Paris In December

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I began working on this blog quite awhile ago. I got distracted. And I went home for christmas without my wonderful photo capturing device...errr camera, so I had no way to upload my pictures! So now I'm doing it, after the fact. I'm probably leaving out a lot, which I apologize for.

Four score and 3 days ago... (more or less) I went to the land of France, and Paris.

In the past, I have bemoaned the lack of luxury on our traveling coaches. Someone was listening, because this coach had approximately one extra inch of knee space. For me, this brought untold joy and celebration admist my sleeping. Unfortunately, our 'luxury coach' had some problems later on in the trip, which will of course come later.

So we left on a thursday night, headed for Paris. Once again, we drove/rode the ferry all night and arrived in France at 10AM the next day. This is like the ultimate red-eye flight. You're on a bus, and the moment you fall asleep you're forced off onto the ferry, which is riding some VERY high seas. Then, you fall asleep again but are forced back on the bus. Just as sleep comes back, the onboard dvd finishes. This is not a problem until it goes back to the DVD menu, which shows a nice little intro that unfortunately boasts extremely loud music and loops approximately every 16 seconds. Our awesome guide (not being sarcastic, Owen is the bomb) was unfortunately incapacitated/in a sleep coma, so this wonderful loop of forced insomnia seemed to last hours. Maybe it only lasted a few minutes. Either way it was burned into my subconscious. Every time the tv show 'little britain' comes on the telly, I become severely agitated.

Anyways, I sleep until we arrive at the hostel. Then it's off and running onto the Paris underground. I had never been on a subway, but luckily, Kelly, Jeanette, Dylan and I were joined by a guy named Dylan that knew what was going on. We headed straight for the Eiffel Tower like good tourists. It was here that I encountered my first gypsy. Basically, they hang out, ask you if you speak english. If you say yes, they produce a very sad story on a piece of paper involving their lost loved ones in a country divided by civil war. Sound like a scam? Yes. Make you feel guilty anyways for not giving money? Yes. But hey, gotta make a living somehow right? If you're not careful you'll get totally mugged, like I almost did later in this story.

Anyways, where were we, gypsy people... so the stairs of the Eiffel tower were closed. So we went to Notre Dame instead. Awesome, Awesome place. The christmas tree out front was a very nice touch. From there we got a bite to eat and headed back to our Hostel.

It is now that I should mention where our wonderful Swansea Travel Shop booked our hostel. Ride in the middle of Pigalle, or the Paris Red Light District. Rick Steves, a very very conservative and uptight individual who has a show on PBS about europe quipped that 'dildos abound' in Pigalle, 'a place known as pig alley during WWII for its unsavoury businesses' Haha. Our hostel's wonderful neighbors included the 'sexodrome' and 'dirty dicks' among other wonderful places.

That night was free student night at the louvre (awesome!) so we headed there for the evening. If you go to Paris, you absolutely cannot miss the Louvre, it is that good. I have no idea why, but security was very lax that night and I got some probably illegal photos/movies that you can check out. The only thing is my movies are very disorienting, because when you are holding a camera it is second nature to flip it sideways to get a picture, but when you do it taking video, instead of producing a better angle, it makes the viewer feel like they're getting a case of motion sickness. I've warned you! The only drawback of the Louvre is that you could easily spend 100+ hours there and only get to 10% of what it truely offers. So you pick and choose what you want to see/do, which means you get the same 2-3 hour experience most other people get. But that's ok.

The next day we conquered the Eiffel Tower via elevator. The stair line was incredibly long. The Eiffel Tower is... awesome. At a distance, you will see it and think, oh yeah what's the fuss about, but once you're on the top observation deck, you will be shamed for your earlier thoughts. It's impressive, unique, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Two thumbs up. Five/five stars. 10/10. Okay I'll stop now.

From there we headed out to Napoleon's tomb, but it closes very early on saturdays. Sad. Me and Avi, a neat guy/friend of mine that is now back in the States headed for Sacre Cour, a giant basilica on the other side of town. I might add I embarassingly referred to it as a 'mosque' for a long time because it looked like something from Aladdin to me. And yes, I'm very familar with the non-western world. Heck, I'm currently reading Rushdie for the kick of it. Just a slip up I guess.

Anyways, that was way neat, but coming back from that I'm pretty sure I almost got mugged. Avi and I are walking through this group of guys that were hanging around the bottom of this staircase in a public place, and one of them comes towards me, heckling with something. I never should have paused because this guy grabs my hand and pulls out this yarn stuff like he's going to make me something. I tried to pull away but he was seriously not letting ago and was trying to do something, but while he was doing it all the other guys were seriously like converging on me. The guy had my left hand and I was seriously about to blast him with my right as hard as I could and make a run for it, but I gave it one last shake and started raising my voice a lot and he gave it up. Avi and I got out of there after that. Seriously.

I stayed in that night and used my last morning to visit Pere Lachaise cemetary and the grave of Jim Morrison. Glad I did it. Pretty lonely little grave for the former leader of the Doors and rock itself. But then again, his last days of obesity and drug abuse weren't exactly the greatest. He is buried in one of the more prestigious cemeteries in the world... his friends initially told the cemetery keeper he was a rock and roll star but that didn't get him in, so they more or less lied and said he was an American poet, which got him in. He used to have a large headstone/bust of sorts, but someone stole it at some point. He now has a regular looking grave with flowers and drawings from his fans.

From there it was a rush back to the Hostel and onto the bus back to Swansea! When our bus pulled up, it honked. When it shouldn't have. Turns out, our bus had a broken horn, that would intermittently go off on its own accord. Seriously, it would just blare randomly for a few seconds then shut off, then come on again. Our bus driver attributed it to 'our bus being parked in the redlight district and becoming horny' haha.

But man oh man did those french people get pissed off with us. Our bus was just cruising down the freeway and would randomly honk. Most of the time cars gave us a wide berth, but new cars were continually coming close to us because it was a busy freeway and next thing you know our horn would start blaring and the car would swerve away/accelerate, more often than not with a middle finger hanging out the window or a french person shouting obscenities of which the only word I could translate was 'british'. Although a few frenchies were kind enough to let us have it in English with heavy french accents. Those ones were usually death threats. Ohhhhh it was glorious and I was laughing so hard at some points that I actually could not breathe. Many of the Americans on the trip were more concerned/horrified by what was happening, but I was actually in physical pain from laughing so much. I can't believe we didn't get pulled over by the police at some point. The first hour of the trip back, that horn would just randomly go off, although we hit a bump or something at one point and it eventually stopped itself. All good things must come to an end, I suppose.

The last interesting part of the trip came at the ferry crossing. Impoverished individuals wait their with belts and attempt to run underneath waiting vehicles so they can strap underneath it and hitch a ride to the UK. If it sounds like an easy way to die, it's because it is. I hope I am never in that desperate of a situation. The alarming part is they are already within a developed Western European nation. I can't imagine how bad things are in undeveloped, or even 2nd world countries.

I hope everyone had a wonderful and safe easter.

Okay, Travel Blog is really really buggy in general, which is the other reason this blog took so long. It won't led me upload pictures right now. So I'll try again tomorrow. But until then, I apologize for not having them up.

Alright, Pictures are NOW up! I couldn't get it to let me label them, but I think I know how to do that next time. Yay!

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