Big Cities: London & Paris

Over the past two week, my friend and I spent the entire weekend at these two big cities, London and Paris, where I had never been to before. As the Capital cities of United Kingdoms and France, the two cities are still very different to me. Not only their transportation system, the food, and the style of buildings, but also their people are very different.

I like both cities. I do. They are always two of the cities girls most likely to visit.

Every day I was in London, I could always feel this oddly good mood that it's hard to tell why. The city was just awesome. I enjoyed looking at different type people walking around. Watching how they walked, what they wore, and things they did. This is always the way I get to learn a new city. I watched.

Many girls in London I had seen were all so thin, thinner than I could ever imagine. Also I felt they are a lot taller than the girls I usually see in United States. They wore fancy clothes, not just simply jeans and t-shirt. I had once secretly looking at a girl doing makeup on the metro, and I tried my best to memorize the brand of her mascara because her lashes looked so nice, even better than false lashes.

Transportation in London was very gentle. Cars always let pedestrians cross the street first. This is something absolutely unexpected. Not like what we saw in New York or back to our home. My friend and I were impressed. We never knew people could be this patient and kind while driving. The public transportation was nice, too. The metro system was easy to understand. We bought this oyster card (okay, we wondered why it is called oyster for so long, because as we know, oyster is some kind of seafood) that we could simply top off money and travel to wherever we want.
Unlike London, Paris actually surprised me more than London did, because of its friendliness. People there were totally the opposite as the stereotype I usually heard. The French people I met people were nice and they were so willing to help others. When we were lost and came to people for help, there were people showed us the route on Google Map, and there were even people walked us to the store we were looking for.

Also, there was one thing that was really funny and made me feel a little dumb of myself. Countless people have been telling me how French people hate speaking English, and my friends all warned me not to start with "excuse me" to ask for help, or don't blame French people ignoring me. So I was so ready to communicate with gestures and I was actually pretty excited about this. After all, it's not a usual thing to “talk” with gestures. This was how the funny thing happened. During my first day in Paris, whenever I started to make gestures, hoping French people would understand what I was trying to express, they all gave me this weird look and were like, "you speak English?" So apparently they rather speak English to me. I was really disappointed, meanwhile, it was a relief that I didn’t have communicating problems.

The metro system in Paris was so different from London’s. No matter where your destination is, the cost of one single trip ticket is all the same, 1.7 euros. We spent a lot of time figuring out how their ticket machine worked. At the end of the first day, we finally found out that we should select ticket +, then choose full fare.

Paris and London were so different, but I like them both. Paris has a lot of crazily beautiful buildings that look classical, while London is very well organized. I wish I would have the chance to visit these two cities again in the future.

Below is a video of photo slides. All the photos were taken in Paris. Enjoy!