Paris: Days 7 & 8

Today, in our exhaustion, we slept in until 10:45 and then got up to go to lunch with Randy and Jessica. We took the metro to a rich shopping area of Paris to walk around for a little before our meal. All the big names had their stores there (Gucci, Louis Vitton, etc) - we went into a vintage Chanel store with prices that repulsed me as much as the shoes and handbags attracted me. While wandering around the neighborhood, Lee took us to the store where Jessica bought her prom dress. It's a secret how much it cost them - how scary, that the two who can throw around money like they have bottomless wallets would keep a number secret. When we went in, Jessica and Randy were there! The small shop had a doorman, and half the clothes looked like modified burlap bags - there were seriously burlap clothes in there. Anyway, so they took us down to the restaurant where we were having lunch. We got seats outside, at a table on the sidewalk in the sunshine. I took pictures of the Aston Martins and Porsches parked on the street out front. Randy bought two bottles of amazing rose wine, and lunch was fabulous. Afterwards, we went by their hotel so Jessica could show us her prom dress and Bose' could pick up her Chanel stuff that she'd left with them. What luxury. In the hotel gift shop, they had rabbit-fur teddy bears that were 200 euros. While the Murano had been modern and trendy, this place was classic and sumptuous. I was awed - I tried not to drool or let my mouth hang open and give myself away.

We left the hotel and started walking down the street. This little Asian lady stopped us and asked for our help. She wanted to buy Louis Vitton wallets for her family members back home, but since she was from Hong Kong, they wouldn't let her buy more than one. She didn't exactly look like a LV lover - her clothes were shoddy, mismatching, and far from trendy. Same for the man and woman who were with her. But we're kind, ignorant American tourists, so we agreed to help her. As she was telling us what kind she wanted (she wasn't very picky - another warning sign), some policemen walked up. I sort of wandered over to where Jenn and Lee were standing, some distance away, and let Bose' and Emily deal with the police. They're good at playing the dumb Americans, if need be. Anyway, so the police told them the Asians were traffickers, and that they couldn't buy the LV stuff because they would take it back to Hong Kong and sell it illegally. Bose': "Oh, wow, we didn't know they were traffickers. Thank you so much for telling us." LOL, I wandered if the police actually swallowed that or if they just didn't care. But they let the Americans walk, and we hurried away, leaving the Asians alone with the police. What a story, huh? We almost got arrested for trafficking, but they let us go because we're dumb tourists and they need our money. After that ordeal, happy to not be incarcerated, we walked down the Champs d'Elysses, a huge shopping street that's packed with tourists from one end to the other. I hated it. It started raining, it was crowded, there were smelly annoying tourists as far as I could see in every direction, the stores were overpriced, and I just wanted to leave. The Arc de Triomphe was in the distance, at the end of the street, so we walked down there. I liked it - the sculpture on the side was really great. I took a nice picture, and then I was ready to go. Bose', however, wanted to go to the top, so we spent 20 minutes establishing that it cost money, required climbing a whole lot of stairs, and had an extremely long line of people waiting for the privilege.

We came back to Montmatre and stopped at a little shop down the street to spend more money. We bought great tasting food for such cheap prices. My pear was absolutely wonderful. Then we stood at the window of our hostel room and spit grape seeds at pigeons and people coming up the stairs, and dropped the bad grapes on the pavement below simply for the joy of watching them splat. It was one of those little things that are so nice and will remain in my memory longer than the statues at the Musee D'Orsay or paintings at the Louvre. Then we got ready to go out (Jenn gave me party hair) and found a little Chinese place to eat dinner. It wasn't bad - better than the Chinese food I've had in Denmark! After dinner, we took the metro with some other girls from our hostel to a little strip full of clubs and restaurants. Our first stop was a Latin club - I love dancing to Latin music! The proprietor was a jerk - he made us buy a drink to stay! So I let Emily & Jenn sip overpriced margaritas and hoped he wouldn't notice I hadn't bought anything. I think that's ridiculous - we were young, attractive girls whose presence was catching the eyes of men on the street walking by and pulling them into the club - he should have bought us drinks! But anyway, the other girls left because it was too expensive, but we stayed for about an hour, I guess. Then we had to make a hasty exit because a Frenchman was stalking me around the club and wouldn't leave me alone! They're persistent!

Our next stop was an Irish pub, where we spent the rest of our evening. It was full of Swiss guys celebrating a World Cup Soccer match against France. It was a nice place, and we had a lot of time to chat with some decent guys we had met at the last place. The place closed at 5, so we left then, had breakfast with a DJ we met at the Irish pub, and then returned to the hostel. We were just in time to change clothes, get our stuff together, eat breakfast at 8, and start our journey home. It was a slightly trying journey - Bose' had slept, and was quite talkative, while the rest of us were a little irritable, to say the least. But Emily managed to impress upon her that our lack of sleep meant that her shutting up would be in everyone's best interests, and we got home, all alive, limbs and friendships intact.

Paris: Day 6

We started today off with the Monet Museum. It was a lot better than I expected. Seeing Monet's paintings in person gave me a whole new appreciation for them. They're very beautiful, and I don't know how he made them indistinct with odd-looking colors up close, but far away they look very detailed and the colors blend perfectly. Also, starting sometime around the early 1920's, Monet had cataracts. The colors in his paintings became much brighter, but the works are still brilliantly done. I was really awed at Monet's talent.

It was a really beautiful, sunny day, so we backtracked to a bakery to buy quiche, tarts, and baguettes. We walked to a park we had passed on the way, and sat on the grass, bathing in the sun and eating our wonderful French food. I bought a raspberry tart, and I think that, if there's food in Heaven, that's what it will taste like. It was amazing. I managed to get dog poop on my pants, but other than that, it was a perfect afternoon.



Next we returned to the Latin Quarter for a little shopping. We'd passed some great little places with cheap prices that we wanted to return to. We bought things (I'm not sure all my shopping decisions were wise). As we were leaving, we went in a shoe store. I found a pair of shoes that I fell in love with - I felt more strongly about these shoes than I had for half the guys I've dated. They were wonderful, and I wanted them soooo much. Unfortunately, they were also expensive. Not horrendously so, but more than I was willing to pay, even for the perfect shoes. It's better that I didn't get them - they don't really match much in my wardrobe, and I probably wouldn't be able to wear them until I left Denmark anyway (because it's so freakin' cold!). But I was very sad to leave them.

That night, Lee came back from a day at EuroDisney and a winery with Randy and Jessica. He and Jessica joined us for another night of pizza and beer on the steps of Montmartre. We wanted to take Jessica "slumming" - out to non-exclusive clubs frequented by normal people, but Lee was too tired, and Jessica wouldn't go out without him. So we decided they would come out with us the next night, and we went to bed.

Paris: Day 5

Day 5
It rained today, which was unfortunate. We'd gotten spoiled on the warm, beautiful weather of the past few days. We were visiting Saint-Chapelle first, a beautiful old chapel that was supposed to have great stained glass. I found out that most of the stained glass in Paris is painted, not real panes of stained glass. Almost all of it in Notre-Dame is painted - everything except for the large circles with points in the middle of the church. Anyway, we got lost on the way to Saint-Chapelle because we came out of the wrong subway entrance, so we wandered for half an hour in the rain before we came to the church. It was nice getting to skip the long line with our passes, although we incurred the wrath of some Italians and a little American girl. The church was really pretty. After Saint-Chapelle, we started for the Cluny Medieval Museum, but we didn't make it. There was a cute little bistro with a special - quiche and a tart for 9 euros! So we stopped for some nice French food, and it was really good. My ham and cheese quiche was perfect - really hot, great crust, perfect texture filling, ummmmm! Then there was my strawberry tart. I have decided that French pastry is the best in the world. They find the perfect balance between sweet and tart, not making things too creamy or sugary so that you feel sick when you finish. The crust is always good, and the berries are always wonderful. If French pastry isn't the best in the world, then it is better than Swiss, German, Italian, Danish, and American. And that's an accomplishment.

So we made it to the Cluny about two hours after we left Saint-Chapelle. The museum is fairly small, but it has some neat stuff. It's built over some old Roman baths, as well some other historical building. Everything in France used to be something else - not like Germany, where almost everything old has been destroyed. Anything in Berlin from before the Wars was in pieces. Anyway, I saw some cool wood carvings and wall hangings. The best stuff was the armour - they had chain mail and swords and the scary helmets! We happened to be going through the Cluny at the same time as a large group of school children, ages 4 to 14, I would guess. They moved about in 3 groups, and they were like hoardes of locusts. They moved into a room full of serene, unsuspecting musuem patrons; they destroyed every bit of peace and quiet in the area; they moved onto to the next room, leaving behind a group of shaken musuem-goers, starting with fear at every loud noise or sudden movement.

Next was naptime at the hostel, followed by dinner with family friends of Lee's. This mom and daughter were from Long Island, and they had lots and lots of money. They were soooo nice, and Randy (the mom) offered to take us out for dinner one night and lunch another day. So, we went to a ritzier part of town to meet them at the Hotel Murano. The place was really, really nice. We obviously didn't belong, but saying we were meeting Randy proved to be the magic words that gained us deferential treatment. Dinner was wonderful, and so new and different for me. I tried things I wouldn't have imagined - a soup made with oranges and cheese and scallops, and for my main course risotto with squid in it! I liked it all, but the atmosphere was even better than the food.

There was also a band - 3 guys with a string bass, an acoustic guitar, tambourine, and shaker things, moving around the restaurant singing popular older songs. They sang close to each of the tables in the place, but nobody was really having that much fun with them. They were wrapping up their performance with our table, and we had fun. We sang with them, took pictures and video of them and us, made requests, and Randy asked if they would play in New York. They let us play their tambourine and shaker things on some of their songs.

After dinner, we got a tour of one of the rooms. The cheapest of these goes for 350 euros a night, the most expensive for 2500 euros a night. I can't imagine having that much money. We had to take a cab home that night, and Randy slipped us money to pay for it. She's so generous, and not snobby in the least. It was a really nice evening, especially considering that it cost me nothing.

Paris: Days 3 & 4

Day 3
After wandering around an ethnic neighborhood for half an hour trying to find museum passes, we made it to the Museé d'Orsay. It's full of Impressionist art, and there were some really great works by Renoir, Rodin, and Seurat. I discovered two new artists that I really liked. I didn't make it all the way through the place - it was huge and I got saturated. Just as we were about to leave, they evacuated the place because someone had left a bag in one of the rooms, and they were afraid it was a bomb. We waited in a short line because we had passes, but if I had been one of the people waiting in the line which wound around the plaza and probably took 3 hours to get through, I would have been angry at having to leave. My favorite part of the museum was actually outside of it, on the plaza. There was a set of statues of women, six of them, I think. They looked so awesome. Each was from a different continent, and they looked powerful and capable. I wanted to be these women. Click the picture so you can see it full size, and fully appreciate how awesome these women looked.

After the Museé d'Orsay, we walked deep into the Latin Quarter. It was a lot better because it felt more local, and there were fewer tourists. We got great gelatto and wandered around for several hours before stopping by a Texas Bar! We thought it was so funny that they had a Texas Bar in the middle of Paris, so we went inside. It was early, so there was just an Irish bartender playing video games with one of the regulars while a few more looked on. Pretty boring, but it was neat to see.


Day 4
Today we went to the Louvre. What an amazing amazing place. The Mona Lisa, the Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo are all there, and were all packed with crowds of tourists. My favorite sculpture in the world - Cupid & Psyche, by Canova - is there, and it was so wonderful to see it in person. The musuem is in what used to be the French Royal Palace, and they preserved the apartments of their last ruler. They were really sumptuous and beautiful. Underground, there's also some of the remnants of the Medieval Palace which stood at the same site. Most of it was destroyed, but it was so awesome to sit in the room of a castle from several centuries ago. It was cool and dark, I sat there and wrote awhile. Not too many of the tourists ventured down to the room I was in. I could get the feeling of how it must have been to live in rooms like this. The Louvre also contains the stone which Hammurabi's Code is inscribed in. I saw several Michelangelo statues and tons of my favorite Italian painters. I also saw a lot of great French sculpture that I was unfamiliar with, but really enjoy.

That evening, we had reservations for dinner in a restaurant on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. As we got off the metro, the Tower was sparkling with strobe lights that go off for 10 minutes at the top of every hour. It was really beautiful. The view was spectacular, especially on the side with the river - I must have taken two dozen pictures.

Dinner was excellent, as well. Pretty expensive for me, but it was good. Lee's dad told him to order a big appetizer for all of us, so we were brought a huge tray of seafood - oysters, snails, crab, and shrimp. It was excellent. Then, at the end of the meal, our waiter brought us a bottle of chardonnay. We weren't sure if he felt sorry for the poor kids who couldn't afford to order alcohol, or if they'd opened it and someone changed their mind, or if he just liked us, but we were thankful nonetheless. We didn't get to finish it - we had to leave in a hurry to catch the last lift down.

Paris: Days 1 & 2

I'm going to be a little more succint about my Paris trip than I was with Berlin. It was twice as long, so I don't want to bore you. Here we go:

Day 1
Mostly travel. We got to Paris as the sun was setting - the city looked beautiful, all lit up with just a little bit of light behind the west side as we landed. We got completely ripped off on a taxi to our hostel, but we made it. The place is nice, and our room had an amazing view of the city.

The neighborhood is cute, and definitely cheap for Paris. The Moulin Rouge is a 15 minutes walk. That night, we found a great pizza place and sat on the steps, drinking huge 75 cl beers we'd found for 2 euros. All the French people that passed us were so nice, smiling or telling us "Bon Appetite!" That crap about all French people hating Americans is just that - crap. Throughout the whole trip, everyone was really understanding about our limited French, and almost everyone was really nice to us.

Day 2
Today we wandered around the Latin Quarter for most of the day. It's a popular neighborhood with tourists, because there are a lot of really cute shops and cafes. Street vendors line an area around the Seine and sell art posters and postcards and Parisian knick-knacks. We visited a church across the street from the Louvre. The stained glass inside was beautiful. As luck would have it, though, my camera ran out of battery power less than an hour into our day. At least my friends were there to take pictures, too.

We saw a palace with some beautiful gardens called Les Halles. It really made us aware of how freezing Denmark is and how beautiful and sunny and warm Paris is. The flowers were so nice. Then we got hustled into having lunch at this cafe. Seriously, we're walking aimlessly, this guy talks to Jenn & Emily in French (b/c they speak some French). He hands them a flyer, is chatting with them, and the next thing we know we're walking down some street, and then we're being shown to a table in a cafe. It was a nice lunch, though, so I'm glad we got hustled in. We went to Notre-Dame later. It was sad how none of the tourists (and there was a hoarde of them) seemed to remember that it was a church which some people still used for worship. Total disregard for anything holy in that place. It was beautiful, though. I really liked the gardens in the back. There weren't many flowers - just trees and a fountain, but it was beautiful. There were very few people there, so it was quiet and relaxing. I enjoyed just sitting and writing for awhile. Next we walked through the Palais-Royale. It, too, was relaxing and really nice. A fountain in the center was lined by trees forming a long walkway, and chairs were set out for people to sit and read or relax or people watch, whatever they liked. It's nice to chill in a place surrounded by beauty, and since this plaza was surrounded by a palace, it was great. After a little more Latin Quarter wandering, and stumbling upon a few centuries-old churches, we went back to Montmatre for pizza and beer again. It's cheap and good! And sitting on the steps in the wonderfull weather is so nice. After dinner, three of us walked down to see the Moulin Rouge. While waiting on a street corner for the other two to get back from the bathroom, I was accosted three times by immigrants. None of them spoke English, so I couldn't understand what they wanted. One group said something about a boat. I was really getting scared by the time the other girls got back. The Moulin Rouge isn't in the best neighborhood, and it's obviously not a good place for a young woman to be alone at 10:30 pm. So we hustled down, took pictures, and got back to the hostel.

Sorry for the Delay, Folks

I know, it's been a month since I posted. Well, after waiting with bated breath throughout my long absence, you'll soon be hearing all about my Easter Break trip to Paris. And I promise to update more frequently! I promise! I'm sorry it's been forever.