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A fun fact about me is that I love learning new languages. Unfortunately, I do not have the patience to wait for fluency. However, there is one language that I have persisted with – French. I love the French language and French culture, so you can imagine my excitement when I finally got the opportunity to visit the city of love itself – Paris. I felt even luckier knowing that I would be staying with a local Parisian friend who knew all the ins and outs of the city. Before getting into all the exciting details of my adventure, I do want to say that this was only a weekend trip, so time was very limited.

On my first day there, I went to the Palace of Versailles on the outskirts of Paris. This palace was enormous, adorned with gold as far as the eye could see. What struck me the most about the interior was the careful attention to detail in every room. The frames surrounding every painting were exquisite; they could have been their own separate statues and I would have been so enamored with them. The ceilings themselves were painted, showing the stories surrounding the royal family. Despite how beautiful the palace was, the main staple (arguably) are the gardens. The only word I can use the describe the gardens is ‘enormous. I was blown away by the sheer size of them. The downside was that it was still very cold (I believe it was still wintertime), and this meant that the gardens were not as lush and green as I expected.

Later that day, I had lunch in a small café and tried some classic French pastries. Let me just say that chocolate in Paris is definitely not like chocolate back in the United States. These pastries were INSANELY good. However, my friend really wanted to show off her baking skills, so we went back to her place, and she made crêpes and jelly filled cookies. This was my first time trying an authentic French crêpe, and I must say they are a lot less sweet than expected. In fact, most flavor will come from whatever it is you put on it.

That afternoon, I went to Disneyland Paris and got to do a lot of shopping. Yes, my inner child was healing at an exponential rate over the course of a couple hours. After doing all my shopping, we realized that there was a movie theatre in Disneyland, so we decided to watch John Wick 4 (please don’t watch this movie at Disneyland) and I was scarred. It was a very intense way to end my day, but the car ride back was more than enough time to get over it.

Yes, this was basically the extent of my stay in Paris. Sunday morning came, and I really wanted to go to the Eiffel tower, but later realized that I simply would not have enough time to go and then come back to my friend’s apartment and go all the way to the airport in time. However, do not be disappointed because I will be returning to Paris in June, and I will 100% do all the classic tourist things.