Paris, France

Once again, I am delayed in writing this blog post, but for the second time in a week, I find myself crammed into an airplane seat between my friends. This time we are on our way to Geneva, Switzerland!  Expect a belated update on this trip sometime next week. We have no clue what we are getting into here in Switzerland, so it should make for some entertaining stories. 

As I said last time, Dan, Ross and I traveled to Paris last Thursday night (September 13), arriving in the city around 8 PM.  We had already made plans to meet up with our friend from SLU, Carly, and her friend, Courtney, who are studying abroad in Brussels. It took us longer than expected to get to the hostel and after an extremely uncomfortable encounter with an unfriendly, anti-American, anti-English train ticket salesman and a long and sketchy ride on the metro into the city, we arrived at the Lumiere station and walked through the ghettoish area to St. Christopher's Inn. There, we checked in and reunited with Carly, whom we hadn't seen since last semester at SLU. She is always a blast and her friend Courtney was fun too! Together we figured we would venture down to the Eiffel Tower for our first night in Paris, get some drinks and enjoy the calm night before the masses arrived on Friday. We stopped into a little convenience store to grab some cheap beers and I rediscovered one of my favorite beers of all time - Desperados! I had this for the first time with Bettina in Strasbourg, France then again in St. Martin (a French island).  I am not sure if it is available in the States, but it is flavored with tequila and definitelyworth a try!  Besides, the kind old man at the store rewarded our crappy French with a handful of some good pistachios, which barely made a dent in our debilitating hunger, but helped. We excited the metro at the Tour Eiffel stop and our jaws dropped as we had timed the view perfectly for our first sighting. The Eiffel Tower shimmers and sparkles with lights for the first five minutes of each hour in the evening. We caught it perfectly and were so excited and impressed. The Eiffel tower is the only monument that despite seeing it before, seeing it in popular culture my whole life and even visiting it three times on this last trip, that has never failed to impress me and keep me gazing! Just across the street from the tower on the Seine was a tourist-trappy food vendor with crepes, which we couldn't pass up!  Mine was simply sugar, but others opted for nutella and fruit. Then, we sat beside the river with the Eiffel Tower just behind us, enjoying the evening in Paris.  At this point, Dan and I had to pee so bad, I was looking for any secluded bush or tree that I could hide behind. We had decided to make our way back to the hostel, so as we walked to the metro, we saw a dark, deserted park adjacent to the Eiffel Tower that looked perfect for a bathroom break. As we entered the park, not 20 feet from the sidewalk, we saw some scary, dark figures appear from behind the bushes with what appeared to be very bad intentions. They were approaching us quickly, so we took off running for the sidewalk and just dodged the mugging... or something.  As if our luck hadn't soured enough, the metro had closed (probably while we were trying to get mugged) so we were forced to walk to different stations, take different trains and hike a long way back to the hostel, reviving that hunger that was only temporarily satisfied by the crepes.  We stopped into a to-go restaurant by the hostel to get a croque monsieur and fries - traditional French! We met some "outgoing" girls from Australia back at the hostel, who didn't mind mooching off our fries. Afterwards, we went to sleep for the first time in a hostel, padlocking our valuables and closing the curtains to our private bunks! Haha! 

Reunited with Carly

Shimmering 

On Friday, we had anticipated to meet up with the rest of the huge group heading to Paris from Madrid. They were supposed to arrive relatively early, but after 10:30 rolled around, we decided to make a move and begin exploring the sites, just the five of us. We had to check out of the room and store our bags, since the following nights were booked under separate reservations. Our first stop was the famous Catacombs of Paris.  Back in the 18th century, Parisians were concerned about the health safety of the buried bodies in cemeteries, so all of the graves were exhumed and the bones were stored in the abandoned underground quarry, which can be toured today. It was unreal! The pathways were literally lined with bones, inlaid designed made from skulls and femurs decorated the walls and countless plaques were left to honor the bodies. It was cold, dark and creepy, but totally cool! Upon leaving, we were hungry since the morning's baguettes and nutella didn't hold us over for long. We stopped at another streetside creperie and ordered big, hot chicken and cheese crepes. Finally no ham!  Since we had bought three day unlimited metro passes, we were able to use the system to travel all around the city.  We chose the Notre Dame cathedral as our next stop.  The church was impressive and beautiful.  We took photos outside then toured the inside, which was crowded and anticlimactic.  I actually remember going in there with Dirk and Gayle back in 2006, but didn't realize it until then.  That shows how incredible the inside is.  Haha!  However, I was able to write my name in a huge guest book, documenting my visit to the famous church!  We walked down the Siene afterwards, heading towards the Louvre.  Just on the backside of the museum, we discovered a little farmer's market, where we tried handmade jams, honey, cookies and sorbet.  We walked into the plaza of the Louvre just to sit and take it all in, but planned to return again later.  Having not heard from the others of our group all day, we decided to make our way back to the hostel and look for clues to their whereabouts.  They checked us into our rooms, which ended up being incorrect since the huge, confusing group from SLU literally turned the place upside down.  As a result of the confusion, I was issued keys to both the 5th and the 2nd floors, which gave me access to most of our friends' rooms for the weekend.  That came in handy! We ended up running into the girls we were missing and since it was our friend, Emily's, birthday, they had made plans for dinner and then an evening on the lawns of the Eiffel Tower with wine.  Since the wine started flowing well before then, we ended up taking the recommendation of our friends Carly and Courtney and picked up a few baguettes and brie from a market to make sandwiches with blueberry jam.  The snack was great and filled us all up enough to get to the Eiffel Tower.  By the time we got the big group moving, the metro closed when we were only half way downtown.  We were forced to walk over a mile and a half to the tower to make it there by the last "sparkle" at midnight.  We had some difficulty along the way, as a few people fell down, others had to pee and others had to ditch shoes and clothing.  Despite a hellacious marathon night, we made it to the Eiffel, saw the sparkle, got another delicious crepe and returned to the hostel, while the girls continued on to a nightclub for even more birthday festivities. 

Skulls of the Catacombs

Notre Dame

Courtney, Carly, Ross, Dan and I at the Louvre

Final sparkle of the night!  

On Saturday morning, Dan, Lauren, Ross and I decided to break away from the group to do our own thing, considering the confusion and difficulty of the night before. We planned to go to The Palace of Versailles to start the day then work our way back into Paris. We encountered metro delays and cancellations due to an "accident involving a person". Therefore, we were forced to transfer to several, different stations and metro lines to inch closer and closer to the Chateau. Along the way, we met a very nice older couple from the Boston area who took us under their wing, literally, and helped us make to Versailles with them. Monica the wife, was very international and had worked for the UN, lived in Paris and spoke French, so she managed to get us onto a real train heading to Versailles - for free!  In the town of Versailles, we stopped into another market for baguettes, brie and jam to make the same sandwiches.  Plus, we got half-bottles of white wine for a little picnic outside the palace.  The picnic was great and lifted our spirits after the challenging and time consuming travel.  We had a strange restroom experience there, which repeated itself a couple times in France.  It was a unisex bathroom with both urinals and stalls, so guy are peeing while women are walking behind to get to the stalls or standing besides you to wash their hands.  So funny!!  We managed to get into the palace for free because Lauren and I had copies of our visas, which sufficed for European residency.  We whined to the lady enough for her to just let Dan and Ross follow us in for free.  Big savings!  The palace was as incredible as I remember.  We started in a really cool museum part, which documented the history of the chateau built by Louis XIV to wine-and-dine the French nobility.  We passed trough the lavish rooms, the famous hall of mirrors, as well as the King and Marie Antoinette's bed chambers.  Her room has a secret passage for access to the king's chamber during "riots".  All the rooms had incredible views of the famed Gardens of Versailles.  We couldn't access the gardens for free, but since it is like a huge park with a lake and several things to see, it was worth the money . We got some great views of the palace, then lied in the grass with fruit sorbet until leaving for an evening in Monmarte at the Sacre-Coeur cathedral. This church is situated high on a hill with great views of the city especially at night when it gets dark and the skyline illuminates.  The steps of the church fill up with people eating, drinking and watching Paris come alive.  We got more baguettes and cheese and a couple big bottles of wine. Dan couldn't pass up a fried chicken store so we had some chicken wings too!  Naturally, he knocked over and shattered Lauren's, unopened wine within 5 minutes which caused some tension...  We found our friends on the steps and sat with them for a couple hours watching the street performers and the swarms of people. Afterwards, we walked around the corner for some nice views of the Eiffel tower, then the four of us continued on to explore the area, passing through shops, getting more crepes (Lauren had two), trying the famous macaroons (I did not like it) and finally stopping into a cafe for some beer and a snack. We settled on one with good looking escargot, but when we only ordered 4 beers and one large order of escargot for the table, the unfriendly waitress scoffed at us and left without taking the menus or saying a thing. We talked to the nicer guy who brought our drinks and asked why she seemed unhappy. He told us that usually they are only a "restaurant" at that time and we were ordering more like a "bar", but that it was no problem.  Whatever!  She was mean the whole time and I left her a really nasty look and pissed off "bon soire" as we left, which Dan said definitely sent the message!  haha!  The escargot were some of the best I have ever had (no offense to my Saputo's family)!  They were served in the shell, filled with garlic, parsley butter, along with strong tongs to hold them and extract the meat. Delicious!!  On the way back to the metro, we had an odd encounter with a Venezuelan woman and her daughter who were traveling in Europe.  They found out I spoke Spanish and followed us to the metro and got directions to their hotel.  They asked to take a picture with the four of us and even wrote their names on a piece of paper for me to find them on Facebook! Haha!!  Back at the hostel, we encountered the others and Ross and I went back out with them to a bar nearby for a Desperados before calling it a night. 

PS: I forgot to mention that I am currently writing this post on a train, as we pass through beautiful Switzerland from Geneva to Interlaken for the weekend!  More on that later.  

Palace of Versailles 

Picnic at Versailles 

Ross, Lauren, Dan and I at the Gardens of Versailles

Sacre Coeur, Montmartre 

On the steps of the Sacre Coeur

On our last day, Sunday, we had to hit everything that we had missed the previous days.  We began at the Arc de Triumphe, walked down the Champes Élysées and found a nice cafe for a croissant and coffee.  We continued down the beautiful, most famous street in Paris, all the way to the Louvre.  We had heard it was a holiday in France and that all the museums and sites (including the house of the president, which had a 2 mile line) were free to enter. We were nervous of the Louvre, but it turned out it wasn't free for everyone and we only had to wait 5 minutes to enter.  Once again, we gained free entry with the European visa!  Two for two!  We headed straight for the Mona Lisa, which was honestly anticlimactic.  It is a rather small painting, protected behind thick glass and surrounded by hundreds of pushy, smelly people.  We got in and out of there quickly and moved on to see some other famous paintings, the Sphynx, the underground moats of the original Louvre, the private apartments of Napoleon and the code of Hammurabi. We saw the very famous painting of the Second French Revolution with a topless woman holding a French flag amidst fighting soldiers, which I have since studied in my art history class. Perfect timing!  We left the museum and stopped for lunch at an overpriced cafe along the Seine. I ordered a Croque Madamme with fries and another icy Deaperados. We walked back past to the Notre Dame so Dan and Lauren could place a lock on the lovers' bridge. Their romantic moment was preceded by a big argument, so it was very, very special... Haha!  We ended up running into some of our friends at a cafe adjacent to the church and chatted until Ross and I got ran off by the rude waiter, since we were not eating and must have been taking up too much public space on the sidewalk.  We reunited with the lovebirds and headed to the Pantheon.  This huge church has crypts in the basement, which contain the bodies of famous French people like the philosopher Voltaire, the revolutionist Roussaeu, the famous scientists the Curies and even the man who invented the braille language, Mr. Braille!  We sat on the steps of the church until we were run out of there, then went to the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens until we were forced out of there!  The gardens were great.  We had bought beers and sat in the garden, by the pond, with views of the Eiffel Tower and interesting people. The place closed eventually so we were sent to the streets to track down a place for dinner.  We decided to spend a little more money on a good, traditional French meal that did not consist of baguettes or brie.  The restaurant was great, very fancy with outdoor seating. I ordered a filet with Bordeaux red wine sauce and Lyon style potatoes.  It was great to finally have beef!! I tried to save money by ordering mineral water and not wine, which turned out to be more expensive than a glass of wine.. Ugh!  After the dinner we headed back to the hostel, since the big group from SLU that arrived on Friday were leaving so early on Monday morning that they planned to just sit at the Eiffel Tower until 1AM, then rest at the airport for a couple hours before the flight, instead of paying for another night.  We, on the other hand, didn't fly out until later on Monday, so we planned to hang with them at the tower, then go back for a decent nights sleep in the beds. We viewed the tower from a plaza directly in front of it. We were able to get more crepes, sit on the steps in a big huddle to stay warm and enjoy the last night in Paris. It was a lot of fun!! 

Arc de Triumphe

Mona Lisa

Luxembourg Gardens

Monday morning was not as fun!  We were scheduled to depart Paris at 10:25, so we woke at 8ish and planned to be on the metro and moving by 8:30. There were terrible delays that morning and it took us well over an hour to get to the airport, let alone to get to the ticket counter for boarding passes. When we got up to the agent, she told us the flight had "closed" at 9:40 and it was just after 10 at that time. We were freaked out, but luckily there were two other guys next to us, in our same position.  The agents called the gate, issues our passes and instructed us to RUN to the plane.  We flew through security and hit the jet bridge in a mad dash.  Fortunately, we were not the last ones on the place and no one seemed as frazzled as we were.  The flight went by quickly and we landed back in Madrid for three short nights before leaving again for Switzerland.