We stayed in Maastricht until Tuesday for a holiday called Carnaval, which is mardi gras/Dia/the fourth of July/Halloween times a million. I'm writing an article for my feature writing class over it so I can elaborate a little more then...Until then, feel free to look through my pictures to see mobs of Dutch people in costumes. Dancing in puddles of beer.
Anyway, we left really early on Tuesday morning and spent the day traveling through the French countryside. Strangely enough, the train ride was one of my favorite parts of the trip because it was the first time I felt like I could really unwind and enjoy the scenery since we got here...I got to journal and read a lot, which is always so so good when I'm trying to process things.
Once we got to Nice, we found our hostel pretty quickly and were pleasantly surprised to find that they had upgraded our 6 person room to 3 private rooms. Ravenous (ahem)...as usual, we quickly unpacked and went out to find large quantities of food. We spent the rest of the evening playing fishbowl with an interesting group of Latin guys whose first languages were not English and threw some rocks in the ocean at midnight. For being so pointless, that kind of thing is strangely therapeutic and invigorating.
The next morning we got to sleep in a little bit and headed to the flower market around 10, where I bought a precious little oil painting from our new friend Martel. Here's to me trying to become artsy while I'm over here. We explored different parts of the market and Old Nice and had a little picnic lunch on the beach. Old Nice was all kinds of perfect--with ice cream colored buildings, painted window shutters, cobble stone streets, and ivy growing on everything, I was in Pinterest heaven. We hiked a little bit on some cliffs right of the beach, where we realized we could see mountains and beach at the same time. Dreaaaamy.
We headed to Paris the next morning at the crack of dawn, just in time for Vaaaaalentine's Day, which was only MOSTLY a coincidence. We hit the ground running after we dropped our backpacks off at the hostel and did a little sightseeing. For dinner, we went to a really sketchy fondue place which provided us with a lot of stories, all of which I will tell you if you ask. We headed to the Eiffel tower in hopes of witnessing a few proposals and ate some chocolate while we watched the little twinkle lights go off. So romantic.
The next day we were literally running around everywhere and didn't have quite enough time at everything we went to..Which just means I'll have to go back sometime. We went to the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Shakespeare and Company bookstore (the bookstore of my dreams, complete with little ladders and nooks filled with books) Saint Chapelle, and the shops on Champs Elysee. Sigh. A full day of wonderful Parisian things.
The next day, we went to the Eiffel tower for a picnic lunch (just for the sake of being cute...we are under the impression that eating bread and cheese is very french) and explored the flea market before heading to the train station. While trying to connect trains, we realized we were running much later than we had anticipated and took off running through the station with our giant backpacks on. After 10 minutes of this and lots of panic, we made it onto the train and had to sit on the floor in the bar area, which wasn't actually terrible. We finally got back late on Saturday night and had all day Sunday to catch up on sleep.
France, you were magical. Well done.
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