Paris in a Nutshell
06/21/2007
- *I had every intention of posting photos with this entry but apparently internet cafes in Europe are locked down tighter then the US/Mexico border. I promise I'll get some up later if possible (I have my ways).**
- *Second note: forgive any misspellings, I don't have a spellcheck**
- *Third note: some of this may already be in the last post**
So we've made it to London, England. But before I indulge you with the details of our first day here, I'd like to dedicate this post to what we did in Geneva and our days in Paris. So here comes a long post, sit back and enjoy...
Geneva:
Our one day in Geneva was an easy day meant to help our newly arrived travel mates cope with the impending "never ending day syndrome" that comes from arriving at 8:30am. Having time to kill before checkin, we headed to Lake Geneva where we saw the water cannon (shoots over 100m in the air (oh no, they got me using the metric system!)). From there, we walked the waterfront till we reached the United Nations Europe headquarters but was dissapointed to find them closed (it was Sunday I think). That was about all we did that day in terms of note worthy activities, sorry for such an anti-climatic ending but like I said, we were taking it easy.
France:
So the next morning we woke up and headed to the train station early to catch our 3 hour long train to Paris, France. The ride was nice, through the French countryside and it reminded me of our past week in Cully/Lutry, Switzerland.
Upon arrival at the station, we set out walking to our hostel, just over 1 mile from the station. It wasn't long till we got lost and realized we were right back staring at the train station we had walked away from 10-20 minutes before. So we opted for a cab who also got us lost. Apparently theres a Rue (road) and Blvd. by the same street name. After having to pay for the ridiculously long cab fare because well, no one could argue in French, we checked in to the Hotel Richard (though hotel is somewhat misleading as it implies some standard of "quality"). But it was home, and it treated us well enough for our 3 night stay.
After getting situated in our rooms, we went to the metro to learn the ropes and get in as much sightseeing as we could (realize the sun isn't setting on us till like 10:30pm every night). So we headed first to Notre Dame Cathedral. We walked through it and was amazed at the size, but passed on going to the top after looking at the long line winding outside the building and down the street. Afterwards we foolishly walked to the Louvre instead of taking the metro again. Someone should put disclaimers on these maps that say, "Jackass, its further then it looks!" Once we made it, we had to hunt for the famous glass pyramids since they aren't in the middle courtyard like you would think. When we got there, we noticed the line wasn't long at all so we seized the oppurtunity and headed into with one goal, the Mona Lisa. Thankfully there must be many "tourists" like us because every room seriously had a sign pointing the way to it. So as you can imagine, when we finally arrived (30 rooms/corridors later) the crowd around it was unbelievable. We inched our way upfront to realize.. its rather small. Feeling like we had accomplished something great though (how many can say they saw THE Mona Lisa?), we headed to the Greek/Egyptian exhibit to convince ourselves that we weren't some run-of-the-mill tourists. Now it was getting late, and we were very tired, so we headed back (once again foolishly) to the original metro station by foot to then head back to our hostel. We stopped in at a supermarket to buy dinner (cheese and french bread, the official food sponsor of this Europe tour) and went back to our hostel to have our first authentic french dinner: french bread, various cheeses, and a wine bottle that we had no corkscrew to open (and my pocket knife proved to not be a substitute). In case you were unaware, every place we have been so far in Europe has no A/C units or fans, so you have to rely on the good ole' wind to blow through the wind, and it just so happened that every night it wouldnt be blowing when we first went to sleep, but later in the night the temperature would plumit freezing the sweat on our brow. But I suppose you get what you pay for in life, and the days in Paris easily made it for these nights (plus I've already been conditioned to this since Switzerland).
My reasoning for not posting since our first night in Paris, besides the damn French keyboards that are hard to get used to, was the shady neighborhood the internet cafe was in. On our way back to the hostel after making that initial post, we saw a girl pass out on the street and just some real shady characters around.
So now to Day 2.. we got up at 9am (a common theme of the trip since theres a sense of urgency with every day of the trip) and headed to the Catacombes. It began with what seemed like a never ending staircase deep into the Dante's Inferno of Paris. But when we finally got to the bones/skulls we were impressed at the magnitude of dead that had to be transported down there and the designs the body layers did (like crosses and other designs). Lindsey's unscientific poll estimated the body count to be somewhere in the millions, but that number might be way off and Quentin and I have our doubts on it. Once we made it out of that death pit, we headed to the Eiffel Tower. Having learned our lesson from the day before, we held tight to our 3-day metro pass and got off at the nearest station to the Tower. The Eiffel Tower is HUGE. No photo has ever done it justice, its just something you have to see for yourself. Walking to it, we were greeted with the only english words a gypsy knows, "Do you speak English?". Lindsey's run in with a gypsy (there are a lot of them) earlier in the day had gotten us all on guard, so we knew to avoid their trickery and just pass them by. So, before I worry anyone, let me tell the story of Lindsey and the Gypsy (that has a Disney movie ring to it).. We were at the train station earlier that day when Lindsey was asked that question mentioned above by one of them, and being the nice person she is (and maybe because she did in fact speak English and had been English deprived in French countries for over a week) she said yes at which time th gypsy presented a card of "her" life story asking for money to help her get home.. this of course provides the distraction for either the gypsy or another to A) steal from her or B) get pity/money from Lindsey. After realizing what she got herself into though, she walked away with the broken gypsy ideal given to her by Disney's Esmeralda.
Ok, back to the Eiffel Tower, we declined to wait in the long lines to go to the top and instead headed towards the Arc de Triumph (foolishly walked again). It was commisioned by Napoleon and also houses their "Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" Memorial. Once we got there, we went to the top to get a panarama of Paris and on the way down, I found a flower that had blown from the wreath of the grave (finders keepers). After eating lunch at a cafe on Champs Elysees, we went to pay our respects at Jim Morrison's grave. We broke into an acapella rendition of "The End" since it seemed like the right thing to do. We also encountered a mad French man arguing with the guard by his grave about, what we thought, was the barricade around Morrison's grave. Two french women confirmed our suspisions. At this point it was getting late again and we were tired from our days worth of walking to we strolled out of the cemetary talking of life/death and our next days plans.
On our final full day in Paris, we went to Versailles in the morning and opted for the free garden entrance. The gardens are around 250 acres, and if that doesn't make your jaw drop then I don't know what else I can say other then that it went back as far as the eye could see. And the whole thing was beautiful gardens with fountains everywhere. Once back in Paris we headed to Hotel des Invalides (aka Napoleons Tomb). This military building was stormed by the French people to seize the weapons to then go "Storm the Bastille!". And like everything else in France, Napoleon's Tomb could fit about 50 Napoleons in it, seriously.
On our last night, we headed back to the Eiffel Tower to watch it light up, and just enjoy the city one last time.
So today we took the Eurostar here to London under the English Channel. We have already checked in to our hostel, seen Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, a Princess Diana memorial fountain, and the Achilles statue in Hyde Park. I know what you are thinking, what else could they do?? Well, I guess I'll leave you with that.
Posted by brandn8 7:21 PM Archived in France Comments (0)
