They flew from Chicago to Paris and I took the chunnel to meet them there. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with myself - it was my first Tube ride by myself, the only time I've taken the chunnel, and my first cab ride by myself to get from the station to the hotel. Unfortunately, my french failed miserably while I tried to converse with the cab driver. Luckily, he laughed it off and attempted to speak English...
Our 4 day trip in Paris was so jam-packed I won't even attempt to go into detail. As soon as I meet them in the hotel, we took off and spent the day seeing every single piece of art in the Musee d'Orsay, a beautiful impressionist museum. Following the museum we waited in line for tickets to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. I've always wanted to go to Paris for this reason alone, and it did not disappoint. Despite the freezing winds, the view was amazing, along with the stunning structure of the tower itself.
On Friday we spent hours in the Musee de Louvre - it's was way bigger than I imagined. I actually enjoyed the ornate ceilings and rooms a little more than the art. The Mona Lisa was so small and I couldn't grasp the reason for it's fame and the rest of the art pieces began to blur together. After the Louvre we walked past a few more memorials/statues and hit up another museum, the Musee de l'Orangerie which held my favorite part of Paris: Monet's wall size paintings of waterlillies. There were two rooms containing the 8 paintings; it was so calm in the rooms and I could have stared at them for hours. Last on the stop for Friday was a walk down the Champs Elysees, accompanied by declicious banana and nutella crepes, ending at the Arc de Triomphe.
Saturday came our trip to Versailles to visit the Palace. This building by far beat out any other palace or castle I've seen in Europe. It's ridiculous how much of the country's money went into building this palace over decades, but it was still amazing to see room after room adorned in gold. Once we got back to Paris we went to Saint Chapelle which houses stunning stained glass windows and then walked around Notre Dame and went to their evening mass.
Sunday morning before we left for the chunnel back to London, we went to yet another musuem: Musee de Cluny, a medieval museum which houses the famous Unicorn tapestry. We ended our trip to Paris with a visit to the Pantheon where we saw the tomb of Marie Curie.
Paris was an exhausting whirlwind of sites, but so worth the trip.
The second part of my parents visit is what I was most looking forward to: showing them around London and where I've been living for the past 2.5 months. Unfortunately, I got the stomach flu Monday morning so I missed out on touring around with them Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday night I still didn't feel great, but couldn't hang out with them either because I already had other plans....
side note: other plans = Robert Pattinson's premiere of Remember Me. Alyssa and I met a bunch of girls from our program outside the theatre after our art class. Lucky for us, they had gotten awesome spots just two rows of people back from the red carpet. We waited for 2 hours and then Rob finally came! :) It was crazy the amount of screaming people, interviewers, and security there was. After Rob gave interviews for an hour, he came within one foot of me to sign autographs and take pictures. It was a fantastic moment seeing him in person and hearing his British accent. (I'm sure most of you reading this know my slightttt obsession for him...)
Back to my parents visit....
Thursday I went with them to visit Bath for the day. It's a really cute town, we had two good meals, and basically spent the day following Jane Austen's steps throughout Bath (my mom goes crazy for that kind of thing and loves Jane Austen).
Friday, their last full day here, they went to visit another Palace in Hampton and I stayed back to sleep in and finish recovering from the flu. Once they got back we went to Harrods, dinner at a restaurant that Princess Diana used to bring William and Harry when they were little, and back to my flat so they could see where I live. My dad saw the embassys, a Rolls Royce, and the million pound flats and claimed that "he's not even allowed to walk around in places like this." I guess I've kind of forgotten how "posh" of an area I've been living in...
Saturday morning we were going to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum before they left, but my mom wasn't feeling that well so we stayed in the room and watched more of my new favorite sport: ski jumping... it sounds boring, but some European cup was going on and you can really get into it!
It was so nice to have my parents here and have conversations in person rather than via skype. They braved a 10 day trip across the pond and (I think) enjoyed it as much as I have been. When I said bye to them at the Tube and realized I only had 5 weeks left (now 4) I had extremely mixed emotions. It was weird sending them on a plane back to the States without me, but I'm definitely not ready to leave London. But instead of dwelling on how quickly April 25th is coming, I'm looking forward to my last weekend trip in 2 weeks: Barcelona to visit Seah!
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