Paris, Munich, and Innsbruck

People always say that Paris is a good idea. I can’t agree more. The first time I visited Paris this semester, I completely fell in love with the city and didn’t think it could get any better. Then it did.

On Wednesday morning, my amazing boyfriend Joe landed in Paris. It has been a long time coming, and I am over-the-moon excited to spend the next two weeks traveling and exploring Europe together. I met him at the airport, and we started our grand ole adventure.

After taking the train from the airport to the city center, and settling into our Airbnb, Joe and I set out to explore Paris. Our first stop was to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was absolutely beautiful!  We walked around inside and saw the famous stained glass windows and ornate architecture. It was gorgeous!  They also happened to be having the Fete du Pain (Bread Party), where they were making fresh baguettes in the Cathedral square. Of course we stopped by for a quick snack before walking to the catacombs.

One of the things Joe really wanted to see in Paris was the catacombs that are hidden underground near the city center. We walked all the way there, to find out that the workers were on strike and wouldn’t be open until Sunday. So that really put a damper on our plans for the day. We stopped at a local bar for a beer to make a new plan for the afternoon, and decided to head towards the Eiffel Tour (My favorite <3). I was completely in awe of its beauty once again. We took the short ride to the top to get the full experience of Paris. The view from the top was unreal. The city went out as far as we could see and was absolutely breath taking. Joe was laughing at me the entire time because I was acting like a kid in a candy shop. Joe was sweet enough to buy me a glass of champagne from the bar, and we got to watch the sun set over the city. It was perfect!

For dinner that night, we weren’t super hungry, so we stopped at a restaurant close by and I made Joe try escargot with me. He was very hesitant at first, but he tried them. I can’t tell if he actually liked them… or if he just ate them because of me. Either way, he can now say he has tried les escargot. ;)

After our dinner, we started to walk back towards the metro, just in time to watch the Eiffel Tower light up. We sat down to wait to see the tower sparkle. It took a few minutes, but eventually the Eiffel Tower lit up the sky and was as beautiful as ever. It was really fun to be there with Joe for his first time in Paris.

Thursday morning, we got up pretty early to get in line for the Louvre. There was absolutely no one there. It was great! We walked right in, I showed my expired Italian ID to get in for free yet again. (This time they looked at me a little funny and I told a little white lie that “I was waiting for my updated visa to be sent to me”. They bought it.) We explored the Louvre for a good part of the morning. Joe was surprised by how big the museum was and how much there was to see. Of course we saw the Mona Lisa and all the big, famous pieces of art. As we were walking around, the security alarm went off telling us to exit the building… we just acted like dumb Americans and continued to explore the museum. It seemed to work. The majority of people left and we basically had the entire hall to ourselves. It was actually really fun!

After exploring the museum, Joe and I took a walk through the Louvre gardens and made our way to the Arc d’ triumph. We walked around and watched the crazy driving around the base of the Arc. We then took the metro to Sacre Coeur Cathedral. The cathedral sits on a hill overlooking the entire city of Paris. Before reaching the top of the hill, we found some really funny street performers that were getting kids to dance and tell jokes. It was really fun to watch. When the show was over, we made it up to the cathedral to explore the inside. The main alter was composed of the most elaborate mosaics and architecture. It was unbelievable! Just for fun, Joe and I climbed the 300 stairs to the top of the Sacre Coeur dome. The view was spectacular. We could see all the famous monuments of Paris from the top. It was so cool!

One of the things Joe was determined to beat while traveling Europe was jet lag. He was confident that the time change was not going to affect him. As much as he tried, he was still tired. After exploring for most of the day, we decided to head back to our airbnb so he could take a nap. On the way, we stopped to see the famous Moulin Rouge. It looked exactly how you would expect, a big theatre with a club/show vibe. What we didn’t expect was for the street to be the old red-light district. So that was a fun little surprise. We eventually made it back for Joe to have his nap. Apparently our alarms didn’t go off, because we woke up at 10pm instead of 6pm like we had planned. I guess we were a little tired. At 10:30 we set out to find some dinner… which is harder to find than you think at that time of night. We found the only restaurant that was open, which happened to be this random fast food burger place. It was a fun late night adventure in the streets of Paris.

A short 4 hours later, we woke up to get to the airport for our flight to Munich, Germany. We had expected it to take us a lot longer to get to the airport, so we arrived more than 2.5 hours early for our flight… ya. It was a little overkill on my part, but better safe than sorry. We landed in Munich around 10 am and took a bus to city center where we met Janek, Joe’s friend from Germany. Janek and his family lived in the Portland area a few years ago and Janek played basketball with Joe in high school. Janek and his family were nice enough to let us stay at their home in downtown Munich. It was really fun to stay with locals and explore Munich with people who actually know the area. Janek was a great tour guide. He took us to a bunch of cool sites, including cathedrals, a cool park where people were surfing in the river, and many other places.

On Friday night, we had dinner with Janek and his family before meeting up with his friends Leo and Mateo. Leo and Mateo were super cool guys. It was really fun to talk to them and hear their stories. Mateo is half Italian and has family that lives in Cinque Terre. Being that I was there a few weeks ago, it was fun to talk to him and show him my photos. He was even able to look at one of my photos of the bay and tell me who owned which boat. Crazy small world! We had a few drinks with them and hung out before meeting more of Janek’s friends at a get-together. It was a lot of fun!

Saturday, Janek took Joe and I all around Munich. Our chosen form of transportation was by bike. We road through a big park and went to the Hofbrauhaus, the main city square, the farmers market, and a traditional beer fest in a neighboring city. It was really fun! The beer fest was really cool because everyone was wearing traditional lederhosen and were drinking German beer and eating pretzels. Joe wanted to keep his mug, so I came up with a way to steal his huge beer mug. It was so funny. Joe was nervous that we were going to get caught. Good thing I’m a pro (ie. I stole my glass from Guinness in Dublin). As we were getting ready to head back to Janek’s house, it started to rain. And of course, at that moment, the chain on Joe’s bike snapped in half. There was no way of fixing that. To make things even better, we really had no way of getting home. We asked a tram driver if we could put our bikes on the tram and he basically yelled at us in german and said "absolutely not". So we had to ride our bikes to the next subway stop. Mind you, Joe has no chain, so he starts riding his bike like a skateboard/ scooter and pushing his bike the entire way in the rain. It was hilarious. It was quite the adventure! We eventually made it home, and just in time to have dinner with Janek’s family.

On Sunday, Janek took Joe and I to the Nyphenburg Castle, which was a huge palace that was owned by the King of Germany at one point. It was huge! We took a tour of the inside and walked around the gardens. It was really cool. In the afternoon, Janek had to do some homework, so he left Joe and I at the castle, where we continued to explore and got a little dessert snack before making our way back to Janek’s house. For dinner that night, Janek took us to a traditional German restaurant so we could have a beer and a typical German meal. It was a lot of fun!

Joe and I really enjoyed staying with Janek and his family. They were such sweet hosts and were generous enough to let us eat and stay with them for a few days of our trip. It was a blast!

Monday morning, we took the bus to Innsbruck. After sitting in a traffic jam and having the bus take longer than expected, we made it to Innsbruck. We dropped our bags at the airbnb, and went to explore the city. For those of you who haven’t been to Austria, we highly recommend visiting. Innsbruck is settled in a valley in the Alps. It is absolutely breathtaking with huge granite peaks in every direction. It is beautiful! While exploring, we found a street food market that was going on, and spent the afternoon eating yummy street food along the river looking at the mountains. After exploring the city, we hit up a few cool bars and drank some delicious Austrian beer before returning to our airbnb for the night.

The next morning, we woke up, made some breakfast, and packed some lunch for our day’s adventures. We took the bus to the Patscherkofel ski resort in Igls, Austria. This is the main ski resort where the Winter Olympics were held in 1964. Thanks to some great advice from Joe’s brother Chris, we took the gondola ride to the top of the mountain. It was so pretty and it was so clear out. We could see mountains for miles and miles. It was unbelievable! When we reached the top, we decided to hike even further up to the cell tower at the top of the mountain. We stopped to have lunch at a bench that over looked the mountains and the entire valley. It was so pretty! Joe and I enjoyed hiking our way to the top. When we finally made it, we looked out to see endless mountain peaks and cities that lined the valley. We could see dark rain clouds approaching us, and of course we were not prepared for rain by any means… so we made our way down the mountain. We had planned to hike the 14miles all the way down back to the city, but by the time we reached the gondola that could take us down, it had began to pour. The entire valley was socked in and you couldn’t see any of the mountains or Innsbruck below. We made the smart choice and decided to take the gondola to the bottom. Lame, I know. After we made it back to our airbnb and dried off, Joe needed another nap (JETLAG) before we headed out to dinner and drinks.

We had so much fun exploring Paris, Munich, and Innsbruck. We loved exploring new places and Joe loved trying different German and Austrian beers. Luckily we have another week to travel Europe. Back to Germany we go!