A Plethora of Monuments

This weekend was basically one of the busiest weekends of my life. Sistadre came to visit, and I think I only got 5-6 hours of sleep per night from when she arrived on Thursday night and when she left last night. As a result, I am now the proud owner of a head cold. Awesome.

The weekend started out great; I met Jules at her hostel, and we had a drink in the bar (and were marginally involved in what might have escalated into a bar brawl), and chattered at each other for a long time before I left to take the metro home. It was really strange to leave Jules at the end of the night because I don't think we've ever been in the same city without staying in the same place before. I think we both felt really anxious when we parted, which was a bizarre feeling.

The next day, I got myself out of bed early and had breakfast with Jules before we headed off the Louvre, which is my new favorite place in Paris. I'm making a promise to myself to go every week, if at all possible. After that, we wandered around Montmartre and visited Sacre coeur, which was beautiful.

On Saturday, we went back to the Louvre, which was almost better than the first time. Then we walked over to Notre Dame, which I'd only seen in the rain. It was even more beautiful in the sun, and I couldn't help but sing the Disney songs in my head again. Saturday night was less great because we spent a good part of it trying to meet up with my housemate and her friends at a bar, but we weren't having much luck. When we did find them, they were all wasted and not very friendly, which was disappointing. After Jules left, both our nights went downhill, with her missing the last metro, getting humped by a guy on a bus, and having to take a cab part of the way home. Meanwhile, I was stuck in a bar, watching my wasted housemate throw herself at French boys until 4 in the morning when I finally dragged her home.

By Sunday, both Jules and I were getting worn out. We were tired and cranky with each other, and then we took the wrong train while trying to get to Versailles. We ended up in the banlieus (read: ghettos) of Paris, which were kind of sketchy and really depressing. Finally, we got ourselves to Versailles and laughed it off as best we could. Versailles itself was really cool, but not as cool as I'd hoped it would be. There were far too many people, and I hate crowds where I get jostled and overheated. But it was, overall, pretty awesome. That night, Jules came over for dinner with my host family (and my host mother's adult son who is GORGEOUS), and I drank too much wine, and Jules and I skyped with my parents together for awhile.

Monday and Tuesday were pretty chill. I had class for most of the day, but Jules came over on Monday night, and we watched How I Met Your Mother in my room for a while and just chilled. On Tuesday, we ended up in a cafe and had an hour long (at least) discussion about academia, the nature of history, and moral obligations. It was an interesting argument that brought up a lot of tough questions, even if Jules and I didn't see eye to eye on everything.

It was really great to see Jules, because it had been 5 months, which has never happened before. All in all, it was a great visit, even though we did have moments where morale plummeted. Also, I think I saw more of Paris in those 5 days than I did in the entire 2 weeks previous.