Paris: Day 1

Okay. Wow, what a day. Where to start? Woke up forgetting I was in Paris and then I realized and wow, what a feeling. After breakfast, we walked to the train station so we could book our reservations for our trains. Our plans became mixed up and instead of Amsterdam, we are traveling to Belgium. Everything else has worked out, we need to make just one more reservation and then all will be well.
After all was said and done, it was lunch time and so we bought some baguettes.

After we ate, we went to our new hostel called Woodstock.

After the hostel we wandered for a bit until it was time for our tour. It's a tour of Paris through a family run tour system called Culutrefish! If you are in Paris and want an amazing tour, I highly recommend, this tour.  Our tour guide was Pierre and he is French American, as are the rest of his sibling, Joey and Julie. He is the best tour guide ever. Oh yeah and he's from where I am. Small world, eh?

The tour not only gives you the ins and outs of Paris, but also insider tips of the do's and dont's of Paris. They are so helpful and any questions you have they are most likely to have the answers.

We went through the Red light district of Paris and saw the Moulin Rouge which as a lot of you know, it's one of my favorite movies.

The tour was amazing and I learned a lot. I wish I could recap everything that I learned, but it was so much information and there was so much to see that I cannot possibly recap everything. One of my favorite stories however was the story of Dennis the Menace. He was a priest and during 325AD and he was sentenced to death. After walking 1/2 up this giant hill, the Roman guards got lazy and chopped his head off. Legend has it that Dennis simply picked up his head and kept walking and talking. The Romans could not get him to shut up. He walked for a few more miles and then he finally died.

We went the the house where Vincent Van Gogh stayed. The window that is closed and has the flowers on it is where he stayed. For you Moulin Rouge fans, Toluse (forgive me if the spelling is wrong) was a friend of Vincent's and they would frequent the Moulin Rouge together.

 

All around the streets and on some cars and building there was a signature in the form of an owl. I asked Pierre about it and he didn't know. (Contrary to popular belief, he knows almost everything, not everything.)

This windmill was actually this pretty snazzy hangout where all the artists and Bohemian Revolutionary people would go. There is pretty gruesome story that accompanies it. I many get some details wrong, but the jist of it is, this man rebelled and to show the people that the government wasn't messing around, they took the man and chopped him up and hung him from the blades of the windmill. His wife finally took him down and buried him.

 There is this statue which shows a man walking through walls. The story goes that he found out he had this ability and used to meet with his lover. The tale ends when he becomes stuck because his doctor gave him pills so he would be unable to walk through walls, pills which he accidentally took earlier that day. So legend has it, if you listen closely sometimes you can hear him screaming for help.

The tour ended on a great note and I loved the three hours we spent with Pierre. Honestly the highlight of my trip so far.
 Dinner was fantastic. I had steak and fries and then a slice of cake. It was amazing. We finally made it back to Woodstock, showered and updated most things.
There is another tour by the same group tomorrow which Alyssa and I will attend!
Allons-y
Remi