Paris

This Blog Post is By Cat

Dear people reading my blog post,

This is the last adventure with my mom and dad. First me and my mom said goodbye to my dad from the hotel when he took the shuttle to the airport.  (If you didn’t know, my dad flew home while me and my mom would spend 2 days in Paris – my favorite place in the world!). Anyway, we drove to Lyon to drop our car off at the car rental place. My mom was really happy to turn the car in and not have to drive anymore!

Then we took a bus to the airport train station where we would catch our train to Paris. But our ticket said that this wasn’t our train station, ( but google maps told us that it was here at 9¾. ) Just joking. But our train was at a different train station. Ironically, before he left this morning, my dad asked if we were going to the right train station. Even worse, the information office was closed and didn’t open till 2:30pm and our train was at 2:00. We asked people what we should do. But sadly, nobody knew what to do. Finally, we ran into a lady who works there, and she said to get a ticket to go on the train to get to the right train station. Confusing right? Anyway, we got on a different train and made it to our correct train station that we were supposed to go to originally. We felt very accomplished. There were blue skies when we got to the train station.  Once we got in the right train station, we got Starbucks and a croissant, and hung out there till the sign said where our  next platform was. Once the platform was announced we headed outside and it was pouring! It was so loud and cold and wet. Finally we got on the correct train and made it to Paris!

We got a Uber (apparently Uber is huge in Paris) and went straight to the tattoo parlor that I had looked up. It is the best one in Paris! (We went with our luggage and everything!) We went down stairs to the piercing room and we waited and waited and waited for what felt like an hour or so. Then, this man with all of these tattoos came out and I prayed that I didn’t get him but I did. He was actually really nice.

Afterwards we took another Uber to our Airbnb and chilled out for a while for my ears to stop hurting. We got dinner and walked to the Eiffel Tower. We took a couple pictures and then walked back to our Airbnb.

The next day came and I felt awful! There was snot hanging down from my nose, my throat burned, and I was coughing like crazy! And worst of all, I had all this pain coming from my ears and I didn’t even know why? But then I remembered that I got earrings! I finally got them, but it wasn’t such a good feeling because they were hurting.  I took a lot of medicine but still didn’t feel better. My mom told me that it would kick in soon enough. So, I got dressed and we headed for the market to grab food and a pharmacy for more medicine. We didn’t find any, so, we went to a pastry shop instead. I got a croissant and my mom got a chocolate croissant. Mine was better. We than took the underground train to the Sacre-Coeur. We had to walk up 500 steps! We waited in line to go in the Church. Don’t forget, it’s Sunday.  I walked in and all these people were singing in French. I didn’t know what they were singing so I went along with Amazing Grace. We walked around the Church while looking at these amazing paintings on the ceiling. There was a lot going on in the paintings and I didn’t know what to look at. I lit a candle for anybody who needed it and we left the building! Before we left, we sat on the stairs and we ate a banana, apple, and drank a peach flavored ice tea.

We were walking around and noticed soldiers walking around with the big machine guns. I asked my mom why there were soldiers with the guns  and she said “They are like the police.” I thought that was pretty interesting.

While I was at our Airbnb, I looked up the best macaroon shop in Paris. It was called Laduree.  So, my mom got 1 macaroon while I got 3 macaroons. We also got 2 boxes of macaroons for people at my mom’s work.  We asked how long they would stay good and they said 12 hours If you don’t keep it refrigerated and 4-5 days if we did.

Next, my mom got a text from my Uncle Mark saying that there’s the Women’s World Cup Football (that’s soccer In American) game today and that we should go. So, we literally got tickets from a scalper in the subway and he literally walked us up to see if the tickets were real. And they were! So, we got some popcorn and found our seats at the top row 22 seat 51 and 22 seat 52. In the first half as you might know already the Americans scored 3 while Chile scored 0. In the second half nobody scored. It was a great game and there were for sure more American fans there than Chile.  After the game we decided to eat the macaroons we had bought for my mom’s work colleagues. Actually, more like I ate them. I LOVE MACAROONS! Then we went straight to bed.

Soon enough it was morning. We were going to go to the Louvre but I felt awful again so my mom left me in bed for 15 more minutes. I got up, got dressed and took lots of medicine. We still went to the Louvre but we couldn’t get in with all the tourists. We still had to take pictures by it! We than went shopping for a JA dress.  The first store we went to had very nice dresses. I tried on a few. Then, I saw it. It was the most beautiful blue summer dress. I loved it with all my heart. My mom said that it was too casual for JA. We asked the people who worked there to hold on to it for a bit. So, we tried some other stores but just couldn’t find the perfect dress.  We finally went downstairs to what looked like a bikini shop or just a shop with mannequins wearing bikinis. Anyway, my mom wanted to look inside just to see which one it was and as we were walking in, we saw a gorgeous purple dress. I loved it! I didn’t have any words for it. I tried it on and it fitted perfectly! We bought it! We looked around the mall some more. Finally, we came back to the first store we went to and also bought the beautiful blue dress for sale.

After shopping we had to replace the macaroons we ate. We tried 3 different bakeries to see if their macaroons tasted better but nothing compared to Laduree so we gladly went back there and got some more!

After shopping me and my mom took the underground to a boat dinner cruise for our last night in Paris. We got there an hour early so, we just hung out there and ate ice cream. Then I saw my mom searching for something in her bag and I asked her what’s wrong and she said that she lost the phone cord. We tried asking people where we could buy a cord. Sadly, we didn’t find any in the stores.  We headed back to the boat and apparently the boat had the right phone cord for us to borrow. Dinner was tasty. It wasn’t the best food I ever had but wasn’t the worst either.

My mom said that we had to go see Notre Dame before we left. I wanted to go to Notre Dame too, but our AirBnB landlord told us that it was locked up and you couldn’t see anything. I guess she was wrong. We went and we could still see the Church but just couldn’t go in. It turns out that the back of the Church was burned down. It was pretty cool because we could see a storage for all of the broken pieces rescued from the fire.

We than wanted to see the Eiffel Tower one more time before we left. We went back to the underground and I navigated us to the Eiffel Tower. We than found a place to sit and watched the Tower lite up. It was beautiful. Sadly, we had to leave since we needed to get up early the next day. We headed back to the AirBnB and had an amazing sunset to end the night. We fell right to sleep.

The next morning I was excited to get home and see all my friends again, my dad and Buster! (my dog). We ubered to the train station and then hopped on two trains to get to London. Our train actually went under the English Channel. Whoohoo! We made sure to rub Paddington’s nose for good luck before we left Paddington station. We got off the last train and hopped on the plane and  now we are in Arizona fighting the heat.

Well I had a great time traveling with my family. I can’t wait to travel again with them. I loved the crazy stuff and the hard stuff as well as the fun stuff.

Well this is Caitlyn Gill signing out but not for the last time.