Day 32-France, Paris

Je suis en Paris!!! Aaahhhh!!!! I seriously can't believe it. Right now I'm enjoying the view from my hotel window of the lit Eiffel Tower and am blown away by the beauty of parisian night life. It truly is romantic :)

We arrived in the city around 5 pm after our afternoon flight from Berlin and began our evening in this timeless city by visiting Notre Dame. It was incredible. Now I've seen my fair share of churches (granted most were early christian, byzantine, and Greek orthodox), but none had the immediate effect of grandeur this gothic cathedral had. Luckily, we happened to go during mass making the experience that much more unforgettable. The organist and singing was so perfect, it was really moving. Amazing!

The only thing that tore us away was the promise of food since we hadn't eaten a meal (not comprised solely of sweets) all day. I wanted my first experience of parisian food to be legitimate, so we found a cute little cafe where I ordered Pâté, chicken with white sauce (I thought it was similar to Campbell's mushroom soup but more rich) which came with French fries (thought that was pretty ironic), and what I thought was going to be cheese and fruit but ended up being a sort of Greek yogurt with raspberry syrup. I enjoyed all of it, even the meat and fat spread ;) Il etait vraiment bien!

Après nous avons mange notre nourriture, we decided to check out some pastry shops and somehow ended up on a corner by this incredibly talented man who was balancing a fishbowl on his head and doing other things like blowing up balloons and dancing. It was crazy impressive! In fact, it was so cool I had to have a picture with him. But instead of just posing for the picture, he moved me right in front of him and all of a sudden began juggling with his arms around me and the fishbowl (with like five fish swimming around) balanced on his head! I was terrified of moving in case a fish flew into my hair or something (I hate when fish flop around and also when pigeons fly right up in my face which happened outside Notre Dame aujourd'hui). He was incredibly impressive so I didn't mind the mass of people laughing at my startled/slightly apprehensive/amazed expression as I was trapped in the performance act. Totally worth it!

We ended the evening with each of us purchasing une baguette that we ate half of before we got to the metro...It was really good :) J'adore Paris et j'espere que demain est incroyable, aussi! Au revoir!