Midnight in Paris

“A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.” 

-Thomas Jefferson

After leaving Morocco, I was, of course, mostly just looking forward to getting to Bolivia. However, the travel agents at SIT, in their infinite wisdom (I have many things to say about travel agents at SIT), decided that the most efficient way to get us from Point A to Point B, was to fly northeast to France, west to Florida, and then finally south again to Bolivia. On the bright side, that meant we had a 14-hour overnight layover in Paris after our first day of travel. We were booked in a very nice Best Western hotel nearby the airport, but this was my first time in Europe, and it would be silly to spend the night sleeping. Instead, I caught an insanely expensive taxi into the city and met up with my friend Vicky, who's studying abroad there this semester. Unfortunately, taking my big camera into the streets of Paris in the middle of the night wouldn't really have been a wise decision, so I had to turn to *shudder* my phone for taking pictures. Ultimately, I decided to treat all the photos with Instagram, simply because I didn't feel like editing them with a real program, and Instagram filters are so overdone that they hide the fact that the iPhone camera has the image quality of a potato. 

Hopefully the last time an instagram picture of my food will show up on a blog I try to take seriously. On another note, dinner at the hotel was predictably delicious.

What better place for the taxi to stop than the Eiffel Tower? Every hour on the hour for about five minutes, the tower starts to sparkle. It's amazingly beautiful, and unfortunately we only saw it out the window of our taxi. By the time we got out, it was too late. One thing I hadn't really expected with the Eiffel tower was the scale of it: it's huge. And just as ridiculous and beautiful as the pictures suggest. 

After ogling the Eiffel Tower for a little while, I walked to the bar to meet up with Vicki. We hung out for a while there, then walked back to the Tower where I caught my taxi. There really is something magical about the streets of Paris; they really capture the haut couture the city is known for, even in the middle of the night. It probably helped that this was my first time in the developed world since September, so all the affluence was overwhelming. Not to mention how expensive everything is; 7 Euros (like 10 dollars) for a beer? That's just ridiculous. 

This poster was prominently displayed all over the city. Kind of a shocking change after being in the super-conservative Rabat medina for a month. Tasteful blurring added for underage viewers.

Following Paris, we had another 8-hour layover in Miami. Even weirder than being in Paris for a night was suddenly being back in my home country for a little while: turning my phone off airplane mode, calling parents and friends, enjoying being in a place where everyone speaks English, and getting all the food I haven't been able to have for months (as in, Mexican food). Between all this, sleep really wasn't much of a thing. By the time we got to Bolivia, we were all exhausted and extra-susceptible to altitude sickness. But in exchange for getting to walk the streets Paris, see old friends, and finally enjoy a good burrito? Worth it.

Flying into Miami

Oh hey, Bahamas.