bonjour, bonsoir, merci, s'il vous plait. that sums up the amount of french i know. but trying to speak with the french accent, well that was fun and hard to kick by the time i returned to spain.
anyways...i left off having arrived at the paris airport, the main airport of a city for once, although still a good half hour/forty-five minutes from downtown. we trekked the length of a very long airport until we found the place to buy tickets onto the RER train that goes into the city and connects to the underground. for the first time we felt a little uncertain of what to do and didn't have the language skills to help ourselves, although the workers spoke enough english to point us in the right direction. at this point the group consisted of me, shayla, kevin, darren, and pat (with nathan joining us the next morning). so we all bought our tickets, kevin only after explaining to the clearly frustrated ticket lady three times that he wanted a ticket to France, with shayla whispering PARIS as loudly as she could in the background. then i got stuck in the RER doors with my friends on the platform behind me, we managed to get them open, get on the train, and make our way into paris hoping we were where we were supposed to be. luckily i made friends with the nice korean girl sitting next to me, who perhaps lived in france, and gave me her subway map with directions on how to get to the stop that we needed for our hostel. she didn't speak much english and i speak no french, but we understood eachother enough to make it work.
we made it to our subway stop Pigalle, the only stop that happened to smell strongly of sour milk and which we had to pass through at least twice each day. so we walked up the exit stairs to the street and found ourselves surrounded by bright red neon lights, and store names that i'd rather not write. adventure #3?#4? i've lost count. the boys just laughed and congratulated me on selecting an excellent hostel location. after wandering in circles for a while we found our hostel, which was actually at least three blockes outside the redlight district. it was in district 18, montmartre, which turned out to be my favorite part of the city. the hostel was fine - shayla, pat, and i shared a three-person room, while kevin and darren shared a room with one other boy. pretty tired, we went to an ATM, McDonalds, and then called it a night.
wednesday:
after partaking in the included breakfast i felt quite proud of my hostel selection. we had orange juice, coffee or tea, a baguette, a croissant, butter and jam. and had lovely movie soundtrack music playing in the background as well. i forgot to mention that we ended up eating one hour later than we had planned, as pat neglected to change his clock from london to paris time (adv.#4). but regardless we made it out of the hostel, onto the subway, and down to the Eiffel Tower. i was fully prepared for the actual tower not living up to my expectations, but instead it surpassed them. it was magnificent, amazing to see. instead of taking the elevator up, we got into the stairs line (not sure if it was because the line was shorter or because it was cheaper, probably both). so we climbed up the 350 or so stairs to the first level and captured beatiful views of the city. after circleling (squaring?) half the structure we climbed up the next 350 stairs to level two for equally impressive views. we even managed to find nathan amongst all the tourists thousands of feet below. unexpected, was the freak hail storm we suffered while up there, which actually required some head covering because a little pellets started to hurt (#5). after that we made our way back down to take pictures of the eiffel tower and not just from it. the photos included ones of just the structure, us in front of it, us jumping in front of it , and the crown jewel: a six-person pyramid styled after the eiffel tower in front of the eiffel tower. a thing of beauty. we thought the poor person we asked to take the picture would have to wait for a considerable amount of time for the formation, but we got into place remarkably quick, perhaps the future sevilla cheerleading team in the making.
sixty-seven photos later we decided enough was enough and that we should move on.
although we didn't move on all that quickly because of our collective poor map reading, although i didn't really bother to assist not minding the extra walking. i will go ahead and label all map blunders as adventure #6. so we finally ended up walking along the seine river past a gold-adorned bridge, a famous square with a massive obelisk, through the statue gardens to the entrance of the louvre. all in all i'd say the best part of the louvre were the grand pyramid entrance in the front and the inverted pyramid you see before you leave. we did see the mona lisa, and the venus de milo, and got lost a few times before leaving. the museum is HUGE. miles and miles long and slightly tricky to manuever. but we saw what we went there for and continued on our way.
went the wrong way going to the notre dame and ended up on the other side of the seine, walking past the museé de orsay, to stop and get some lunch.
then we walked back along the other side of the river to our intended destination, the notre dame. when walking back past the museé de orsay i made eye contact with a lady walking past and felt this sensation like i knew the person, but couldn't decide if it was because i knew them from my life or because they were famous. about fifteen minutes down the road i realized it was the latter, although definitely not of A or B list fame. it was HILDI from TRADING SPACES! not the greatest celebrity sighting, but still kind of fun - the fact that she was wearing a beret should have tipped me off that it wasn't an acquaintance of mine. so back to the notre dame, also an impressive building, and the site of a great hunchback picture of three of the boys in my group. we toured through the building and then walked around the outside before attempting to find a metro station to go back to our hostel. unfortunately the M's on our map stood for museums, not metros, as kevin realized after venting in frustration about the "phantom metro stops" (#7). after a great progression of french directions from at least three different passerby, we found the subway and made it to the hostel.
grocery store goodies for dinner, a couple hours of conversation in the hostel room, a quick stop at a pub in the latin quarter for one of the boys to say hi to friend studying in paris and then back to the montmartre area. we saw the moulin rouge (not quite as exciting as i was expecting) and happened upon a kareoke bar on the return trip, so we had to stop there before bed. fun place, but after continuing to be told that kevin and darren would be singing next, we got fed up and left, angry at the french (mainly just the rude employee working the singing list)
thursday:
breakfast (yum)
walked up butte montmartre (the hill/mountain) to a lovely square of painters, montmartre is the art district. the streets were filled with art and people, great souvenir shops. we wandered until we found sacre coeur, another famous church not in the gothic style. i really liked the look of the church, perhaps becuase its so different from all the other one's we've seen. there is also a great view of paris from its steps.
went to the arc triomphe, walked around that area, got lunch, took a rest at the hostel, and went to Les Refuge du Fondus for dinner. a hole in the wall fondue restaurant recommended to us by the girl studying in paris and a couple other of nathan's friends. turned out to be a fabulous recommendation and one of the most fun things we've done. the place is tiny and has two long tables with bench seating, so you just cram into the people next to you. the walls are covered in colorful writing of the patrons listing their names or the schools they're from. you pay for a set meal and a get a sweetly flavored starter drink, a plate of toothpick appetizers (meats, cheese, pickles, olives, potatos), delicious cheese fondue with unlimited ciabatta bread, and meat and dipping sauce for those who eat that. i probably should have kept track of the amount of bread i ate, but it was too good to stop. the meal also includes a baby bottle (yep, baby bottle) of red or white wine and a refill for one euro. makes no sense, but adds to the fun. we made friends with the couple sitting next to us, a girl from minnesota who has now lived in paris for three years and her best friend's younger brother from st. louis who now lives in isreal. an interesting pair and very nice. after eating we went with them back to the kareoke bar. why? i'm not sure. because we once again did not get to sing, and once again left quite frustrated. (if only we knew it would only get worse)
our bus to the "paris" airport that was an hour and a half away left at 5:00AM from a bus stop across town so in planning we made the poor decision to not get a hostel for that night and just stay up (never will this be part of my plans again). it could have been fine because as all i wanted was to see the eiffel tower lit up we figured we'd head down to the eiffel tower at 12:30 before the subway closed, spend time there and then make our way to the bus stop. what we didn't take into account was the unpredicted horizontal downpour, the cold temp, and the fact that the eiffel tower turns its lights out at 1:00AM. so we managed to get soaked, see an unlit eiffel tower, and not know what to do with ourselves for the next three hours. we probably should have waited in the common room of our hostel and then took a taxi, but instead we walked for forty minutes in the rain to the convention center enclosed parking structure outside the bus stop and then sat there misreably for two hours before boarding the bus. not my finest moment, but we made it through.
arrived at the much warmer airport, drank some much needed hot chocolate, and boarded our on-time plane to barcelona :)
France's Flag
Map of France