Courtesy of Grace MacDonald

On Feb. 18, my roommate and I landed in Paris for a weekend trip. We were supposed to be meeting her dad and brother there, but something happened with their flight so it ended up just being the two of us.

We arrived in the morning and were able to check into our hotel right away, which was nice because we could set our suitcases down and start exploring Paris. We both bought three-day unlimited ride passes for public transportation, which was around 53 Euros. It was a little expensive, but definitely worth it: we took the bus and subway a lot, yet still ended up walking 26.1 miles over the span of the weekend.

The first place we went was the Palace of Versailles, which is about an hour outside of the city. We took a train, similar to the MBTA commuter rail, to get there, which was included in the transit passes we had purchased.

The palace was beautiful: huge and very ornately decorated. There was a lot of amazing artwork inside too. I loved it. 

Since we have student visas for studying abroad, we were able to tour Versailles for free. 

Our visas also got us into Musee d’Orsay  — where we saw “Water Lilies”, Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait” and “Starry Night Over The Rhône” — and Sainte Chapelle, a church with beautiful stained glass, for free as well.

Afterward, we took the train back into Paris and got off at a stop by the Eiffel Tower. It was so surreal to see the Eiffel Tower in person, right in front of me, and it was so beautiful when it was lit up at night.

After dark, there’s a five minute light show on the Eiffel Tower that happens every hour on the hour until 1 a.m. This was one of my favorite things in Paris: we watched it three times, even staying up late despite how tired we were to see the final show of the night.

Two of the major highlights of our trip were going to the very top of the Eiffel Tower and touring the catacombs. It was very windy at the top of the tower, but the views of Paris from above were incredible, and it was just really cool in general to be inside the tower.

If you read my article about my trip to Vienna, you’ll know that seeing the catacombs there was one of my favorite parts of the trip, so I was very excited for the Paris catacombs. They did not disappoint. 

The Paris catacombs are much larger than the ones I saw in Vienna. They were essentially a bunch of hallways with bones stacked on either side and no barrier between you and the bones. I swear you could’ve just taken a bone and no one would’ve noticed.

Only a portion of the catacombs are open to the public. There are several dark hallways behind bars that you can shine your phone flashlight down and see more bones as far as the light will reach. It’s kind of creepy, but cool at the same time. Like, who knows what’s down there?

We tried escargot (because why not) but neither of us really liked it, and it was hard to get out of the shell. The croissants and crepes we had throughout the trip, however, were delicious. We enjoyed an amazing charcuterie board and some pizza one night.

However, our final night was slightly overshadowed when someone tried to steal my friend’s phone right out of her hands. Luckily she had a tight grip on it, so he wasn’t able to grab it, but it was scary.

Regardless, I’m so happy that I’ve crossed Paris off my bucket list and we covered so much ground over the span of three days! It was definitely my favorite trip so far.