salut, Paris!: turns out everyone here does actually hate my accent.

Hello, bonjour!




This is probably going to be a quicker update than I intend, but we'll see! I'm not a week away from coming back to reality and I can hardly believe it. If you're following me on instagram, you can rest easy knowing that the onslaught of images is almost at an end--especially because my travelmate, Matt, is leaving me at the end of the Paris leg! It's gonna be all selfies from here on out.

We left London with reluctance even though we knew we were headed for sunny weather--Shoreditch was a super fun area to have spent time in, and we probably spent a bit more time there than we should have instead of exploring London. But still! I'm excited to get back this week and go see King Lear and hopefully do some thrift shopping.

Barcelona was an absolute dream and I spent every night blissfully full of good Spanish food and wine, and every day taking in how gorgeous the buildings and people are there!

Our BnB was stunning and I'm considering visiting Barcelona again just to go back there, we tried the best restaurants (seriously, I can now suggest some really good food in Barcelona so hit me up) and the Sagrada Familia was so incredibly stunning I was moved to tears multiple times.

And, like, I'm not even religious; that was just how gorgeous it was.

We left Barcelona pretty sunkissed (I used sunscreen, don't worry!) and ready to get back into some cool and overcast weather (Matt and I are both pro-sweaters over any other item of clothing).

Paris has been lovely so far; I never really dreamed of visiting Paris at all when I was a child, so I sort of went into it with a carte blanche. I do speak French fluently, so that's been a big help, the only downside is that most people here would rather not here my French-Canadian accent at all, but that's a subject for another post.

I will say, the funniest part of this to me is learning to function on 'European Time', which is to say, everything is pushed about five hours later into the day than I'm used to. As someone who goes out at 9pm, comes home around 2-3am pretty steadily, it was a pretty interesting curve to see people just getting into dance clubs in Barcelona at 3am. What do you even do with that extra time? My North American/Australian body clock is out-of-whack, now.

I'll definitely update more in London, because I'll be alone and probably just chilling at night in the hostel (I think my liver deserves a break, honestly), but if not, a bientot! Make sure you check out the #rowenaholiday on instagram for both me and Matt's posts on this trip.

Celina