Corporate Yuppie - Indian style

WOW! I've had many adventures since my last post and have not posted any of the stories into this blog.

Here I go again, being seriously ridiculous around the world, though a little more business than usual.

Takeoff from Seattle: Unfortunately, I missed my "St. Practice Day" celebration in Seattle, but no fear here, my layover happened to be in Chicago where I could meet up with Brie and Lauren (no accident for sure). To appease my liver (read, further destroy my liver), Brie brought some Jameson for the car ride (NICE!) and we proceeded to an Irish pub for some drinks and lunch. Of course I had to eat a giant steak seeing as it's illegal to kill a cow in India, thus no beef for me for the next three weeks.


So I climbed onto my nonstop flight from Chicago to New Delhi a little buzzed for sure. Apparently, it's American Airlines' longest nonstop international flight, and probably not good for my health that I only got up twice the entire flight. The plane wasn't as filled with Indian families as I thought it would have been; there were quite a few tourists on the plane. Anyway, as soon as I sat down, a man approached me expecting that I switch seats with his wife since I was traveling alone and he wanted to sit next to his wife. Obviously, properly asking me to switch seats was just an afterthought...oh Asian manners...

After landing in India, I tried to purchase a SIM card, which would not work on my phone. The SIM seller was pretty mad at me as he had already activated the card. It's also interesting to note how often phones are used in this country; during the work hours, people's personal phones are just ringing blatantly and being answered no big deal.

Aside from randomness in the airport, work has been pretty good. It’s definitely exhausting as you’re with your team from morning to around 8:30/9pm. Working in an office away from main campus also requires you to work on Redmond time – I’ve had to take late night calls for meetings with managers, etc. and work around their time. Other than that, it’s not too bad. I work in a conference room with 6 other people, so it’s nice to be focused and not goofing around reading the news and such. After work, we usually go out for a pretty big meal. I think I’ve had every single Indian dish I’ve ever wanted to eat. Lots of kebabs, lamb, naan, and random food filled with yogurt and lentils, etc. Funny enough, my favorite food so far was from a Lebanese restaurant. Here are a couple of pictures:


Aside from Gurgaon, I went to Mumbai (Bombay) for the weekend. It was nice to get away from Gurgaon but I’m pretty exhausted. Traveling as a tourist in India is incredibly tiring, especially if you don’t have your own car/driver. I am constantly being scammed by the cab drivers! Of course, we couldn’t leave Mumbai without seeing an elephant for a ride on the highway…


Our trip began with a stop at the Gateway of India, probably named that because it’s a pretty large commercial port.
In going there, I was able to view the beautiful green Indian ocean water. Seriously, this country is probably one of the most polluted countries I’ve seen. Granted, I’m here during a dry season and probably did not expect as much smog and pollution everywhere since my benchmark is my last Asia trip, which was during monsoon season where the rain probably helped clear a lot of the pollution away.

Gateway of India wasn’t very much of a site, so Marissa (my coworker who is on the trip with me) and I had lunch at the Taj Mahal Hotel, which is incredibly nice, where we were able to once again have a great view of the waters (note the sarcasm, the waters are gross). Funny enough, Marissa and I ended up having dinner at the Taj as well. I think India is a little too insane to be doing much else…it’s just far too chaotic and without someone local, all you can really do is see the main touristy sites and hang out at your hotel.

Aside from the Taj Hotel, we went to the Elephanta Caves, which is an uncovered site Hindu gods’ faces carved into the rock slash side of the mountain. On the way there, I had a fun brush-up with a monkey. Note: Never dangle your camera around a monkey….bright, shiny objects tend to attract monkeys, surprise! Luckily, my camera was not stolen by the monkey, but here’s a fun picture of a monkey taking a sip of mango juice from a bottle.


At night, Marissa and I toured some local markets, full of bangles and patterned scarves. Basically, the usual trinket/tourist trap from any large city. We also found a beach near our hotel that was quite a wild celebration of sorts. Locals were celebrating Holi, a festival where one smears all types of bright colors on each other marking the beginning of Spring. On the beach, people were celebrating by having a bonfire and then running around the bonfire in circles, while also throwing colors on each other.

Before leaving Bombay, we also managed to go to Juhu Beach, where Marrisa and I were the only two not covered in bright colors, making us pretty obvious targets for Holi. We opted out of being Holied as we figured the planes would not let us back on covered in multi-colored powder (that incidentally is extremely tough to take off).



More to come next weekend!

Fine, Cane, and Jail

Okay, so as promised, I am writing about my adventures in my tour de Asia. I’ll do it country by country so it’s not too overwhelming.

Let’s start with country #1 on the trip: Singapore

Singapore is probably the cleanest, most respectable place ever! It’s so the opposite of the rest of Asia, and since it’s my favorite country in Asia that just tells you how Asian I truly am. Hah! In Singapore, there is actually zero trash on the ground (okay maybe a little, but probably the cleanest country I’ve ever been to, aside from maybe the Vatican), nobody shoves you when you line up, everybody looks and dresses amazing (seriously, everybody dresses as if he/she is on his/her way to the club or some other fabulous party), the metro system is super convenient and clean, and the service is amazing. I would definitely say that Singapore is the Europe of Asia; the clothes they wore and everything reminded me of Europe…but with all Asians and malls literally on every other street instead of old buildings. I think we went into at least 10 malls (and they are really big malls, too) in the two days we were in Singapore.

Okay, so I’ll tell you now about the events of our trip. We got to Singapore and their metro system is awesome, except for the ticket machines. It requires that you put 1 Singapore Dollar (SGD) to get this metro card and you use it to put the fare cost on it. When you’re done, you put the metro card back into the machine to get your 1 SGD…but for your next ride, you have to repeat the entire process, instead of being able to reuse that metro card to reload. I complained about this inefficiency a lot!

My sister and I got to our bed and breakfast Sunday afternoon on June 14th…totally exhausted from just landing in Asia. I totally ticked off the cabbie by offending him and asking if the meter was on (in most of Asia, meters conveniently “don’t work”). Luckily, the B&B was amazing: super duper clean and the owners prepared breakfast each morning. So we met up with Yingheng and Aaron (both friends from Penn) and they took us from China(town) to (Little) India, all within a few blocks. Since the boys were huge eaters, we sampled everything on the street to get a taste of, well, randomness. Singaporean food happens to be a combination of Chinese and Indian food. Around afternoon time, we heard the Islamic song prayer (you can actually hear it from almost anywhere in Singapore, I think?); it was our first time hearing it so that was interesting. Yingheng amused us by coming shopping with us and then took us walking around some famous areas like Raffles City (Raffles is considered the founder of modern day Singapore) and Marina Bay. I loved that Singapore was surrounded by water and everywhere you went, the buildings reflected off the water. We went to Clarke Quay (a cool bar strip near the bay) and had Turkish ice cream: ice cream where the vendor picks on you…you’re mostly paying to watch the vendor act silly.

The following day, my sister and I were mostly on our own. We went to Orchard Rd, super famous for its shopping. Unfortunately, my sister and I didn’t realize that the shopping was all ridiculous name brands wayyy out of our budget. There were at least two stores for every designer. I tried on a Dior dress and looked terrible in it…sad, even in a several thousand dollar dress, I still look silly. A bit of advice, it’s really not expensive to eat at a real food court so even if you’re in a really nice area, don’t go to a shady looking basement area food court just to get cheap food…it’s probably going to be terrible (as my sister and I quickly figured out). After our stroll down Orchard Rd, we went to a mall where we could actually afford things, Vivo. I bought tons of cute clothes for super cheap prices; it was Singapore’s sale season so that was awesome. The only bad thing was the super small sizes. For example, in one store, I wasn’t allowed to try on clothes that were less than like $10 or something. So my sister pulled out a Large sized skirt and I thought, I don’t know if I’ll fit it…it’s a large and I’m usually a small. Yeah, so the store employee measured my waist size and pretty much told me I was too big for the size L skirt. Haha SAD! Anyways, I went on to buy an XL shirt later on in that day. Also, one out of the many weird things you will find in Asia is that there is an “F” size…which means Free Size. This free size is apparently a one size fits all type deal; unfortunately for me, the F size in Singapore was like an XS in America.

Other than the ridiculously small clothing sizes, Singapore did have other downsides. There are crazy strict rules, to where it’s kinda terrifying. On top of the rules, they brainwash you by having signs everywhere that pretty much tell you what to do. They also show videos to tell you how to behave. Seriously, it’s a bit extreme, but I guess that’s the only way to turn around a country so quickly like Singapore has done.

As a side note, if you’re ever stuck in an airport, pick Singapore. It has free games, music, internet, and everything else you could ever need in an airport! I’ll load pictures soon.

Okay, so that about details my entire Singapore trip. It was super super fun, I’d totally recommend it!

Life is Good

So I feel like I should update everybody on my life events. Sorry I’ve been completely out of touch…I’m rarely online these days, except for at work. As far as what I’ve been up to, I’ll start with my life presently.

Life in Vietnam:
I actually live on the outer edges of Saigon, not more than 15 or 20 kilometers from the very center of the city. I live in my 104 year old grandma’s house. My grandma’s pretty weak these days…she lies down all day and I’m pretty sure she has no clue who I am or that I even live in the house. I’m always surrounded by family and always going to visit or have dinner with one family member or another…my aunts are practically at my beck and call. It’s nice but can be a bit suffocating because I’m not used to it and feel like I’m burdening them (though they disagree)…good thing I go to work where no one bothers me. Anyways, a lot of random men hit on me through my tour de Asia so I ended up buying a wedding band to wear so that I’m not bothered by strange men, though I doubt anybody believes I’m actually married.

Okay, so I can’t stress enough how many people there are in Vietnam. In a country that’s probably half the size of California, there are 85 million people currently residing in Vietnam. The roads are crazy dangerous…there are motorists everywhere and nobody drives normally. I feel like I’m in New York City, except way worse. A lot of times, I ride on a “xe om,” a mini-motorcycle, literal translation is “hugging car,” because you have to hug people when you ride one. Haha. When crossing any road…you pretty much have to put your life in others’ hands and hope that they stop (read yield) for you to cross. Aside from the massive amounts of people in Saigon, it’s a pretty cool city. Pretty much anything I want or could need is in Saigon…there’s even a Notre Dame Cathedral built by the French that looks almost exactly like the one I visited not too long ago in Paris. I haven’t been into it because it only opens during Sunday mass.

Okay, so I lead a pretty good life in Vietnam and am even considering working here for a few years? The only thing that kills me is the insane humidity and heat and the fact that there’s practically zero air conditioning.

Working for Coca-Cola Vietnam:
As far as my project for the summer and the workplace…I’m loving it! I really enjoy working here; people don’t seem to work as much and are super friendly and joke a lot. To give you an example, the CFO of Coke Vietnam one day told me I dressed sexy that day and talks with me about fashion all the time. Another day, during snack time, my boss told me to bring the snacks to the big boss to win over his support to see what I would do. It’s also pretty relaxing to work here, though I think I came during a slow season. Three days a week, we have snack time at 4p.m. and hang out and chat for at least half an hour. Every day after lunch, you go to brush your teeth together and chat in the restroom for at least 15 minutes. Work starts at 8:30 a.m. but nobody actually shows up at that time. I leave at 5p.m. even though work doesn’t technically end until 5:30p.m. I’ve gotta admit, this work-style is winning me over.

In regards to what I actually do everyday other than goof around…my project is really cool and totally up my alley. It’s about Coke’s “Water Neutrality” initiative where Coke wants to return the community the amount of water it uses. It returns the water by providing the money to build water pipes and such in order for the poor to have access to clean water. My project deals with assessing last year’s results on these projects (how much water we have actually returned) and with writing a proposal to request $ for next year’s projects. In doing this, I will be visiting these poor communities throughout Vietnam and even in Cambodia to talk with local NGOs and visit the worksites myself and maybe even follow the NGOs on surveying the sites. So that’s my life presently…I’d upload some pictures but my sister successfully destroyed my camera along with the memory card with over a thousand pictures from Asia that had not been uploaded onto my computer by dropping the camera at the waterpark.

I have a ton of interesting stories from Asia but I’ll wait to write them another time.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and is enjoying his/her summer!

Back to the Motherland...

So, I know it's been quite a while since I've updated my blog, but I figured I would pick up the habit again seeing as how I leave tomorrow for SEAsia.

First, I want to talk about what I was up to after my Rome trip. I got to spend most of my last month in Europe in Holland, exploring more of the country and catching up with a lot of unfinished projects and papers. I went to Keukenhof, the largest flower festival in Europe, located an hour away from Rotterdam in a town called Lisse. Here are some awesome pictures from the flower festival. Notice the picture of me with tons of azalea bushes (azaleas are the flower of Mobile).




Aside from the fabulous springtime weather and beautiful flowers in bloom all around Holland, there were also fun Netherland traditions taking place in May. One big celebration at the end of April was Queen's Day officially celebrated on April 30th. It's kind of like a 24 hour celebration of the former Queen's (of Holland) birthday. In this celebration...people wear crazy orange outfits and get incredibly incredibly intoxicated and roam around the people-filled streets eating random food from food carts and dancing to live techno and hip-hop music. To give you an idea, here are a couple of pictures: There's also a Queen's Night celebration the night before where people party through the night. Both Queen's Night and Day are celebrated throughout the country in pretty much all the major cities. The biggest celebration is in Amsterdam, where I went, but the Queen usually attends a parade in one of the smaller towns in Holland. Unfortunately, some lunatic this year decided to go on a rampage and drive into the crowd at the parade, killing nine people and injuring even more. Insane! It was apparently an attempt to take down the royal family.

Okay, enough about my random adventures in Holland. After finishing up most of my work at RSM, I went on a weeklong vacation to Spain towards the end of May. It was incredible to get away from the still cold May Holland weather and bathe in the warmth of Spain. I landed in Barcelona on a Sunday afternoon and it was absolutely beautiful. I met up with a friend from Penn, Lauren (I already mentioned her in my previous posts). Our hostel was in the center of Barcelona, a super cute place full of really friendly people. We met a lot of randoms on our Barcelona trip. We went to all the touristy places: Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia was amazing! It's also absolutely huge!


Of course every place was amazing...Barcelona is a really fun city with a lot to do. We went to Park Guell, the beach (where apparently, lots of foreigners/Asians go around asking you to buy overpriced drinks and offering massages every five minutes...really really irritating and made me appreciate the beaches in Alabama!), the magical fountain that wasn't even running (we totally missed out on the light show), and of course, the main street Las Ramblas. We even met up with my roommate's sister who was studying in Barcelona!

So after our tour of Barcelona, we hopped on a six hour bus ride to get to Madrid. Luckily for us, Kelly (coke intern from last summer who is now working for Coke in Madrid) was able to accommodate us in her apartment. Kelly met us at the bus station and we went to Tapas and Josh's (friend from Penn who went with us to Rome) housewarming party because he just found an apartment for his summer housing in Madrid. The next day, Lauren and I met up with James (my old friend from high school who happened to be studying in Alcala, a town right outside of Madrid) and he took us to the central plaza, Plaza del Mayor, and to the gardens (read gigantic park) in front of Madrid's Royal Palace. It was a lot of fun, and we saw some cool peacocks just hangin' out on the lawn. Here's a fun picture.


Afterwards, we met up with Josh and his family (who were in Madrid to visit him for his birthday) to go to the Prado Museum (which by the way is free from 6-8pm on weekdays!). It was awesome, Josh gave us a great tour because he took a class on the paintings in the Prado. Later that night, we went out for tapas and to a random Hawaiian bar. Seriously, Madrid is the city of random! A ton of fun! I'm not going to further bore you with the in depth details of my Madrid trip but I can pretty much assure you it included a lot of wine w/ spritzer (sangria, vino de verano, etc.) and other drinks and tons of random tapas that usually had some sort of ham and olive oil involved. I love Spanish people but I definitely do not like Spanish food. Imagine tons and tons of pork meat and olive oil on everything! Don't get me wrong, there are definitely amazing things about Spain, like its super chill and super nice people who are willing to help you at any time! I'm going to end this post with my favorite picture from Spain...if you think about Spain, think "JAMON!"

So I've been home for two weeks hangin' out and getting ready for my next trip...going to Vietnam...which leaves in a little over three hours! I'm pretty excited and I'm hoping to keep my blog updated throughout the summer...so check on it every once in a while!

Ciao Ciao Papa!

A Catholic...in Rome...during Holy Week! Is there anything better?! I think not. The picture is from the top of St. Peter's Basilica; we climbed 551 steps up just to get that view!

So I touched down in Rome Wednesday, April 8th, and met up with Brie and Lauren (and later Josh, who took a small trip to Naples before meeting up with us), all friends from Penn. I realized that four is the perfect number of people you want to travel with: big enough to have fun and always have something to talk about, and yet just small enough that you can easily appease everyone's wishes. The weather during the week was blue skies, warm and sunny: Spring was in the air, trees were sprouting leaves and green.

On Wednesday evening, we took it easy, just the three girls, hangin' out. Brie and I went for some carbonara and wine and later met up with Lauren when she arrived. We went to a 24 hour super cheap bakery, where I got a chocolate bomba (a donut, filled with nutella); as a side note, I proceeded to go to this bakery probably every day I was in Rome. We walked along the Tiber River and caught up on each other's lives. Afterwards, we went to Old Bridge and grabbed some amazing gelato. Old Bridge happened to be right next to the hostel we were staying at, so needless to say, we went to Old Bridge practically everyday.

The next day was another easy going day. Brie, Lauren, and I looked around a flea market, grabbed some cappuccino from a Bar (what they call cafes in Roma) and walked to the Basilica of St. John the Lateran. Apparently, this, and not St. Peter's Basilica, is the official ecclesiastical seat of the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. We then walked by the Spanish steps (the longest and widest staircase in Europe, falsely named Spanish steps: they were built by a Frenchie) and towards Brie's school, a whole ONE BUILDING in Rome, haha, and had lunch on the rooftop of some museum nearby. We then took a mini-bus (about the size of a van, since the roads in Rome are too small to have too many regular buses) right past the Colosseum back towards our hostel. We bought fresh pasta (so fresh, I watched her put the pasta into the cutting machine!) and went grocery shopping for dinner. We had a pretty easy going night, drank wine, and watched Gladiator (a must to see before heading to the Colosseum).

Friday morning, Josh, after heading to Naples for a short trip, met up with Lauren and me in our hostel. We walked to the Vatican to take a tour through the Vatican museum. It's an incredible museum, including the Sistine Chapel, the coolest fresco painting I had ever seen, and paintings like the School of Athens among others. The Vatican is indeed beautiful with its plentiful courtyards; it made me rethink possibly becoming a nun, haha. Afterwards, we grabbed pizza for lunch (not Josh, since he is Jewish and it was passover, meaning he could not have any leavened bread products...yeah, I don't know what he was thinking coming to Italy during passover!) and met up with Brie to take a tour of St. Peter's Basilica, a massive massive Basilica! While it was our intention to climb to the top of the dome on Friday afternoon, we walked into the basilica at the beginning of Good Friday mass and got to catch a glimpse of the Pope (not really, since too many people were shoving to get in front of us, and being nice people, we let them). Afterwards, we took a bus to Trastavere, an off-the-beaten path part of Rome with relatively cheap eats. I found one of the many Roman fountains to fill up my water bottle, undoubtedly one of my favorite aspects of Rome. We saw a silly street show about a bee and a man (not kidding here) and grabbed some dinner. At dinner, I had mussels and clams with pasta and the waiter kept picking on me, saying things like "take your time and dip the bread into the liquid." It was kinda creepy, though amusing to the rest of the party. We found some Duff beer, which unfortunately, I did not try.

The next day, we walked those 551 steps up St. Peter's Basilica to get a great view of Rome. We then met up with Brie and Lauren's former Penn TA of ancient greek/roman history (or something like that) at the Forum. He gave us an incredibly thorough tour of the forum, the center of the Roman empire where ancient Roman civilization developed; so cool since the Forum would have been completely boring without the tour. I can't imagine how incredible the Forum must have been at its height. We spent hours walking around and soaking in the sunlight as well as the history. Seth also took us to the Pantheon, one of the coolest buildings in Rome. It's a dome shaped building that is technically square. It's a perfect 144 meters high and wide inside. Way back when, the Catholic Church owned it and it remains today, a very well-preserved Church. After the tour, we went to a famous coffee shop (I forget the name), and then to Giolitti, where I had the best gelato the entire trip! It was so good, we went back every day, even though it was completely out of our way most of the time. After a great tour and many awkward jokes, Seth, Brie and Lauren's former TA, left and we went to grab real Italian pizza, definitely the best pizza I had on the trip. This time, our waiter, picked on Brie the entire night. After dinner, Brie took us to Trevi Fountain, which marks the terminal point of the "modern" Acqua Vergine, the revivified Aqua Virgo, one of the ancient aqueducts that supplied water to ancient Rome. Here, Josh, Lauren, and I threw some coins into Trevi Fountain. One coin = to come back to Rome, Two coins = to fall in love, Three coins = to get married in Rome. Approximately, 3,000 Euros are collected in the fountain each day!

The next day was Easter Sunday, and somehow, Brie got us tickets/seats for Easter Mass with Pope Benedict XVI! This was such a memorable experience...thousands and thousands of people in St. Peter's Square, all celebrating the Resurrection of Christ. Mass was mostly in Italian. We received the body of Christ from a priest in the Vatican and stayed around for the Pope's blessing to the world in different languages. Surprisingly, his English accent was probably one of the worst accents relative to the other languages he spoke. He said "Jesus Christ be with you all." according to Lauren (since I didn't really hear it, haha, no surprise there to those who know that I am practically deaf!).

After Easter celebration, we went for some lunch and had to wait a few hours for a rude waiter to serve us; typical Italian, not really caring about customer service. It was worth it since the food was relatively cheap and pretty good. Josh made friends with the much friendlier cook inside the restaurant. haha.

We then headed to the Colosseum and then for more Giolitti gelato! Unfortunately, Lauren lost her ticket and couldn't go. I have a fun picture of them digging around the closet for their tickets but I won't post it to spare Lauren. hah. The Colosseum is still magnificent, even though it's now mostly robbed of all the marble that once covered it. The Colosseum is an old stadium where gladiators once fought. It was finished in 80 A.D. and only took ten years to build! Josh pointed out that our stadiums today still have the same layout as the Colosseum does. It would be pretty neat to have a concert inside the Colosseum, but unfortunately, most of it is pretty worn down and it would be impossible to hold any event inside without the Colosseum falling apart. After the Colosseum, we headed back to Brie's apartment for dinner. We (read Brie) made risotto for us...I tried this recently, pretty good and pretty easy!

The next day was my penultimate day in Italy. We didn't do much: had some lunch at Brie's place, more gelato at Giolitti, walked around the city and took pictures at the Spanish Steps. We soaked in the sun and beautiful city of Rome. On our way home, Josh, Brie and Lauren picked up some Roman souvenirs. We haggled a bit and got the price of some of the items down. I went back later to also pick up an Italia jacket for myself. Josh left on Monday evening and Lauren and I left Tuesday morning.

So with that ends my amazing Rome trip. Cheap cappuccinos, delicious desserts, amazing pasta, free water fountains to fill up your water bottles...just a few of my favorite things about Rome!

Alles, alles, alles!

I'm going to apologize ahead of time for the length of this post...it's mostly for me to print out later and put into a scrapbook and remember everything I did.

Bonjour! Je m'appelle Diep, Je suiz American! (This was about the extent of my French.)

I went to Paris a few weeks ago, at the end of March, to visit Sisi, a friend from Penn who is studying at HEC (apparently one of or the best B-school in Europe). Unlike Wharton students, who still compete at the highest level, HEC students realize they are set and party....A LOT!

I'm going to forewarn you that my Paris trip was entirely about food. Hah, no surprise there, I'm sure. My first day there, I went to a fantastic creperie in Versailles, since France is famous for its crepes. Afterwards, Sisi left me for school and I toured the famous Château de Versailles (Palace of Versailles). The weather was a bit ugly, unfortunately, but the palace is indeed beautiful! According to Wiki, since I can't remember any of the history I read at Versailles, the expansion of the château became synonymous with the absolutism of Louis XIV. King Louis XIV wanted to keep his advisors and provincial rulers close him, to make sure they would not revolt against him. Others also resided at Versailles and aided in its current day construction, including King Louis XV and Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. I'm adding a few pictures to give you an idea of how incredible Versailles is...if you include its gardens, Versailles stretches for miles. It's so massive, I had to spend an entire day just touring Versailles. These pictures are the front of Versailles, the famous Hall of Mirrors, and the gardens/fountains/lake of Versailles.

The next day, I had duck confit...duck boiled/roasted in its own fat...yum! Then, to work off that food, I walked to see the Moulin Rouge theatre (where they still have interesting shows *wink*) and hiked up a hill to go to Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart Church) and to get a beautiful view of the City. Here are a few pictures for you.
Even though the weather was a bit ugly, it was a beautiful view of the city! We also heard random gunshots or something here so we quickly departed.

Next on the trip, we walked down Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe! Here, there were tons of high-end stores (much like Fifth Avenue, NYC) including the flagship Louis Vuitton store, which I went into hoping I could afford something for Chi, but to no avail. This street was definitely worth the walk, because I had a pistachio macaron (not to be confused with macaroons, an English dessert) from La Duree! It was so good, I went there again later in my Paris trip. Towards the end of the strip, we reached L'Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph), which honors those who fought for France, especially during the Napoleonic wars. There's a cool eternal flame for the unknown soldier under the arch.

I know, it seems like there was no end to this day, we continued on to go to the Louvre, which was formerly a palace and is now a gigantic art museum. I saw Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, but to be honest, there are so many cool paintings there besides the Mona Lisa. A little tip, the Louvre is free on the first Sunday of every month and for those under 26 on Fridays from 6-9p.m.! By the time I was finished walking through one wing of the Louvre, an hour or two had already passed, and my legs felt like they were going to fall off. Typical me, I demanded we leave and grab some food. Hah. Here's a cool nighttime shot of part of the Louvre.
The next day, Sisi, Cat (one of Sisi's friends from HEC), and I went to see Notre Dame Cathedral (Our Lady of Paris Cathedral) and did not see any hunchback during our visit. It's a beautiful Church, here's a cool view of it from the side. Cat and I played on the seesaw in the back of the Church and then we grabbed some food. I had pate, steak and fries, and some appletart...apparently typical French!
After our tour of Notre Dame, we went to the Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower, obviously). It's an iron tower built beside the Seine River; it stands as the tallest building in Paris...much less impressive than I had hoped it to be, probably because I decided not to go up the tower. After the Eiffel Tower, we ended the day with Chinatown and had some Chinese food, which was probably the funniest meal I had the entire trip. Since my friends spoke Mandarin, they proceeded to speak to our waiter in Mandarin; however, we had several waiters and only one spoke Mandarin. As I knew neither French nor Mandarin, I proceeded to order in English. hah. We were indecisive about what we wanted to eat for our entree and dessert, and probably called the waiter(s) to our table at least 10 times! I'm pretty sure they thought we were absolutely insane.

On my final day in Paris, Sisi left me to attend to schoolwork, and I wandered around the French Tuilleries, which is a huge garden that I'm sure is much more beautiful during the summertime when the plants are actually alive. I had some hot chocolate from Angelina's, which was a bit too heavy and rich for me, but others rave about it! Since there was no Sisi and I had no map of Paris, I searched for a hour or so to find the Pantheon. So of course, it would be my luck that by the time I find the Pantheon (which is located at the Luxembourg Gardens stop, which by the way, is a beautiful garden and actually had live flowers and plants!), my camera runs out of battery! It's a cool building that houses the remains of some famous Frenchies, including Voltaire, the Curies, Braille, etc. There are a lot of empty spots; I guess the French thought they'd have a lot more famous French scientists and philosophers and other contributors to the world. hah. After the Pantheon, I tried escargot (snails)...they're okay.

Okay, so to say the least, I did a lot in France, which explains why I came back to Rotterdam totally sick!

I'll write about Rome, my favorite trip thus far, pretty soon.