Day 17: Paris

Europe » France » Île-de-France » Paris
June 1st 2007

Published: August 7th 2007

Edit Blog Post

amneris

The Arc

Start your day off right with a bowl of Arc-ios

Just a note: I'm using my journal as a reference for this entry, but it was written at 11:30 at night after a very long day of sightseeing, so sadly, I'm sure there are details missing - but you'll get the idea.*

Breakfast was pretty much the same as it had been through France. I was pretty excited about it - the upcoming day, not the breakfast. We got onto the coach, and Pom Pom played the day song as we drove to the Arc de Triomphe to be dropped off for the day. A bunch of us (the usual crew), took a few quick photos and then went through the underpass to the middle of the roundabout to go up the Arc. The bunch of us started the ascent up the few hundred stairs spiraling to the top. It got silly about a quarter of the way up - our legs got a good workout, that's for sure! My motto was "get a good pace going and just don't stop". It worked, but I was sadly out of breath when I finally reached the top. The view of Paris was lovely...truly stunning, and watching the insanity of the roundabout

Pain

So many stairs... could have been worse though. could have gone up the Eiffel Tower...

directly below us was pretty fun too. We had a great view of the Eiffel Tower and the sprawling city, so took lots of photos. I kind of felt like we were at the centre of the universe right there, being high up and seeing so many roads forking out from the central hub where we stood. The Arc itself was very beautiful as well. The amount of detail everywhere we looked just blew me away. We spent between 20 and 30 minutes at the top, but we had a lot of ground to cover and not all that much time, so we made our way back down the spiral staircase. I completely lost my depth perception after a while and I had to laugh at myself as I had major trouble getting down the steps. Finally, we all landed safely on the ground and devised our game plan for the rest of the morning.

We went back through the underground tunnel and started walking down the Champs-Élysées, looking at all of the extraordinarily expensive shops. We stopped about three times so Jeff could buy stamps, and another three times so Sara and Matt could change their traveler's cheques.

From the top of the Arc

So pretty

I didn't mind waiting. Gave us an opportunity to people watch on this famous street. Finally, we hit the Place de la Concorde - halfway to the Louvre. We were all a little hungry, but didn't want to stop so early for lunch, so we stopped at a little crepe stand. Mmm...chocolatey goodness. Jeff got two for himself - a chocolate one and some other kind that apparently wasn't very good. Chestnut cream, or something. "It started off good, it got worst with every bite", as Jeff tells me. I could easily have scarfed down five, but I decided to practice some self restraint. We kept walking toward the Louvre, stopping to regroup every few minutes, and eventually, we arrived. We took a bunch of photos in front of the glass pyramid and the building. There were lots of people around, and a bunch of gypsies. I loved how the standard response to the gypsies in every country had become a grumpy German "Nein!"

In any case, we took the "sneaky" way down into the Louvre, bought our tickets and were in the museum in about ten minutes. We made a beeline for Miss Mona Lisa. We sped through

What the hell?

Me and a pointy thing in the background ruining the landscape :P

hallway after hallway of gorgeous paintings. It kind of killed me that we didn't really have time to look at anything else, but that just meant that I would have to plan to return to Paris sometime in the near future, which isn't such a bad thing, really! Seeing the Mona Lisa was neat. Everyone always talks about how small she actually is, and maybe knowing that beforehand prevented me from being shocked at the size, but it seemed as big as I'd pictured it. It looked slightly different, somehow, than the prints I've seen, but striking, for sure. I had to laugh at Jon who was being very sneaky and taking photos and video when the guards weren't looking. Again, I wish we could have stayed longer, but before I knew it, we were racing to the Venus de Milo. We took a wrong turn and ended up at a room full of crowns and jewels. Very cool, but not what we were looking for. When we found ol' Venus, well...there she was. As I said, "Now, that's a statue..." We didn't get to spend too much more time in the Louvre, and as we left my heart kind

On the Champs

Where all your dreams come true...er...your credit card company's dreams do, at least.

of broke. But I'll be back. At some point.

After we left, we went in the general direction of Notre Dame and found ourselves on the infamous "Sex and the City bridge". Many photos were taken, we saw the slowest moving dog (or was it a cat?) EVER, and I tried to imagine what shooting at this location must have been like. Magical, I'm sure. We were getting pretty hungry, so Matt, Jeff, Sara, Jon, Will, Brooke, Kelley and I went to find lunch. We found a little cafe that looked fairly reasonable and could seat us, so we went in and sat down. I had a big ol' salad - had bit of a veggie craving after eating so much crap. It was very tasty, but I have to say, the best part of lunch was when Jeff got the brilliant idea to order some escargots for everyone to try. It seemed like a great idea at the time, and then when they were set down on the table, I thought Jeff was going to lose what lunch he'd already eaten. It was hilarious. We took turns scooping the snot-like snails out of their shells. Good and gooey.

Off with her head

Looking slightly morbid in front of the old site where the guillotine stood

And green. The boys looked nervous, and I couldn't stop giggling. We cheers'd our forks together, counted down, and stuffed them in our mouths. The reactions were varied. Tasted like garlic and had the texture of mussels. Nothing to it. Brooke was totally into it. Jon and Jeff, on the other hand? Not so much. Jon was ready, water glass in hand, to chase it down, but he couldn't stop chewing for fear of releasing the contents of his stomach. Jeff was the same, and it was so funny to watch. I think we had the other people in the restaurant laughing at us, but whatever. It was fabulous.

After lunch we walked along the Seine, stopping to buy souvenirs and then made our way to Notre Dame, which, I will admit, I wasn't sold on until we got there. The outside was impressive, but the inside was lovely. We were lucky enough to walk in just as the organ was starting to play and the incense was starting to fill the centre aisle. The stained glass rose windows were lovely. We made the rounds and took it all in, then exited and tried to decide what to do

Chestnut or something?

Jeff eating the not-so-good crepe

next. All of a sudden, Brooke got a very worried look on her face, reached into her pocket and said "I brought the sex dice into church...that's like, a sin or something!" (the sex dice had been one of the souvenir purchases she'd made earlier in the day). I laughed and assured her it wasn't so bad but that maybe she should consider confession.

I wanted to keep on trucking, because I knew that as soon as I slowed down, my exhaustion would kick in and I'd be stupidly useless for the rest of the day. Luckily, we made up our minds fairly quickly and went down the street to get in the line for Sainte Chapelle, an old gothic chapel, which was high on Pom Pom's list of must-sees...the place he "always comes to when I am in Paris and send a text to my mum". HA. (what? yeah...I know). Anyway, we got our tickets, went in and it was crazy. The massive stained glass windows lined both sides of the walls and had it been sunnier out at that point in the day it would have been completely spectacular. As it was, still very cool, and taking

Yum

Chocolatey goodness in a crepe

the time to look at one small section of one of the windows really made you appreciate how intricate and massive the whole thing was. (If you have quicktime installed on your computer, take a look at this panorama of the place. It's crazy. )

After that I was so tired I wanted to get back to the hotel. We were all pretty tired, so Matt, Jeff, Will and I searched for a metro, found the metro, got on the metro with the sketchy people surrounding us and found our way, in a very roundabout fashion, back to our Ibis hotel. I could have taken a shower and gotten myself prettied up, but I was terribly lazy after a nine hour sightseeing day, so I redid my makeup, put on some other clothes and just relished in sitting for a while. Ooh, and I watched some French 7th Heaven on one of the few channels we got. Kind of hilarious. The coach was leaving to take people to the cabaret at 7:45, so I hopped on with everyone to go to O'Sullivan's Irish Pub, a little place next to the Moulin Rouge, to have a drink. Before I knew it, everyone I normally hang out with had disappeared without me, and most of the people left were

Pole dancing

Me in front of Matt on a pole in front of the Louvre

going to the cabaret. After a glass of wine, I tagged along with Jen, Rylan, Tracy and Will on the hunt for some food. I certainly wasn't going to try to make it back to the hotel on my own. We walked a bit, and, actually, I don't want to get into it. The next little while was fairly negative, actually. I was trying my best to just laugh off everything that was happening. When you have someone who's super cranky though, and won't stop complaining, it takes a bit of a toll. By the time we got back to the hotel after doing nothing but eating, I was kind of down in the dumps. It was only about 11:30, so I took my journal down to the lobby and wrote/people watched. When I went back up to the room I kind of just wanted to go to sleep, but Rachel and Val were in there talking. Turned out to be alright though. They pulled me out of my funk before I went to sleep, though I knew there was a black cloud hanging over my head, because in 5.5 hours I'd be getting up for the final drive back