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Published: January 19th 2008
Stalingrad?
Stalingrad? That's in Russia. We thought we were going to France...Highlights of Paris
A few weeks ago mum and dad told us that we are going to Paris over a weekend. Mum and dad sometimes travel to foreign countries for only two days, Saturday and Sunday. They say that a weekend is all the time they can take off from work. We think that is a pity because we want to travel much longer. We think our jobs must be much better than their jobs. Our job is keeping this blog updated and entertain our friends when they come for a visit. We often don't have to work more than a day or two in a week. That gives us plenty of time to travel. Life is good for us toys. But mum and dad have jobs they have to attend every weekday or they get fired. We sometimes feel sorry for mum and dad. But then it is their own fault they chose such stupid careers. They should have talked to us first. We could have given them guidance that would have allowed them more freedom to travel.
When mum and dad told us we were heading for Paris we were first overjoyed and yelled "Yeah, we are
Moulin Rouge
We have heard this is a party place. But mum says it is a house of sin. Whatever that is... going to
Disneyland!". Mum then said that we are not going to Disneyland because it's too cold there in winter. But then she added that if we are nice little toys we might go back to Paris in spring and then we can go to Disneyland. We then heard dad mumbling something we couldn't quite hear. We think we heard him say "fat chance" and "Hell freezes over". We know where
Hell is, it is in Norway. We were there last year. But the place "Fat Chance" we couldn't find on any of our maps. Strange of dad to talk about such odd places when we were talking about having fun with
Donald Duck,
Mickey Mouse and
Goofy. Well, sometimes we don't understand what mum and dad say. They should be more specific. But we did understand that it is cold in Disneyland now. Well we don't like cold places so it is probably a good idea not to go there right now. It's better to go there when it is warmer.
When we think about it we don't have to go to Disneyland in Paris to see Goofy. We have our own "Goofy" right here. We usually call him "dad"
Sacré Cur
Nice house huh? White and shiny and everything. Hang on. This is in the film Amelié. Let's go looking for her. though. We don't dare calling him Goofy when he is around. But it's true, dad is a real Goofy look-alike.
We arrived in Paris late on Friday night. It was too late to do anything really except find the hotel and go to bed.
On Saturday we first went to a district known as
Montmartre. We know a lot about Montmartre because we have seen the film
Amélie. It is about Amélie Poulain who lives in Montmartre. We love that movie and we visited Montmartre only because we hoped to meet her. Now we weren't lucky enough to see Amélie that day but we saw a lot of other interesting things there. First mum and dad showed us a nightclub we have heard of before - the
Moulin Rouge. We asked if we could go in now and party for a few hours. But mum told us that Moulin Rouge is not a good place for cuddly toys. It is a place of sin.
We don't understand what "sin" is. When we asked dad he said "It's short for the mathematical term
sine. But dad is a science nerd and we know better than asking him to explain
Carousel
Look at this nice carousel we found in Montmartre. But we didn't have time to ride it. We were looking for Amelie. She must be somewhere here... stuff to us. He lives in his own World. So we asked mum to explain the word "sin". She just answered "You will figure it out one day", but the way she said it we kind of understood that it is a bad thing. Well, we probably have to ask our friends. Maybe they know.
But what we can't understand is why mum and dad brought us to Moulin Rouge in the first place when they never had any plans on going in. Did they really go there to see the place from the outside only? What's fun with that? Mum and dad are getting stranger day by day.
Next place we came to was a wonderful white building.
Jean-Claude: "My first thought was actually that we had found the
White House"
Emma: "How could you think that? The White House is in the USA and we were in Paris."
Jean-Claude: "I knew we were in Paris and I know that the White House is in the States. But it was white and big and that is how you recognise the White House. I thought it was strange that we could find an American building in Paris. But then
The café where Amélie works
We found the café where Amélie works. But, alas, we didn't find Amélie. just an hour earlier we found
Stalingrad in Paris and we both know that
Stalingrad is in Russia."
Emma: "Yeah, you're right. It makes sense. If Stalingrad can be in Paris then so can the White House."
Dad told us this white building was called
Sacré-Cœur and dad added that is it a basilica. Dad always complicates things by using such strange words. We see a house and he says it's a "basilica" like we are supposed to know what that is. We know what a
basilisk is because Harry Potter killed one in
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. And though basilica and basilisk almost sound like the same thing we now know it isn't. At least they don't
look the same.
After seeing Sacré-Cœur we decided to go for some serious Amélie-hunting. We know we were close because we clearly remember seeing Sacré-Cœur in the movie about Amelié. We walked around in Montmartre for at least half an hour without seeing her anywhere. Then dad mentioned that he might know where the café where Amélie works is. He could have told us that right from the start. That would have saved us quite a bit of walking. We went to her
The café where Amelié works
We found the café where Amélie works. But, alas, we didn't find Amélie. café but she apparently had the day off because she wasn't there. Too bad! We will try again next time we come to Paris.
When we were looking for Amélie we found some other interesting places in Montmartre. We found a blue wall covered with graffiti. When we looked at it we noticed the graffiti was strange . The words "I Love you" were written all over the wall in more than 100 different languages. So the graffiti artist must be super multi-lingual. Well we have two friends, Zakje and Joplin, their mother speaks many languages. Probably more than 100. Maybe she is the one who wrote all those "I Love You" on the wall. We have to ask her next time we meet her.
In Montmartre we also found a Metro Station with a nice entrance. It looked like no Metro station we had ever seen before. We decided to go for some serious Metro Station hunting to see if there are more Metro stations in Paris with interesting entrances. Mum and dad were not at all happy about that. They wanted to visit art museums and other boring stuff. But we cut a deal with them.
Drinking coffee
All the chasing after Amelié made us very tired. We had to have some coffee to become happy toys again. If we get to look at Metro Stations today they can see one, just one, art museum tomorrow. Mum and dad gave each other a look, nodded slightly and said in unison "It's a deal!". At first we couldn't understand why they were so willing to agree to that deal. We sensed there was something going on here. Our Jedi instincts told us that mum and dad were not completely honest with us.
But we decided not to worry about that. It was probably nothing. So in the afternoon we looked at two more Metro Stations before we got tired of that. They were both very nice. Like a piece of art actually - but much better than in a museum. We could even climb on the entrances. In what art museum where can you climb the art? That's right - none. It's official, Metro stations
are better than art galleries.
In one of the Metro Stations we found something we didn’t expect to see here - a photo of
Darth Vader. Darth Vader is evil. We prefer
Yoda and
Obi-Wan Kenobi. They are nice. When we become Yedis we want to be like them, not like Darth Vader.
Love wall in Montmartre
In Montmartre we found this wall of love. "I Love You" is written in more than 100 languages. After we had seen enough Metro stations mum and dad brought us to a few different places in Paris that they said are some of the highlights in the city. First we all went to see
Arc de Triomphe, then we went to the
Pompidou Centre and finally we went to
Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Arch de Triomphe is a big monument on Champs-Élysées. It was nice to look at. It probably took the French several weeks to build it.
Pompidou Centre is a big house that looks like no other house we have ever seen before. It turned out that they had forgotten to put outer walls on the house. You could see plumbing and staircases and other things that in normal houses are hidden. Maybe they are renovating the building or something.
Outside the Pompidou Centre we found a fountain with some art in it. We couldn't climb the art though. Art is more fun when you can climb it is our opinion.
We also found a sign saying that we were in a place called Place Igor Stravinsky. That means Igor Stravinsky Square. But why didn't they call it Wayne Gretsky Square? The French have no sense for what
Metro station in Montmartre
When we were looking for Amelie we also found this cool Metro station. The metro stations in Paris are nice. We decided to go for Metro Station hunting when we got tired of looking for Amelié is cool.
Wayne Gretzky is 100 times cooler than
Igor Stravinsky. That's a fact!
On Père Lachaise Cemetery we visited the grave of another cool dude -
Jim Morrison. Dad says Jim Morrison was a singer who died in 1971 and became a legend after his death. Thousands of people visit his grave every year to pay homage to him.
After Père Lachaise it was time for us to go back to the hotel and call it the day.
On Sunday morning mum and dad woke us up at the crack of dawn. The first thing they did was to remind us about the One-day-Metro-Stations-for-one-art-museum-deal we cut yesterday. They looked way too happy when they said it and we were soon to find out why. After a quick breakfast mum and dad brought us to
The Louvre. In case you didn't know the Louvre is huge. No, gigantic is a better word. There are about 35000 works of art on display there - and mum and dad wanted to see each and every one of them. We are such suckers! We should have trusted our instinct that told us they were up to something.
But we got lucky. Mum and
Metro Station
We found this Metro Station when we were Metro Station hunting. It's even better than the first one. dad decided to leave the museum after only an hour. It turned out they were really only there to see two things -
Mona Lisa and
Venus de Milo. We got a real scare there. For a while we thought we would be forced to walk around the halls of the Louvre for a week or something.
We have to admit we kind of liked the visit to the Louvre. It was short enough not to be boring. Mona Lisa was just a painting really. Don't know what the big fuzz was all about. We couldn't even get close to it. Venus de Milo was a statue. It was even stranger that mum and dad wanted to see that because it was broken. The statue didn't have any arms.
The rest of the day we walked around a bit in Paris. We passed a statue of a woman who holds her right hand up in the air. It looks like an athlete who has just won a race like a Marathon race. Or even better 4 × 400 m relay race because she was holding something that looked like a baton in her hand. We asked mum if the statue maybe
Metro Station
We also found this Metro Station when we were Metro Station hunting. Hey, we are climbing the entrance! Can you see us? was named Statue of Winning the Marathon in the Olympics or something like that. She said it was called Statue of Liberty. What a dull name for such a cool statue. The French have no sense for what is cool. One un-cool name might be a coincidence, two is not. We think we have to help the French people a bit here.
The French sure need help when it comes to find cool names on things. But when it comes to building cool structures they are masters. In Paris they have this thing called the Eiffel Tower. It is a tower built of thousands of Iron Beams and it was impossibly high. We have seen high buildings before. For instance when we were in
Shibam. But this is the highest we have ever seen! We think the Eiffel Tower might be the highest building in the World.
The last place we visited in Paris on this trip was
Notre Dame. At Notre Dame dad wanted to take a photo of us and some
gargoyles. Dad really likes gargoyles but we still think they are scary. He has taken
photos of us and gargoyles before and he knows we don't like it. When we
Darth Vader
We found a picture of Darth Vader in one of the Metro Stations. tried to talk our way out of this photo shoot Dad said he just has to have a photo of these gargoyles. They are the most famous in the World. They are featured in the movie
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Dad says it is one of the best films ever made. But if there are gargoyles in it we are not going to see it. The only thing that can make us see it is if Yoda appears in the movie. Well, we agreed on the photo shoot eventually. Dad looked so sad when we refused. He is going to have to pay for that...
After that we all went to the airport to fly home to Stockholm. When we came to the airport it turned out that the flight we were booked on was cancelled. We were redirected to a flight to Copenhagen and there we had to stay in a hotel for the night. We finally came home to Stockholm on Monday morning.
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Reskaninen
Reskanin
Zakje & Joplin
Ha, vi är omnämnda i en annan blogg! Tufft. Vi vet faktiskt vad synd är. Det är när något är dumt, fast det inte var meningen. Oftast. Då kan man säga "Så synd!" KOnstigt att ni inte visste det! Förresten så ser flera av era bilder ut som när Joplin var med i USA: Kolla texempel http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/New-York/New-York/blog-83221.html ! TYvärr har vi inte med den bilden från Chicago som visar en sån där tunnelbaneuppgång som i Paris, fast Reskanin säger att hon har den på datorn. Hjälper ju inte nu, ju. Åsså har jag (Z) faktiskt vart i Paris, fast då fick jag bli avlusad, för det var löss på gång. Hamnade i en frys, det var inget kul alls. Fast hade nog varit jobbigt att få löss, förstås. Annars bodde jag mest i en studio, hette det, och muntrade upp Reskanin när hon kom hem från skolan om dagarna.