week in paris | musée d’orsay, best dinner in paris, answering your questions

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

i love you how's it going coming to you from the last week in paris which i'm heartbroken to say you got the girls milling about hi good morning cannot believe it's our last week we are very sad i'm not ready to go back to new york but we'll dive into that more later in this vlog i feel like this past five weeks have been a lot more formative than i realized coming to this i was like i'm just gonna have a fun little trip with friends but like we've all like honestly learned a lot process on things going on our life otherwise so it's just been a very beautiful trip it's been super fun full of so much joy and friendship anyways we have a few days left here in paris also stay tuned because at the end of the vlog i'm gonna get the gals and we'll come and we'll sit down together and we'll chat more about our experience and talk about tips how we did it the whole deal it's also almost the end of the year it feels like there's a lot of crazy shifts but alas here we are it's a gorgeous day today we got really lucky with some really beautiful weather that's supposed to be like today in the next few days before we fly out so let's go out into the sun but it comes back saying just having a little journaling session gabby's journaling but it's nice just like take a hour two this morning and kind of just like pick back a little bit of the trip and just enjoy the sunshine together got some fun prints i'm excited to hang up in my room i got them from along those little like green um like stands that are up along this end it's gonna sit here for a little bit longer and soak it in maybe if i maybe if i wish that you were mine uh we escaped the work zone we're going to le petites something like that apparently it's really good and they have good french places we're like ready tonight to order as many things on the menu we're going all in we're going all out tonight oh it's good stuff you will not guess how much we paid for both of us guess everyone yes okay guys we'll give you five seconds okay four four three two one 56 euros 23 euros each i've never had such a good meal for such a tea price that's truly the often the price of like one meal and oh my god that's like two coffee two coffees with almonds they also had wine we had a whole carafe of wine for eight euros also wine's just so cheap and john where are we going i have nowhere in like the sketchy pattern i don't like it let's go back i'm scared wine is so cheap in paris in general but especially especially here yeah i can't recommend it enough truly the best you guys have to go what time is it 10 33 and we have to go back to work we're gonna work for like two more hours and then see you in the morning good morning christmas time it's christmas in the apartment and hanukkah yeah christmas christmas for our jewish cow about to go to music dorsey show me is we've been strolling through the mares and now we're at place davos to have a little set it's beautiful definitely come here if you're in this part of paris treat a book a cup of coffee it's gorgeous oh another beautiful day i'm so hungry yes let's go eat food food so much and i bring you to the best part in paris public toilet have you done this i haven't but it's good to know what in a moment come on get in there now let's go that's a rite of passage you know you have to do that before you before in between the cars sorry this is not the direction you probably wanted this to go greetings from paris i'm with the paris extraordinary mayor have you been enjoying your time like y'all this girl is out more than i am like i'm watching your instagram story like wait where's that i'm cooking like literally where are these places we got some cute books so it's a beautiful day in paris 52 books a year baby hello i'm back wearing the same sweater i always wear because i didn't pack it up on this trip just had the loveliest little morning with damon went and got coffee and breakfast with him and then we packed it into a shakespearean cup which is like the iconic english bookstore right along the center notre dame i got a few they're all so small i'm like five books away from my goal 52 books this year and you know the goal is maybe not the best because now i'm kind of forcing myself to pick short books so i can finish the goal in time i'll make a whole video about that about my thoughts on you know setting that kind of book goal for yourself because it's a bit limiting but i'm excited about what i picked up i've been wanting to read alana farenta for quite some time it's called troubling love i also have my brilliant friend at home that i've been meaning to read i had a subscriber recommend this to me i think on instagram so if you're watching thank you called 20 lessons from the 20th century i'll read you a little blurb history does not repeat but it does instruct european history show that societies could break democracies can fall ethics can collapse and ordinary people can find themselves in unimaginable circumstances et cetera et cetera i think this came out in like 2017 so i'm assuming this has to do with trump era we shall see it's got that fun little shakespearean co-stamp and then lastly i got shaw of shaw's by kapoor which i might be saying wrong it's about the iranian revolution i love reading about middle eastern history and i am iranian myself so especially iranian history very intrigued by that part of the world so oh god three different books i guess two of them are quite political which will be interesting to read i love strolling around in bookstores for inspiration even if i don't buy them you know if you want to like just rent them to save money that's how i figure out a lot of my book recommendations is honestly just strolling through a bookstore for like an hour picking up different books reading the blurbs going to different sections maybe based off what i want to read about what i want to learn and it was so lovely to see damon as usual i've seen him a couple times on this trip which has been super fun get outside and make the most of the day left okay hi hello i'm pretty sad too yeah i feel emotional about ladies for sure i figured we'd do a little like end of the trip chat to talk about how we did it what we learned what we do differently because i've gotten so many questions people been like i want to do the same how did you do it it was easier than you think but it did not come without challenges it also did take a lot of time when planning i've got some questions for you ladies we're ready okay let's first talk about how how we did it well i think we'd always wanted to do a long trip together ashley and i lived together and our lease was up the real estate market in new york was not good so suddenly we had this like pocket of time we didn't have to pay a double rent and we were like why don't we do a trip somewhere yeah so we really made the best of a really challenging situation in new york and just turned it upside down and we're like well all of our schedules align took a lot of energy especially because gabby and i do not work for ourselves full-time so to make this work for our jobs as well as coordinating with the lena's schedule we got really lucky that this window opened up we just figured now is the time when else will this happen if you've seen the other vlogs and you probably know we all have been working like 3 00 p.m to 11 p.m eastern standard time well in france monday through friday so it hasn't been us just luxuriously wandering the streets of paris all day it's like you've had to do a lot of work while here i mean if you're working remotely and like you can find an opportune time with your friends and you're in like the financial position or have a job that would allow you to do so like do it because like life's going to get crazy they're about to sign or they signed a new lease while being here like you know if people get in serious relationships or jobs take them somewhere else or back in office like just this window of time felt very very special and rare and we're like we have to do it while we can now let's talk about tips i feel like first tip that comes to mind for me if you're looking to do the same is definitely book at least monthly if you can i personally have not read through it with me but i have in the past and you get really big discounts when you book for more than a month a big tip for me be like very intentional about who you're traveling with and three of us had all traveled together before so we knew we had like similar lifestyles wanted to do similar things and that made the trip so much better because there was no issues with how we wanted to spend our time or spend that money or anything like that another thing for me with the weird work schedule was prior to coming here i had never romanticized what it would be like i really took a hard look at how the hours would pan out in our time here and i knew that it was going to be somewhat difficult but we knew that was the reality coming into it definitely wouldn't recommend doing for more than a few months at a time because you will get a little hurt it is hard but it was so beyond worth it i think a big thing as well is to make sure that if you are traveling for an extended period of time to set yourself a routine just so you have some structure like each morning here we've kind of all had our own like little personal routines that have really kept us it's feeling very grounded and not too exhausted there's anything you feel like you guys have learned from this trip i didn't realize how much living in new york had made me feel like i need to constantly be busy and constantly be like moving at lightning speed with everything i do like we were even joking when we first arrived we noticed we were like overtaking people on the sidewalk just like walking so quickly and we weren't going anywhere we're like just sightseeing and it's like oh my gosh we just need to like slow down like i really want to take back to new york is just like being so much more intentional with like how i spend my time i don't need to be busy all the time i would say for me it's the concept of you don't live to work you work to live and enjoy your life here and just like removing work from your soul identity has been very refreshing before coming here i worked like extra hours in october so i could work a few less hours this month in general and i feel like normally if i were to do something like that i would just fill up with more work but i think for one being in a unique place where i want to explore has helped me slow down but then also i think just like the culture of france in general encourages you more to like live your life and enjoy those slow moments rather than just filling it with like more productivity but definitely put yourself out there to like meet new people i feel like we all reached out to friends of friends and like they connected us with people and like we've met some really cool local parisians friends from the internet yeah or you know use those dating apps finding someone special i'm not going to play any hands but there's hope out there parisian men are very romantic from what i've heard cannot speak from experience there's some good stories that have been circulating behind the scenes this one bless you again we met up with like a friend of a friend super last minute and then ended up at like this very cool party under a bridge like those types of experiences i'd like to do for the plot i love to like collect unique experiences and it's like there's a lot of those a lot of unexpected surprises what are we doing right now just saying yes a lot and pushing ourselves in a healthy way to go out much later than we would normally and just being a little adventurous it's just been the most incredible trip if you're like thinking about doing a trip with your friends i cannot recommend it enough this has been yes save up yeah do everything you can to pull it off yeah okay bye bye goodbye yes you