was really great that we could get into so many places in Europe for free with our EU student visas, we really took advantage of that in Paris. The view from the top of the arc was very beautiful, and Sacre Coure amazing as well!
That night we had a nice dinner as a group and then got to go to the top of the Eifel tower. It was amazed at how big it was.
It was such a dream to get to see this iconic building.
The next day we took a tour of the city along with the tour of the Louvre. My mom really loves museums and always reminisces on the time when she visited the Louvre; we had watched a documentary on the best museums in the world over winter break so I was excited to finally be there!
After the Louvre we were let loose, and I got to explore the city with friends for the rest of the night. We went to a kebab restaurant, got bubble tea, and went back to the Eifel tower to see it twinkle. Honestly, it was one of my favorite nights of the whole semester. Getting to spend time with people I’ve gotten to know the whole semester and not have a care in the world was so much fun.
The next day I had an extra day in Paris and I decided to squeeze in Mass at Notre Dame, Sainte Chapelle, and the Picasso museum. I was really surprised at how much I liked Paris, since throughout the semester I had grown to like the smaller cities I visited a lot more, but Paris was full of so many beautiful things.
Monday morning Josh and I had a train to catch heading to Lisieux. I was overjoyed that we were going to be able to visit. Lisieux is the birthday of St. Therese who is one of my favorite Catholic saints, and I could not wait to visit her hometown. We woke up in the morning with plenty of time to get to the train station. We had no idea the crazy morning we were about to get ourselves into. Unfortunately, the train station we had arrived to was the wrong one. We didn’t realize this until about 20 minutes after we had been going around trying to find our train. We hurried to the metro to try and get to the right station, but at this point I knew there was a real possibility that we wouldn’t make it. We arrived at the correct station only to find out that we were a few minutes too late. At first I was heartbroken, I didn’t know if there would be any other way to get to Lisieux and the dream of getting to visit this city was slowly slipping through my fingers. We got in line to ask the workers at the counter and were disappointed to find out that the only way to get to Lisieux was by buying another train ticket. My heart sank. I had already paid for the train ticket I had, and the thought of buying another one just because we had missed the train by a couple minutes was a bummer. Josh and I talked about it and decided that we should just go for it, we were already at the station, and the only other option would have been to spend the day in Paris and just wait for our overnight bus back to Bonn. Neither of us thought that would be a good idea. It was a lesson learned to say the least. I am very grateful that we were still able to make it. The day turned out to be absolutely perfect.
I had an unforgettable experience in France, and I cannot wait to visit again at some point in my life. Paris is one of those cities that you can visit over and over again without running out of things to do!
No comments:
Post a Comment