Recap of a trip 13 years ago {Paris, July 2002}

After spending a week in Stockholm for a clarinet convention, taking a long ass train ride from Stockholm to Hamburg (and almost getting attacked by swans), and spending some time in Amsterdam celebrating my 20th birthday, we finally made it to the "City of Light," Paris.

We stayed at Hotel Mirific in Paris. 4 tiny beds in a small room. By now my suitcase had a broken wheel, weighed 90lbs, and was so ridiculously difficult to pull up the spiral staircase at the hotel. So by the time we got settled, I was feeling crazy.
We took the subway to Sacre Coeur.

The streets were narrow and charming and super hilly to navigate to the church.

I really enjoyed the view from Sacre Coeur, which was on top of a hill.
For dinner, we went to the HRC again...
We also walked by the Moulin Rouge
Another day we walked to the Arc de Triomphe and did touristy shit like stand in the middle of the road to take a photo of it.

And continued risking our lives to take photos of it.

We took a steep spiral staircase to the top- which I personally thought had a much better view of Paris than the Eiffel Tower.
Another day we took the train to Mantes la Vie, France to see the Buffet clarinet factory. All of our clarinets were made there, so we were very intrigued to see the whole process from chunk of wood to beautiful clarinet.

Sadly, the photos from the tour are lost. But it was incredible seeing the start to end process of how a clarinet gets made.

We went to the Eiffel Tower.

It was really cool to see something in person that I had only only seen online or TV.

I always wanted to return to Paris and have a picnic on the grassy field in front of the tower. Bottle of wine, baguette, stinky soft cheese... Heaven

I plan to recreate these photos when we go to Paris soon.

The view from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Cheesing it up at the carnival below the tower.
I cant wait to return soon!
We saw Notre Dame cathedral. (the back side of it)

And we went inside the cathedral.


We also went inside Cathedral St Chappelle which was even more gorgeous than Notre Dame.

We went to the Louvre.



And saw the sad Mona Lisa in its protective box surrounded by hoards of tourists snapping photos.

We saw the Seine river.

We also went to Musee D'Orsay which contained all of the impressionistic paintings from Monet, Manet, Degas, etc. It was really cool to see "Waterlilies" and other works I had only seen in books.



We also went  to the Pere LaChaise cemetary which was a short ride by subway.

We saw Chopin, Poulenc and Bizet's graves (all composers), as well as Jim Morrison's grave (from The Doors)

And then after a whirlwind 15 days, it was time to come home and back to reality.
It was a crazy awesome experience to see another part of the world for a few weeks. I cannot wait to return to Paris and visit Copenhagen soon. It is so amazing to look back and see how different I was 13 years ago vs now. My tastes in food and travel experience have changed significantly since then and I am super excited to stay away from just about everything I saw 13 years ago and truly experience the culture of these cities. Because traveler > tourist.