The City of Love

When I lamented to my parents that booking a spring break trip that stopped in Paris even though I was already going there over Valentine's Day weekend would mean seeing fewer parts of Europe, they put things in perspective:

"Are you really complaining about spending more time in Paris?"

They had no idea how great their advice would be.

Paris just might be my new favorite city, and I probably would have come home disappointed in all we missed if I didn't know I'd be returning soon. Being in the "city of love" (with two friends) for Valentine's Day was the perfect way to spend the weekend but also meant incredibly long lines. By the time we got into the Louvre, it was practically closing time. Knowing general consensus is that the Mona Lisa is disappointingly tiny in an overcrowded room, we opted to prioritize the Napoleon III Apartments exhibit instead. A friend had called it the museum's "hidden gem," but I still wasn't prepared for how incredible it would be. The huge, extravagant rooms were comparable the Palace of Versailles, which we'd seen the day before.

Napoleon's rooms were unexpectedly lavish.

Anyone visiting Paris should stop at Versailles, if only to daydream about what it would be like to live in a huge palace.

The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles was gorgeous, with its enormous mirrors facing equally large windows.

As cliche as it is, there's really no better word for Paris but "posh." In theory, the fact that most of the buildings look very similar with their Haussmannian designs sounds like a boring architectural plan. But the uniformity in means the entire city is just lovely.

Napoleon hired Georges-Eugene Haussmann to redesign Paris.

The Luxembourg Gardens have Haussmann's designs.

Unsurprisingly, one of my favorite spots in Paris was the Eiffel Tower. We saw it at night, Nutella crepes in hand to create the perfect Parisian experience. On the strike of midnight, a light show started, covering the structure with twinkling lights. Normally I would find that sort of thing cheesy, but I was entranced seeing it on the tower that's considered a symbol of love.

The lit-up Eiffel Tower is breathtaking at night.

Visiting Venice

Having heard about some of my friends' plans to visit Venice for Carnival next weekend, I was getting incredibly jealous. So a few of my other friends made a somewhat spontaneous decision to book our own day trip to the celebration.

Carnival is usually described as "European Mardi Gras," which in theory is accurate. Both festivals lead up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. I've never been to Mardi Gras so I guess I wouldn't be the best judge, but from what I've heard, the events are totally different in practice. Carnival is much more laid back. There's no excessive drinking (well, aside from some Americans drinking boxes of wine on the streets), breast-baring, or otherwise lewd behavior. Instead, crowds gather in a big square and show off intricate masks and costumes.

Some festival-goers showed in Piazza San Marco with crazy costumes.

The mask-wearing tradition started so celebrators could hide class differences by remaining anonymous. Most people — my friends and I included — stuck with masquerade-style half masks, but others wore masks that covered their entire faces or got decked out in entire costumes. Unlike the costumed people walking around Disney World, these were regular people who weren't getting paid, but the coolest outfits drew crowds of people hoping to get a picture taken with them.

Masks hid people's identities to let them ignore class differences while celebrating.

Aside from the Carnival celebration, Venice itself is a lovely city that looks straight out of a story book. As cool as the crowded Piazza San Marco was, the best parts were the tiny side streets with cute little bridges and dead ends that could get you lost if you didn't pay attention. With its narrow walkways, Venice is definitely not the place for the claustrophobic, but I found the quiet streets incredibly charming.

Venice is famous for just having sidewalks and canals, with no place for automobiles, which made for quite the contrast compared with Rome, where walking to class means dodging cars that brake sharply — if at all — for pedestrians and weave through one another without observing any speed limits from what I can tell.

Instead of taking cars, transportation in Venice means by boat or by foot.

Dinner in an island city had to be seafood, so I braved ordering risotto with cuttlefish and...squid ink. It looked like an unappetizing black blob, but the ink flavor wasn't very strong and the meal was really tasty.

Risotto with squid ink is a Venetian specialty. 

Fair warning to anyone planning to travel Italy in the future: Rome to Venice and back by bus is not actually the most ideal situation. With a seven-hour drive both ways, we weren't left with too much time or daylight in the city. We'd woken up at 5:30 a.m. on a Saturday and didn't get back to our apartment until 5:45 the next morning. Still, visiting an enchanting city to experience a world-famous celebration was well worth the lack of sleep.