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Published: October 12th 2009
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With our various detours and complete lack of planning we ran out of time to see many of the different places we had thought we might get to on our roadtrip, including many parts of France, but we decided upon leaving Luxembourg that we might as well at least swing by Paris to see the Eiffel Tower as I'd never been this close before and it would be a shame not to see it. For those of you that know my family, you know that my Mom was lucky enough to spend a year in France working as both a ski patroler in Chamonix and as a nanny in Corchevel. With a family history like this in France I was really hoping to get the chance to see the places that my Mom had been on her adventure, but unfortunately that will just have to wait for another trip. Paris... however, I believe I have seen, and honestly it would take a miracle and a strong willed person to get me to visit the capital again.
As we drove into Paris, during rushhour, I began to notice that my feelings about European drivers could not even compare to my feelings
about Paris drivers. There were no markings on the road to indicate lanes, so people just swerved in and out of traffic creating their own lanes and then falling back in line with the people who obviously had no idea what was going on, like Della and I. The police were completely useless, as were the traffic lights they were telling us to ignore. Rather than paying attention to the traffic lights, which appeared to be working just fine, the Police would stand in the middle of the intersection and wave frantically at you to go through the red lights. This system... could be refined, if you ask me. Then trying to find somewhere to park was ridiculous as all of the paid parking meters required you to pay by credit card, but wouldn't accept either mine or Della's. My credit cards were not accepted anywhere in Europe, not even in England, as they have upgraded to a system with a little magnetic chip at one end of the card and no longer accepted cards that you had to swipe. So... we couldn't park anywhere without fear of getting a ticket, so we ended up driving in circles once again
trying to follow the ever so helpful SatNav to some form of parking garage. Eventually, after driving in increasing circles away from the Eiffel Tower we managed to find a parking garage that we hoped to God would accept change, but chose to worry about it later.
The Eiffel Tower was... ugly... but it was still impressive. I'm not really entirely sure what they were trying to prove building the worlds tallest metal... ummmm... triangle thing, but it was a very big metal triangle thing. As we walked under the Eiffel Tower only to realize that there were huge lines at every entrance, we decided this wouldn't be our day to ascend the giant metal... thing, so we just wandered around the area and over to the fountain across the street. It really was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but once again it was a typical tourist destination with thousands of people milling about the base and thousands of people begging. There were also a lot of men walking around selling souvenirs and bugging you every five feet to buy from them because it was the cheapest. (Turns out it was a hell of a lot cheaper to buy
everything they had at the little tourist shop a hundred feet from where they were haggling with unwitting tourists.) For some reason Della had managed to get the "fuck off" glare down just right to the point where noone really bothered her, but they all seemed to view me as the gullible "will by anything if you ask me enough times" type. At one point I got so frustrated that I told Della I was going to punch the next person who asked me if I wanted a cheap piece of crap in the Face... I didn't, as the next person that asked me had probably heard me say it and I really didn't want to get arrested in France.
The fountain was beautiful with thousands of people laying around it, in what I can only describe by reminding you of those Greek portraits with the ladies and men lying draped across one another in a romantic fashion. As we only had enough Euro coins to last us two hours at the Eiffel Tower we had to hurry back to the car after having seen the fountain area and gazing at the romance of the Eiffel Tower for a
few whirlwind moments, in order to fight the throng of tourists back in the direction of the car. All in all, I'm glad I saw it, but Paris just simply is not the city for me... in fact, I don't really think any city is the right city for me, what can I say, I'm a mountain girl. :D
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Maggie
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woof, woof?
Woof, woof? (Mr. Eiffel?)