TacoCat’s Travels #55: School Shenanigans and Sightseeing!

Hey Steemit!

So if you didn't catch the last few posts, this series is about our trip to Paris way back in June 2016 when we went there for summer school! Both of us enrolled in a Luxury Management course at a college called HEC Paris. The course itself was 2 weeks long, but we booked our flight a week earlier so we could travel and explore the city.

And in the last post, I went on a solo adventure (and by solo I mean without Sean, but I was with my group mates) to the Aston Martin store! As part of our group project, we had to take an excursion to the physical store of our luxury brand, take pictures and share our findings and suggestions during our presentation. After visiting the store, we also explored Champs-Élysées for a little bit, where I got this amazing shot:

15-17 June 2016.

Anyway, I'm just gonna do a quick summary for these 3 days, since we were just in school on campus the whole time. We'd attend 3 hour lectures in the morning, break for lunch, then attend another 3 hour lecture in the afternoon. So there's not really much to write about.

I mentioned that we had another friend from our college (named Ho Kit) coincidentally join us during our summer program, and he was also my ex-group mate on one of my modules back in NUS! We were also all taking the same Luxury Management course here at HEC so the 3 of us got pretty close.

We were blessed with shockingly good weather on Wednesday (the 15th), so Sean and I decided to go out for some groceries.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much to photograph on campus. But I did get this shot of the amazing azure blue sky:

Seriously have you ever seen the sky so blue!

I think if Singapore wasn't so hot and humid I would love to be a nature photographer. But using my smartphone instead of a fancy DSLR haha.

Anyway, on the way back from our grocery run, I did get a shot of the hostel we were staying in, and I gotta say, it legit looks like a jail without bars.

Just for comparison, this is the hostel I was staying in at my own college back in Singapore:

Source: Wordpress

But anyway, Sean and I were staying together in my room on the second floor, since his room was on the top floor and there were no escalators. And our friend just happened to be staying right next to us! What a happy coincidence! So we decided to turn Sean's room into... a kitchen!

Our friend was gonna be staying for month since he was taking another course after this one, so he bought pans and an induction cooker. So we decided to cook our dinners since it was really expensive to keep eating out.

And so the 3 of us had a new routine! Go to class, have lunch, go back to class, then cook dinner in our secret kitchen!

We also bought plastic cups to use as bowls for the pasta that we would make. I apologise since it's not exactly eco-friendly, but we were broke college students on a 2 week exchange program, so we didn't want any extra baggage.

And I gotta say, those meals we made were legit. They were so tasty! We had curry noodles, mushroom pasta, and our own european version of hotpot. This is still pretty much how I cook today; just dumping vegetables and meat in a pot with noodles and seasoning. 😅

So that was basically how we lived in HEC Paris. It wasn't much, but it was good enough. And we had so much fun cooking and eating together!

But the real fun was going out on weekends!

18 June 2016. Saturday.

We didn't really have plans for today, other than just exploring the city together. Sean didn't walk around with his group mates during their field trip so this would be his first time seeing the "real" Paris.

We took the morning shuttle bus from our campus to the city together, and arrived where we got picked up the first time, at the Lion of Belfort!

So fun fact: this lion statue in Place Denfert-Rochereau is actually a smaller version of the real Lion of Belfort in the Belfort, France! That Lion statue is humongous and sits below the Belfort citadel. It was originally sculpted by Frédéric Bartholdi, the sculptor of the Statue of Liberty!

Source: pinterest

Anyway, we didn't really have a plan other than seeing the Eiffel tower, so we just took a walk around town.

And we eventually arrived at the town hall of the French government, because why not.

Beside this building, was the Panthéon! Which I just learned, is the final resting place of French luminaries. The inscription above its very grand entrance reads “Aux Grands Hommes La Patrie Reconnaissante,” or “To the great men, the grateful homeland.”

We didn't actually enter the Panthéon, unfortunately; there might've been a long line, or we just figured it was another museum. Now that I'm looking at all these pictures of the interior I'm kinda regretting it, because it looks so cool!

Source: Babies with Backpacks

But oh well, we need enough time to see the city anyway. The Panthéon itself actually has a dome on top that we couldn't see from being at its doorstep, so we had to walk quite a ways away to get this shot:

The Arc de Triomphe was just a 15 minute walk from the Panthéon so that's where we headed! It was nice just taking a relaxing stroll along the streets of Paris, admiring the architecture and enjoying the weather.

We walked past this really cool-looking church (I think?) that I might've come across during my field trip.

A little while later, we arrived at the Arc!

Unfortunately, we didn't have clear weather that day. It would've been so nice to see the church with the blue sky, but oh well. It was still cool seeing it again with Sean and Ho Kit.

Not too far off, we also saw the Fontaine Saint-Michel! Which I learned is a monumental fountain constructed in 1858–1860 during the French Second Empire and since 1926, has been listed as national heritage site or monument historique!

I think with this last picture I better end it off here because this post has gone on long enough.

I'm so sorry for the long post! But stay tuned next week, where we visit more sites like the Eiffel tower!

Thanks so much for reading!

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