Paris, Take 2

Permit me, firstly, to apologize for my long absences between posts. If you want to know why, try going to a foreign country for a while where you don't speak their language, going without consistent internet access, midterms that count for nothing for the French but count as your finals, and keeping a blog. So lay off me (Barron). This stuff takes time, expecially when some people thinks they need to point out my grammatical errors.

Well, on November second I packed my bag, bought a coat (that's another story), and shipped myself back to gai Paris to meet Mlle Nina Badoe, longtime friend and fellow international student. She flew in from Norrich, England, where she's studying for the semester, and arrived in the Charles de Gaulle airport about thirty minutes before my train came in to the same airport. As soon as I got in I gave her a call, and she said she had found a friend already (she does that. I don't know how, but she does) who could help her find the train station. I got a call back later saying she had found herself Charles de Gaulle 1, rather than CGD2, where the TGV station is located. No sweat, I thought. I asked a lady to direct me to CDG1, but I guess my thick accent made it sound like I was asking for Terminal 1, which is most certainly not the same. In the meantime, a young man walked up to me and started speaking in a language I didn't understand at all, though it sounded a bit like Spanish. He got across to me that he spoke no French, no English, and no Spanish, and that he was speaking Portuguese. That was about all we understood of each other. He was pointing to phone numbers on a sheet of paper, and I was asking him if he needed to use my cell phone, and he just kept speaking really fast Portuguese, and I was trying to tell him I had no idea how to help him (which I thought would have come across in my complete lack of Portuguese), and eventually he said something that might have been "Thanks anyway," and walked off. So I was misdirected, lost, had to give the phone to a Hertz employee so he and Nina's friend could talk to each other and figure out what was going on. Two hours and an empty stomach later, Nina and friend finally found me as I sat in Terminal One. That sure was encouraging.

We didn't do much that first evening, other than check in at the hostel and eat McDonald's (we had a craving. I have no excuse), but we did take a long walk around the block and freeze before returning for a good night's sleep. The people at the hostel seemed to take a liking to us, and used us to practice their English whenever we showed up.

The first day was the Eiffel Tower and the Moulin Rouge, plus a walk around the Montmartre area. Nina and I both were ridiculously tired after we climbed all those stupid steps, and that was when we decided not to see the Sacre Coeur up close until the next day. There was an American family coming down while we were going up, and the little boy was telling his mother that he was really tired and ready for a break. "My legs have been whining," he said, and I thought that was a very accurate statement. Not much was different from the last time I climbed that thing, save for it was sunny, and there was Buddhist monk running around in his orange robe and some really yellow socks with his sandals. I wanted to get a picture, but he was a sly devil, and I have no evidence of my monk sighting. After the Eiffel Tower we grabbed some lunch and subwayed over to the Moulin Rouge. Nina wanted to walk down the whole thing, but I was afraid of catching herpes. Then two tall transvestites walked past, and Nina changed her mind. Can't say I was sorry.

We stayed in the area for most of the afternoon, looking in shops around Montmartre, trying to find the breakdancers who had been there the last time (no dice on that), and marveling at Frenchiness of Paris. I could techinically sum up our trip in those three words: we wandered around. Or we wondered around aimlessly, because we didn't have a leader. That night we went dancing in a really crowded club, and stayed a lot longer than we intended, mostly because it was hard to move anywhere without climbing over people. We went to bed late, got up early, and headed back to Montmartre. The angry string/bracelet vendors were out in full force that Saturday, and cursed in English at everyone who didn't buy anything. I was really tired, so it was easy to put on a grumpy face that said "If you mess with me, I will rip out your spleen," whenever they came around.

There was also a harpist playing on the steps, which I thought was really cool. There was a family speaking something Germanic, and the dad was wearing giant yellow clogs. I would love to know how he fared climbing all those steps.
The Sacre Coeur was, again, very impressive, and I am of the opinion that everyone should see it at least once in their lifetime. The Moulin Rouge, on the other hand, looks nothing like it does in the movie, and is nothing special (save for the transvestites).




After the Sacre Couer we grabbed sandwiches and took the train to Versailles to see the famed palace. I was thoroughly astonished. I couldn't get the whole thing in a picture. When we walked through the gates there were, of course, more vendors, two who thought I should be able to speak Arabic, but it gets easier to say "no" every time I walk past a guy selling cheap Eiffel Tower keychains.



Versailles deserves its fame. It is massive, ornate, and gets more golden and fancy as one approaches the king's quarters. The chapel inside the palace is a very good idea—no excuses not to go. And, if all else fails, the church service could come to you. I did not, however, like the idea of waking up and going to bed publicly, though it might have been fun to have music accompany your every move. The queen, I think, was worse off. Who wants to give birth with half the court watching? I certainly hope Louis and his successors made that sort of humiliation worthwhile for their wives.



That night I tried to lead Nina back to a Fnac I had seen on my previous trip to Paris from the bus tour (she needed an adaptor for her computer). Apparently it's not easy to find things I've only seen while half-asleep through a bus window, because somehow we ended up walking down the Champs Elysées, and turned up next to the obelisk. Then we walked through the park and came out in the über-posh area, where Chanel and Gucci are located. We stared at expensive jewelery through windows and marveled at the prices, picked out the pieces that were deserving of our life savings, and continued to wander in search of Fnac (again, we were without a good leader), and by the time we discovered we were nowhere near that darn store we had walked for a good hour and a half. So we ate at a restaurant called Hippopotamus, dragged ourselves back to the hostel, and slept.


Sunday we went to mass in the famed Notre Dame, and it was fantastic. Marvelous music, marvelous cathedral, and hundred of tourists to snap photos and distract me from the sermon. It also happened to be the international service, so I heard Scripture read in English, Italian, Spanish, and French. Pretty cool. It was also freezing cold, but that's a side note. After the service Nina and I went to a café near the church, and the waiter spoke English to us the entire time even though I only spoke to him in French (Is that rude? I was offended, and need justification). Then we went to the Louvre. Wow. There is so much in there to see. We stuck mostly to the non-European displays, and took irreverent photos with several pieces of priceless art (I forgot my camera, so I'll post those pictures when I snatch them from Nina), saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, and wore our feet to thin flappy pads. We were there for four hours, never stopping once, and saw maybe a quarter of all the Louvre has to offer. And we usually didn't read the display cards, either. That was pretty much it, that day. We were too worn out to do much else, and Nina had an early morning the next day, so we actually did homework that evening and rested. Then we went out to eat and the waiter asked me if I was from Beirut. Do I look Lebanese?

So it's settled. When I come back to France in a future summer or late spring, I will kayak on the pond at Versailles, see the rest of the Louvre, and find out what's the big deal about the Palais Japonais and the Hôtel des Invalides. Feel free to join me.

Are you happy, Barron?