Paris
11 Oct
Hey! It’s 4 am! Let’s go to FRANCE!
Upon arriving into Paris Beaveux airport, Scot and I enjoyed our supposed final cigarette.
The first thing that threw me (which I should have expected) was the amount of people speaking French. All the signs were French. All the speakers in the airport rattled on in French. I had forgotten about the language barrier, since we were in Ireland for so long. We had a good deal of trouble finding a place to stay. I had it in my mind that we would just come across something, but we were all cranky and tired from our 4 am flight.
There were so many dogs in Paris. It seemed everyone on the street had one or more dogs they were walking. They also had these ‘port o potties’ that were SELF CLEANING. Yes, you heard me SAR, SELF CLEANING. After you use them, they steam up with really hot cleaning solution and spray the whole interior of the john. Kyle was the first to try it out.
We finally found a hostel… the “Woodstock Hotel.” Haha. Finding that sign was a sigh of relief from all three of us – as I said, things were pretty tense. We got a room that opened right into the courtyard of the hostel, it was really beautiful.
We immediately found the food store and stocked up on 2euro bottles of wine. We loved French wine, as you can tell.
wine on the mind…
wine in a flask…
wine with our meal…
kyle post-wine loving her creme brulee…
… resulting in some weird wine-induced photo ops…
There were so many pigeons.
I loved the streets in Paris.
Scot and I rented a scooter and explored the city in the most non-organized fashion. We got pulled over by some French policia for riding in the bus lane… who knew that the right lane was the bus lane?? I flashed them a pretty smile, and complimented their English ability. Scot searched everywhere for the paperwork for the scooter, exposing our lunch under the seat: A baguette, cheese, nutella, and a bottle of vino. I thought they’d arrest us for having the wine, though unopened… but no. I think it actually worked to get us out of the situation. The police chief came over and explained a few times, in broken English, “You no driving in bus lane. Only bus.” Phew. We rode away, happy to be out of that close call.
So, we ate our picnic lunch on the bench a park near the Eiffel.
nutella teeth…
It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, and everybody was out and about.
We some a funny dude working out in the grass by the tower, where most folks were sitting in the grass, reading, eating, or chatting. He had tossed a long rubber rope over a tree branch and connected the ends to a long stick. He bent down, and was doing pretty much a shoulder press. WEIRD, but awesome. I thought of MF, he’d totally do something like that. Don’t they have gyms in Paris?
We caught sight of the military doing their rounds, machine guns in hand, grimacing at all the tourists. That was a little scary. I took their picture from across the street, pretending to get the Eiffel. Isn’t it illegal to take their pic?
Kyle checked out Notre Dame while we were away, and climbed all the way up to the bell tower…
We met Kyle at the Louvre and got the crazy earphones to hear about the art, since all the signs were in French. We also checked out an old graveyard… this photo is for maria…
The graveyard housed Oscar Wilde…
…and Jim Morrison’s grave.
We saw the Moulin Rouge! It was actually not that exciting. The best part was getting an enormous crepe filled with bananas and nutella right next to the Moulin Rouge.
We admired the Eiffel tower up close at night. It was strung with these crazy lights that go off every half hour or so. We climbed it and took a ton of pictures.
At the top you could actually feel the sway of the structure from the enormous height. I caught a few minutes to myself, took in the most beautifully lit city.
I was tired and getting SUPER annoyed with the city pace. I convinced Ky and Scot, and we decided to leave for Barcelona, another European tourista metropolis.
MRumianowski
You should have brought me along… I’m somewhat proficient. I soooo want to go back!