Paris

When we last left our hero, he was teetering perilously over the Thymes River in a glass prison at the peak of the ominous London Eye...

Okay, I thought about writing this blog in third person about some valient hero who travels from famous European city to famous European city, but I decided I'd spare you from that and, as usual, just give my account of Paris, France. Maybe, in a later post I will pose as a protagonist on a mission to retrieve a treasure of great importance.

So, Friday I travelled with a handful of young women to Paris, France. As usual, the mode of transportation was a train, which arrived at Gare Nord. Our first mission was to get to the Louvre by way of the metro.

The Louvre was far too big for me (or anyone in my company) to see in the hour and a half we had to spend there before it closed, so I concentrated my efforts on two main sections: Italian Paintings and Greek/Roman Statues. I also felt obliged to view the Mona Lisa; she must have really liked me because she would not frown no matter where I looked, only smiles she gave me (if only all women were so kind).

Saturday was the "big day," the day we had set to see all of the most important Parisian sights, and see the sights we did! We started at Volontaires Station, the famous station that - nevermind, it is not famous, it was merely the metro station that was nearest to our hostel, and the place where we purchased metro day passes, which ended up coming very much in handy.

The first sight was the La Basilique du Sacré Coeur de Montmartre, which most people (including me) refer to simply as the Sacré Coeur. It is this really massive cathedral. I found it amazing, but once again, I refuse to describe cathedrals, so you're out of luck. After seeing the cathedral, we moseyed around in search of the Artist's Market. Here, people were painting and drawing and doing all sorts of artsy things. It was impressive; I watched a father commission a charcoal and chalk work of his daughter; I saw an old man splatter blue and white paint on a canvas which eventually became a monochromatic image of the Eiffel Tower.

Apparently, there is a movie named "Moulin Rouge" which takes place in Paris, and apparently the women I was travelling with enjoy this movie, so I saw the big red windmill. Impressive? Not to me; maybe I needed to see the movie.

After a bit of lunch, we went to the other famous Parisian cathedral, Notre Dame. Once again, if you're waiting for a description, you are waiting in vain because one won't appear here. I enjoyed it enough to return on Sunday, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

By this time, it was about two in the afternoon, or fourteen o'clock if you are like my esteemed mother and sister, and we were in a bit of a problem. The only things left on our list were the Arc de Triomphe and some tower that Eiffel built, and we had planned to arrive at this aforementioned brown tower around six in the evening. We needed to improvise: we needed to find something to do to fill some of our time. I had heard of this landmark called The Bastille but I did not know too much about it. I thought it was this big fortress slash prison (yes, since I'm the author, I can use the word slash instead of denoting it as a fortress/prison), so that is what I was expecting to see. History had something else in mind, however, because at some point people tore down the Bastille and constructed a pillar in its place, which is what I observed.

After the Bastille, we hopped on the metropolitan once again and travelled to the Arc de Triomphe. When most people plan to go to Paris, the impression I get is that they want to see the Eiffel Tower, but when I planned to go to Paris, number one on my (hypothetical) list was the Arc de Triomphe. I am not really quite sure why that is. So, we went to this massive structure that stands stoicly on the the Champs Elysées. It was incredible and it lived up to my expectations, it was the best sight I saw in Paris.

Finally, we arrived at the Eiffel Tower around six in the evening. The reason we had a specific time to arrive is because one travelling mate was told that we should go up the tower before the sun sets so we can see Paris both during the day and at night. Good advice it was, and I'm glad we heeded it; the view from the top was stunning both in the light and in the dark.

Sunday morning, some of us went to mass at Notre Dame. It was touted as an "International Service" but it was mostly in French. An alter boy read out of the bible in English maybe twice, but the sermon, if there was one, was given in French. Since Catholics seem to have so many symbolic actions my mind started to wander, wondring about what would happen if something like one of the symbolic candles would go out, or if the young boy swinging the incense would accidentally hit somebody with the large incense ball, or something else crazy like that. But my digression (both during the service and in this writing) stoped at the end of the service.

After Notre Dame, our seven person group suffered a schism (but not quite as monumental as any of the catholic church's schisms), and two companions and I trekked back to the Eiffel Tower. We had purchased some wine, some very cheap wine (€2.60) because we had been given the advice that all wine in France was splendid, even the cheapest fermented grape juice one can find. The advice turned out to be correct, and we spent much of the rest of our trip to Paris sitting in front of the Eiffel Tower sipping cheap, tasty white wine out of cheap plastic cups.