The Paris Chronicles: pt. 1

…Wow. I have a ton to report.

I’m going to be posting several times over the next few days. Remember last post when I said I had the feeling I would be posting more often, or something like that? I actually have more to post than I thought, due to the failure of Eurostar.

So my brother came to visit. We were planning to go to both London and Paris. Guess what happened the first night? It snowed. A lot. We were supposed to go to London the next day, a Friday.

The buses into the city were all cancelled, so I had to reschedule the bus for the next day. That worked out, I guess.

But then guess what happened? We made our way to London on Sunday to go to Paris. We got up at 5 in the morning, arrived, and were told that all the trains were cancelled due to bad weather. The security guy actually said something about condensation, but I couldn’t understand his thick French accent so I’m not sure what that means. All I know is, the train was cancelled, and I was out of a lot of money: the train, the hostel, the bus to London—that all costs money, and it was all down the drain. Needless to say I was not pleased.

The train was also cancelled on Monday. Sarkozy finally got involved—he ordered that the trains resume on Tuesday. They were all reserved for people who didn’t get to travel on Sunday and Monday, so my brother and I decided to try and go again. That time, it worked. Instead of going by time they just stuck people on the next available train.

So we FINALLY made it to Paris. Overall grade: C-. I wasn’t impressed to be honest. First of all, it was overcast. Second, when we got there on the first day it was already dark, so we didn’t do anything except go to the hotel. Speaking of which, I still had to pay for the first night at the other hostel I booked. Thanks Eurostar.

We went to Champs d’Elysees the second day. Unfortunately we went down the wrong way so we didn’t go to many shops, because there weren’t many around. I fail at directions. We also got lost on the way to the hotel the night before. My mistake.

We then walked to the Eiffel Tower. The top half was covered in fog but later it cleared up and the sun came out. There were these hardcore armed guards there patrolling the place. There were also some pigs towards the middle with a sign close by, but since I don’t read French I have no idea what they were doing there. We also got cheated on some souvenirs, but I’ll mention that another day.

The city is kind of gross. There’s spit all over the ground and we saw a guy peeing in the street the first night. Charming. Plus my tickets for the underground didn’t work several times, and I had to get someone to open those doors that are attached to the machines you stick the tickets in to go through. I’m not sure if there’s an actual word for that.

We also saw the Louvre. The Louvre is a nightmare. If you ever plan on going and you want to see the Mona Lisa, do that first. The museum is huge. I mean, I knew it was big, but I didn’t realize it was so big that the map didn’t even make sense. There were two drawings for the same floor…I think. Basically, we got lost inside, and by the time we asked someone where the Mona Lisa was we were already tired, and then it took another…I’m guessing 15 minutes to find it. The museum, I reiterate, is HUGE. Plus it was far away, you couldn’t walk right up to it. There was a rope that designated how close you could get to it, and there was a crowd around it. Plus the painting was protected by glass. I can’t help but think that the painting is difficult to locate because they don’t want it to be easy to find for anyone trying to steal it.

After that we got something to eat and then went to Notre Dame. This sounds silly, but it looked bigger in the Disney movie. I love that movie by the way. Hellfire? One of Disney’s best songs.

Anyway, it was nice looking inside. I liked the windows. Honestly though, it was kind of…I’m not sure what the word is. I don’t want to say creepy, I just got an odd feeling while in there.

Afterwards we wandered around some more. We went into some shops to find stuff for family members back home. I got a bunch of stuff for myself too. I’ll go into that on another day as well.

The next day we went back to Champs d’Elysees and went in the right direction. There’s tons of shops there. The Arc de Triomphe sits at the end, which is pretty cool because we hadn’t even realized it at the time. It was...tall. I'm not sure what else to say about it. I wanted to visit Sacre Couer or however you spell it, but we were out of time. We rushed back to Gare du Nord and caught the Eurostar back to London. As it is, we could have stayed longer because we got back two hours or so early for the bus back to Brighton. Oh well.

So! Stuff about France:

1. Everyone speaks French. Duh. All the signs and everything are in French.
2. Some people speak English as well. It’s actually not that hard to get around without knowing French. I bought a pair of earrings at this store and the cashier didn’t speak English. She tried to tell me that I couldn’t return them, but she only knew a bit of English so it just came out as, “No…change,” with a lot of gestures towards the earrings. I figured it out eventually and we laughed about it so it was no big deal.
3. It reminds both me and my brother of New York. I hate New York.
4. They really do have snails on the menus at restaurants. My brother got frog legs on the first night. They weren’t that good, but only because they weren’t seasoned. I’ve had them before and they can be delicious if cooked properly.

I don’t know what else to say. I think you can leave comments, right? If anyone reading this has a question, just leave a comment.

I’ll end here. I’ll try to post again tomorrow and talk about buying things in Paris. Fun stuff.

P.S. I look really young in that picture next to the pyramid...ugh. I just turned 20 (happy birthday to me!). I'm told I will like this "looking young" thing in the future. Is the future here yet?