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Published: August 6th 2012
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France
From a window in the Louvre The main reason I don’t consider myself an environmentalist is because I’m pretty sure they are against leaving the sink running so your girlfriend can’t hear you pooping. Three weeks is a long time to be staying in tiny hostel rooms together and if it comes down to killing the environment or killing the mystery in our relationship… “Sorry grandkids, you should have seen how cute polar bears were when they were alive.” Ah, summer in Paris, cold and rainy. That’s not entirely true, one day it was sunny and cold. I can’t believe this is what passes for summer weather. Paris has been mentally added it to my list of Chicago, Seoul, Bogota, and Beijing as a place that I really like but I’d never live in because of the weather. The natives kept telling us it was abnormal but I looked it up and 59 low (15 C) to 75 high (24C) perfectly matched the monthly temperature average for July. Our third day there was Bastille Day which means you stand next to dudes with unicorn neck tattoos (see photo) and watch France’s military might stroll by. It was mildly entertaining. We tried to eat at Joel Robuchon’s restaurant
Unicorn Tat
I had to do it on the sly because while he had a unicorn on his neck he was actually pretty burly. Gotta be kind of BA to pull it off I guess. L’Atelier but it was far too early for dinner in such a trendy place. I realize that the Louvre is France’s national museum, but the fact that nothing is in any language but French is stunningly ethnocentric for the most visited museum on Earth. I am aware that the phrase
lingua francacomes from when French was the world’s language, but those days are past. These days ten languages are spoken by more people than French meaning the descriptions next to the paintings would reach a wider audience if they were in Malay or Bengali.* You could always get an audio guide, but they won’t rent you one unless you wait in the impossibly long ticket lines (which you pay extra to avoid before you realize that you have to wait in those lines anyways if you want an audio guide). Anyways, it’s very un-visitor friendly. But the pictures are nice. The Orsay is a much nicer experience in my opinion and I would recommend it over the Louvre any day of the week. So what if you can’t see the Mona Lisa, see the copy (made by the same stencil and by DaVinci’s assistant) that they have in the Prado
Napping in the Park
We did a lot of napping, it's kind of our thing. in Madrid (Spain’s national museum that is fully multilingual for international tourists I might add). I climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower which made me pee in my pants a little. I love to look at impressive views, but hate heights, a curse I know. I like when I see people washing their windows from the inside, from a distance it looks like they’re waving at me. Paris is the most visited city in the world, which I can appreciate I guess, but for my money I’d rather be in Barcelona, which is where we’re off to next. Random French trivia: Crayola is a French word that means “oily chalk” which is why true American patriots call them Crayons.** The French call French kissing “deep kissing” or “soul kissing” not “our kissing” contrary to what you might have thought. I really wanted to see the most visited tourist attraction in Paris, Disneyland (more than the Louvre and Eiffel Tower combined) as my parents didn’t love me enough to take me there but alas, it wasn’t in the cards. Hey childhood dream, catch you the next time around.
Music In honor of
Al singing it the whole trip when we went, I sang it for Maria the whole time leading her to question my sexuality on more than one occasion. Les
Champs-
Élysées by Joe Dassin. Movie Declaration of War is an entertaining French movie we watched recently. It’s more interesting once you find out that the two actors playing the leads are playing themselves in a story that really happened to them.
TVMaria got sick so one half day we were holed up in the hotel and Parisian tv did not let us down with an American Dad marathon and some French game show called 60 seconds where families compete in these ridiculous 60 second challenges like strapping a Kleenex box to your back and gyrating all the ping pong balls out of it, or blowing a deck of cards that were balanced on top of a bottle and blowing them all except the joker on the bottom. Maybe you have to watch it, but it’s great.
Book Under the Banner of Heaven ~ Krakauer. I think any Christian should familiarize themselves with the tenets of the Mormon church, both traditionally and the changes they’ve made to move
Easter Island Head
I love that they cut its head off and took it home. Seems like a very American thing to do, see we're not that different after all. into the mainstream, when considering who to vote for. I’m guessing if they did some research most would find they have a lot more in common with Barack Obama’s belief system than Mitt Romney’s.
This place is brimming with penis. ~ Maria in the Louvre
Her legs look like Shwarma meat. ~ Some insensitive North American about an obese lady.
If there isn’t a corgi named Corgi Haim, then I’m not even sure I know what the point is anymore. ~ Sammy Rhodes
*The list of languages, by speaker (from Ethnologue 16) is: English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindu, Bengali, Russian, Malay, Portuguese, and Japanese.
**The pronunciation of which is debatable ranging from the awesome pronunciation Crowns, to the really lame CRAY-ons.
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Jeni
non-member comment
Samantha
Has been to Disney World three times... just sayin