Paris!

I'm already 2 trips behind on this thing, and I'm going on another next week. (EDIT: now less than 4 days. Geez)

I guess I need to power through then. who knows...maybe I'll have 2 posts in the same day!

But yes...Paris. One of the most romantic cities in the world, and I went with one of my new guy friends Manny that I met here. I actually fell into a group of American guys that I got to know while being here. Most of them go to my university, so it made it all a little easier to find common ground and whatnot. THAT, and I think I am one of the only girls that ever hung out with them. they are a good group though...they definitely made parts of my trip ones I won't soon forget. (example: my trip with most of them to Rome)

Moving on though...

So our flight from Prague to Paris was at 5 in the evening, which was the latest either of us had flown to another country. Everything leading up to the flight and getting to the Paris Orly Airport was uneventful...we got our tickets...got Mcdonalds to kill time...got on the plane...got off the plane...ran to the bathroom...and then began the ordeal of getting from the airport to our hostel.

when dealing with the Paris Metro...you see this map and want to have a heart attack.


THAT....is 14 lines. Yes...14. And of course they are not all clearly labeled, its very bizzare how far you have to walk to transfer at times, and sometimes you don't know if you are going in the right direction or not until you get on and hope that the next stop is towards you final destination. With that being said, Manny and I NEVER got lost on the metro. I would tell us where we were going, and he would figure out how to get there. It was a beautiful system. I figured if I had a hard time finding our hostel on a map, that I had no business looking at a metro map.

You are often greeted by this sign on the metro. I think it says something to the effect of "don't be a dumbass and use your foot to block the door from closing" These doors were quite scary. I should have gotten a picture of them. instead of them opening automatically, there is a latch you have to lift up to unlock the doors, and they open kinda fast. and riders would like to open the doors before the train had come to a complete stop. And you had to step up to get on the train. fun times.

But we found our hostel, got dinner at McDonalds (which was across the street from our hostel. Smart planning on someone's part.) and then wandered around the area because we had nothing else better to do with our time.

Typical metro stop decoration. They are designed in the Art Nouveau style, and of the reason why I went to Paris in the first place. Coincidentally, these metro stops are some of the only designs I care from from Art Nouveau...the rest of it is all too frilly and busy for me.

La Bastille, which was i think about a mile away from our hostel. That is all that's left of the infamous prison that started the French Revolution. I think i read somewhere that you could see remains of the foundations of the prison from a metro stop nearby.


FULL DAY #1 Started with a trip to the Eiffel Tower. And just like when I saw the Colosseum...the first words out of my mouth upon seeing it were..."that's the god damn Eiffel Tower right there." And there it was indeed.

From the Bottom

From the middle-ish?

View from the first or second observation level. Im going to lean towards this being the higher one of the 2

A view of the menu for a restaurant at the top of the tower. That's right...they have pigeon on the menu...and if I remember correctly, its 74 Euro. You heard it here folks...the French are somehow making money off of a bird that won't move EVER, even when a tram is dangerously close to flattening it. (Sidebar: the pigeons in Europe are entirely too domesticated. You could be standing next to it and it still won't flinch and the larger the open public area...the more they swarm around people, especially friendly old people).

View from the bottom (obviously). I tried to get the whole tower in the shot, but I failed.

ME. We walked across the street and to some other building that is parallel to the Eiffel Tower. It had a lot of flags and statues and whatnot in front of it. We mainly did this to get a picture of the whole thing.

And then we headed towards the Paris Catacombs...and got really hungry, and progressively more pissed (atleast I was) because it took us forever to find a place that had an english menu outside of it, and it started drizzling, then raining, then pouring.

Typical street in Paris

My first "french" meal. 1/4 of chicken and french fries at the place we settled on. it was tasty

THE CATACOMBS!! We paid 4 Euro to get it (roughly 6 bucks i think) and then had to go down a flight or 2 of stairs, and then down a corridor that was 400-600 meters (i went like a month ago...I don't remember exactly...geez!) it was slippery. and dimly lit (these pictures were taken with flash though, because the night setting on my camera blows). It quickly turned into one of the creepiest/most awesome places I've been to in Europe. Expect for the me almost slipping and falling part a few times. BUT...I figured if I died that they would just throw my body in with the rest of the bones, and no one would know... It would be quite ironic as well.

Entrance to Catacombs. get excited!

Proof I was in the Catacombs. YES that's my shadow, and yes, I think those are femurs and skulls behind me. I spent some of my time in the catacombs taking pebbles that were on the floor. I thought it would be a pretty sweet sovenier (Sidebar: sorry...that word is incredibly difficult for me to spell this semester), and would have less potential to bring a horrible curse onto my family than taking a random bone.

From what I understand, the Catacombs were concecrated in the 18th century because the bodies in a nearby cemetary were causing a plague to spread, so the bodies had to go. And then I guess that bones from all Paris cemetaries were put down there until 1815. I didn't even know the Catacombs were there until someone told me about them a few days before I left for Paris; I thought it was an "off the beaten path" tourist destination. Apparently Manny and I were wrong. We waited in like for close to an hour, and contemplated even getting out of line because it was still drizzling, and both of us were cold. And it almost looked like we were not going to get in because someone who worked there came around at like 4ish and said that not everyone in line was going to get in (we actually have no idea what the guy said, but neither did the people in front of us, a lady was kind enough to translate for them, and I overhead what she said), but I think we were in the last group of 20 or so people to get it.

View from the bathroom of our hostel. I thought I had gotten a picture of it, but if you had looked to the right of this building, you would have seen a Mcdonalds across the street. It became very convenient during my stay in Paris

After the catacombs we headed back to the hostel for a bit, and then traversed to the Triumphal Arch. or Arc de Triomphe if you speak french. I believe its modeled after Hadrians arch in Rome or something like that. It has a tomb to an unknown soldier from WWI at the base of it. BUT before we got to to the Arch, we got sidetracked by some people dancing.Manny says they were pop-and-locking, but it looks suspiciously similar to someone doing the Robot, so I'm going to say he was doing the Robot, which made the Paris trip awesome. Because ever since seeing Eurotrip, I had always wanted to see the Robot done on a Paris street. Granted, it was not a battle royale like in the movie (which is one of the best scenes in the movie. well, that and the train scene, which I also experienced sort of when I was in Rome.) And I think there was a Lambo parked on the street behind them. So of course Manny had to get a picture.

Best Angled picture ever! The sign's arrow points the arch! in reality though, the sign points to stairs you can take that lead you to a tunnel that can take you from one side of the roundabout that the Arch is in the middle of, to to the other one. We were unaware that was there at first, so we ran across the roundabout because we could not figure out how else to get closer to the arch.

It turns out thats a bad plan.

After that, we went back to the Eiffel tower, because we heard it "sparkles" at night. Oh yea it sparkles. The lights flicker like a spasmatic seizure-inducing strobe light. It was definitely a sight to see.
FULL DAY #2 Began with a trip to Versailles

The gate to the palace. We waited in line to get tickets for almost an hour. But it was one of the most entertaining lines I had ever waited in. Because you see, I was greeted with some guy talking with his friends and mom about random shit, It went from why Texas should seceede from the Union, to what he was wearing that day, to his crystal meth addiction earlier in his life, to living in London. Granted, I overheard all of this, but he would have had to be stupid to think no one could hear him and wasn't paying attention. THAT, and waiting in a line at a famous house in France is not the place to discuss your entire life story with others.

You never know who actually speaks english...

The tour cost about 11 Euros (we just looked at the palace, but you could pay extra to see Marie Antionette's rooms, the Petit Trianon (her little cottage on the grounds), and the Gardens), but it did include an audio guide thing. We accidentally got rid of the audio guides before you were supposed to, but all they really talked about was the art anyways, which is not exactly why I came to Versailles.

Yup, that's marble. It was some of the most colorful marble I had ever seen as well. And I totally touched it.
The world famous Hall of Mirrors. Louis XIV built it, and used it to walk from his rooms to the chapel in the morning. And other such functions were held in there as well. i just looked it up, and wikipedia says that there are a total of 357 mirrors.

We got to the Palace at 11.30, and by the time we got out of there, it was almost 3, and both of us were STARVING! So, with very little arguement, we settled on Versailles' friendly neighborhood McDonalds, which was actually cheaper than the McDonalds by our hostel by 40-50 Euro cents.

Then, we went to Norte Dame, a church I distinctly remember learning about in school, and know that the facade is uber important, but I can't quite remember why. Grr, after a while all the Gothic churches looked the same...

Notre Dame Cathedral

Notre Dame Cathedral!

This was yet another church that had candles you could light (but for like 2-5 Euro depending on how decorative a candle you wanted to light with the potential of burning the church down. YES, I know that the church is mainly stone, but it could happen...) so I totally did. SO now I can say that I've lit candles in 3 countries, Poland, Hungary, and France. WOOT.

After church, it was ice cream time!

Tirimisu Ice Cream. Delicious. And I still have that spoon. It was pretty.

Our "french" dinner. The tortellini (the pasta in the top left) was the best out of the 3. I always have the best akward conversations with people when people are trying to say whatever to make the whole thing less akward. Food seriously brings people together.

FULL DAY #3 began with looking at the Sacre Coeur. I believe its a Neo-gothic church with islamic influence built in the 1800s. its at the top of a hill. And full of people trying to sell you stuff. I thought was terrible in that respect, but Paris is WAAAY worse. And they are a lot smarter about it here too. They situate themselves in places where you have to pass by them, so its nearly unavoidable to talk to them. It is incredibly irritating.

Sacre Couer in all its glory

Since that took like 20 minutes, we headed in the direction of the Hotel Invaldes, which was the French Military History Musuem was, and Napoleon's tomb. Tickets were like 11 Euro though, and we were only mildly interesting, so we just walked around the outside of it.

Napoleon (Dynamite's) Tomb. You have to pay to get in. We were having none of that. And both of us had to go to the bathroom.

Since that took like 45 minutes, and we were running out of ideas, we back in the direction of the Cathedral because when we had gotten ice cream earlier in our trip, we saw this one guy making delectable looking crepes. So we got ham and cheese ones, for I'm not a fan of ham, but I was a fan of this crepe.

Ham and cheese crepe. I started eating it right away, so I didn't take a picture til halfway through eating it.

After this we were going to go to the Louve, but I thought it was free at some point that day, but not til later on, so we loitered around in a few bookstores and a Starbucks for like 3 hours. I did get a book for 3.50 Euro there, So it wasnt all bad.

THEN, We tried to Louvre it up.
The glass pyramid signifying the I.M. Pei addition to the louve.

Yea...i fucked up on the times and the placed closed like 20 minutes before we got there. But the gift shop was open, so we wandered around there for a bit. I was so pissed that I screwed up on the times. But I guess I saved a bit of money, and its not like i know a whole lot about art anyways....so i would have gotten through the whole place in like an hour.

Then we spent the rest of the day killing more, had a slight scare that we were going the wrong way when we left for the airport in the morning (turns out we were right anyways) and then I made it back to my room at like 2 in the afternoon.

all in all, a good trip. I'm sure more things happened...I was on this trip over a month ago...so its time to push onto the next one...Bratislava and Budapest!