By: Editors Addie Zwick and Alyx Prieto 

Our first few days in Paris have been absolutely amazing, beginning with our arrival Orly Airport on the north side of Paris after a seven-hour overnight. We then passed a “nuit blanche,” as the French call it, because we left USA at 7 p.m. and arrived in Paris at 9:30 the next morning, with only a few hours of sleep on the airplane.

We set out immediately for le Cathédral de Notre Dame, desoite our jetlag from the seven-hour difference between U.S. and French time, and spent several hours exploring the area around the cathedral as we tried out our French while getting lunch and asking for directions. Afterwards, we visited l’arc de la Défense, a huge arch at several miles outside of the city where the offices of the French defense department are housed.

Exhausted, we returned to our hotel to get settled into our rooms, and then we went out into the surrounding neighborhood on our own and ordered a delicious dinner at a café across the street from the hotel, made even better by the great conversations we had with our waiter in almost-perfect French.

On Saturday, we set out early for a bus tour of Paris, led by a hilarious history teacher who told us all about the military history of the city. We visited Shakespeare and Company, the famous English-language bookstore started by Walt Whitman, and grabbed a quick Greek lunch before getting
on the train for Château Versailles. We took the RER train 12 miles to Versailles, then spent several hours at the château.
We followed up the castle visit with a delicious dinner of roasted chicken and soup at a café.
Our destination the next morning was the Louvre museum, where we managed to sneak in through a little-known entrance and avoid the massive line. We spent several hours perusing the paintings and sculptures, spending most of our time looking at ancient Greek and Roman art. Afterwards, a group of students took the metro train all by themselves to the love lock bridge near Notre Dame, which was quite an accomplishment. We put our lock on the bridge and threw the key into the Seine, as tradition dictates. Then, we walked a few blocks to a restaurant, where we bought sandwiches, desserts and drinks, and enjoyed a beautiful lunch in a charming park across from Notre Dame. We followed this up with another successful metro trip and a visit to the Champs-Elysées and the Arc de Triomphe.
We finished off our night with a sunset trip up the Eiffel tower, made worth the wait by the breathtaking views.