Paris, I will miss you! Day 3

Sorry it’s taken me awhile to finally get this blog up, but please forgive me; the essay writing seems to be endless.

Day 3 in Paris was just as amazing as the first two days were. Katie and I woke up early and were ready for the day. Admission to the Louvre is free the first Sunday of the month, and what do you know, that’s when we were there! We had spent a little bit of time at the Louvre on Friday night but I wanted to go back, and there were some really pretty parts of the museum that I wanted to show Katie. We left our not so nice hostel, got on the metro and went towards the Louvre. We stopped to get chocolate croissants and hot chocolate at a little café next to the Seine. I don’t really ever order hot chocolate or eat croissants, but they were pretty amazing in Paris.

A couple things that Katie and I constantly wonder about being in Europe/ the UK, almost any time we’re in a restaurant or café, it’s unclear weather customers are supposed to pay at the table, ask for the bill, wait for the bill, go up to the bar or find the cash register. Really, we never know what to do. Also, we haven’t decided what side of the sidewalk and stairwell you’re supposed to walk on. In the UK if people drive on the left side of the road, are you supposed to walk on the left side of the sidewalk? But there are British people all over the rest of Europe and people from all over the world in the UK, so really, it makes for lots of awkward dodging moments when passing people on the sidewalk.

Well, anyway, after sitting for a long time trying to decide how we were supposed to pay for our breakfast we made it to the Louvre. There is so much to see and everything is so beautiful, three days in Paris is just not enough time. Our flight was leaving that night, and we had a full day planned out so we couldn’t stay at the Louvre for too long.

(The Louvre)
My friend, Cole, told me about a walk that would be really nice from the Louvre, through the Tuileries Gardens, past the Place de la Concorde, down the Champs Elysees, to the Arc de Triomphe. Cole is the expert on France and the walk sounded perfect. Saturday in Paris had been rainy and dreary, but day three was beautiful, it wasn’t too cold and the sky was clear and blue! What a perfect day to be walking around the city.
(Jardin Des Tuileries)
The Tuileries Gardens were beautiful, I’m sure in the spring or summer they would be much more impressive, but with statues, fountains, ponds, ducks, and little cafes throughout the garden, and the Louvre off in the background I think it’s beautiful at any time of the year! After sitting by a fountain and watching the ducks and some seagull looking birds for a little while we went on to the Place de la Concorde, oh, but on the way, we found a little place to get crepes, so, of course we stopped.
(Yummy Crepes)
All of a sudden we found ourselves at an intersection, the Obélisque de Luxor in front of us, two ornate gold plated fountains on both sides, and beautiful buildings in all directions. I didn’t know where to start or what to look at first. Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t know the significance of everything we were seeing, and since, surprise...all the signs for monuments and buildings were in French, I could only grasp general ideas of what things were. We found a placard on the ground and decided that this must have been the place where Marie Antoinette and Henry the XVI were executed. Once again, my international studies nerdyness came out a little, and I was in awe of everything, and now that I actually know that everything was, I think it’ even cooler. So, here’s a tiny history lesson, thanks to the wonderful Internet.
"The square was completed in 1763. It is actually in the shape of an octagon, and was once bordered by large moats which no longer exist. Several decades after its construction, this square was to serve as a focal point for the bloodiest political upheaval in the history of France: the French Revolution. When the hordes of revolutionaries seized power, they renamed the square Place de la Revolution, tore down the statue of Louis XV and replaced it with a guillotine. Between 1793 and 1795, more than 1300 people were beheaded in public executions, including Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Danton and Robespierre. Supplanting the guillotine is the powerful Obelisk of Luxor, a pink granite monolith that was given to the French in 1829 by the viceroy of Egypt, Mehemet Ali. The edifice, which once marked the entrance to the Amon temple at Luxor, is more than 3,300 years old and is decorated with hieroglyphics portraying the reigns of the pharaohs Ramses II and Ramses III. Gilded images on the pedestal portray the monumental task of transporting the monolith to Paris and erecting it at the square. Installed in 1833, the Obelisk — weighing 230 tons and standing 22.83 meters (75 ft) high in the center of the Place."

From there we walked down the Champs Elysees, where there are lots of expensive looking stores, but its fun to look in the window, we looked in the Louis Vuitton window and I don’t think there was anything under 700 Euros, that’s like $900, crazy! As we walked closer to the Arc de Triomphe we could see that there were little tiny people (well they just looked little tiny from far away) on the top of the Arc de Triomphe. I didn’t even know that there was anything on top or inside of the Arc de Triomphe; I just thought people went to look at it from the ground. Lucky for us, admission was free there too! So, we hurried up the really long winding stair case all the way to the top. Winding staircases seem to be really popular in Europe....maybe because they take up less space? When we were walking up the stairs we passed two American couples, they sounded Southern…I wanted to ask where they were from, but I decided being in Paris, maybe I shouldn’t bring extra attention to a bunch of American’s.

I am however, still searching to find someone, anyone, in all of Europe and the UK from Texas, but not from Baylor. haha. Maybe I should get those flag patches to put on my backpack. I could have Texas, Kenya, Tanzania, Ecuador, and Maybe Scotland, and maybe the US….hmm….that might be kind of tacky. I don’t know. Anyway, from the Arc de Triomphe it seemed like I could see the whole city. But I knew that this would be nothing compared to the Eiffel Tower. We only stayed at the top of the Arc de Triomphe for about ten minutes because we still had to get to the Eiffel Tower and we didn’t know how long we’d have to wait in line!
(View from the Arc de Triomphe)
We took a metro to a stop close to the Eiffel tower and stopped at a little place on the side of the street to grab something quick for lunch. The man working at the stand had really good English and I guess he heard me talking because he knew I was American. He told Katie she looked French, and she said, she was definitely not French and she could only speak a little bit of French. Then he clarified, no, “I said you looked French, not that you spoke French,” but he didn’t really sound like he was joking about it....we both ordered hot dogs, I don’t know why, but it sounded good. Katie said that hot dogs and sausages were apparently pretty popular in France, but then after thinking about it for a second, decided that maybe they were just trying to cater to the American tourists. When he handed us the hot dogs, he said “for the French first, for the American last.” So, in all, I was muttered at by an angry old lady with dogs, bothered by a weird guy who couldn’t take a hint and yelled at by a crazy Rastafarian man. And this seemed fitting, “for the American last.” But really, I felt welcomed and that people were friendly almost all of the time in Paris.

We went to get in line at the Eiffel tower, there were people everywhere, standing in different lines, and we didn’t know where to go. We got in one of the lines and hoped it was the right one. I thought we might have to wait for hours to get in, like waiting for the Batman ride at six flags. But it actually wasn’t that bad, I think we waited for about 45 minutes to buy our tickets. Then we figured out what the different lines were for, each side of the tower has a different line, so people can go up different sides of the tower at the same time. It just so happened that the side that we were on, was the side with an elevator! Hey, I mean, I try not to be lazy, but I wasn’t going to complain about riding an elevator up 337 feet instead of walking. The elevator kind of shot us up to the 2nd level; it was a strange feeling, like being on a roller coaster when it’s climbing up to the top just before it sends you flying down the tracks. I kept reminding myself, I’ve never heard of an elevator dropping at the Eiffel tower. Six flags on the other hand, yikes….their record isn’t so good. The 2nd level, at 337 feet already seemed really high, but we were going to keep going!

We got on another elevator and again, quickly glided to the top, it was kind of a strange feeling, being crammed into a little glass elevator with a bunch of people, all speaking different languages, but as we were getting closer to the top, everyone was just amazed, and no one was saying anything. It was kind of like being in the clouds. We got out at the top, and this was officially the highest man made structure I had ever been to the top of at 899 feet! I noticed, before we went up, that there were lots of giant pigeons waddling around, and wondered if they could make it up to the top of the Eiffel tower. I was on the lookout, but I didn’t spot any pigeons, a guy did spit off the top though, some people………I walked all the way around the deck, looking at all the places we had been, it was really cool. I did make a mental note though, “remember to tell Dad he should probably never go to the top of the Eiffel tower…or probably even the 2nd level.”
(It was homecoming weekend at Baylor so I did a Sic 'Em)
For most of the day, it had been really nice, but now it was starting to get a little windy and cold. We decided we should probably work our way back to the ground and continue with our day. Since we were both freezing we thought, first thing stop to get something hot to drink, preferably somewhere where we can get one last crepe, next go to a gift shop, and be at the metro stop by 6:30 to get to the bus stop by 7:00. This was our brilliant plan, to make it to the bus stop at 7:00 even though we really didn’t have the slightest clue what time the buses left for the airport.

We wandered around for awhile trying to find a somewhat inexpensive café with crepes…didn’t happen. So we settled on just a hot drink. We were doing alright on time, but we had kind of roamed farther away from the Eiffel tower than we thought we had, and of course every ten feet I wanted to stop and take another picture. Probably mostly because of my dilly dallying we found ourselves at the Eiffel tower with fifteen minutes to stop at a tourist shop, get crepes, buy metro tickets and get to the metro. We were going to accomplish everything and make it in time; I have positivity and self-assurance (a strengths reference for all my Baylor friends.)

So, we basically ran the whole way, I stopped at a tourist shop and Katie went to buy crepes. I caught up with her, she was still in line so I ran to buy metro tickets, oh no, where’s the ticket booth?!? What I have to use a machine, I don’t know how to do this?? But I did it, and ran back to find Katie, but she wasn’t at the crepe stand or by the metro. Ok, I’ll call her, what?!? I can’t call a UK number in France? But she could call me, we found each other and everything was ok! We had 20 minutes to make it to the bus stop…as we were getting off the metro we saw people with luggage running, so we followed them, it was like a race to the bus stop. We got there and got in line to buy our tickets only to find out that the bus for our flight wasn’t leaving for another hour! After all that….but at least we hadn’t completely missed the bus or anything tragic like that. We ended up just getting on an earlier bus to the airport with a tour group from Spain, going back to Barcelona.

Oh, I almost forgot, or maybe I’m trying to repress the scary memory…on our flight back to Scotland everything was going fine. We were greeted in English by the friendly flight attendant, and I thought, gosh how do they always know I speak English?!? And then I realized she was Scottish, opps. They played the weird Ryanair carnival sounding music and we were off. (here’s a YouTube link if you want to hear the Ryanair song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lZEVFACYAc&feature=related

The pilot sounded like he was in a hurry, but sounded pretty upbeat, He said we were going to land in about 20 minutes. Do people race planes, like they do with cars and greyhounds? Because I think Ryanair does! Everything was just fine, and then all of a sudden the plane started shaking, not just a little bit, a lot! Then the pilot got on, and quickly, but in a frightened kind of way, said, “flight attendants, take your seats.” I’ve experienced bad turbulence before, and I never like it, but this was really much worse than I’ve experienced before, and it just kept going. I just closed my eyes, prayed and sang myself a little song in my head. But obviously, we made it. Everybody was kind of shaken up, like literally people were shaking, but it was ok. And then I saw the slogan for the Prestwick Airport… “Pure Dead Brilliant” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really want to see the word dead in any context at the airport, especially after that kind of a flight. The bus ride to Edinburgh was about an hour and a half. I fell asleep as we were pulling away from the airport, and the next thing I knew we were back in Edinburgh.

It had been a good day, and a weekend I’ll never forget! Almost everywhere I go, I like, and want to go back, but I really, really hope I get to go back to Paris and the rest of France, maybe I’ll try to learn some French.

My next trip will be to London at the End of November. It should be different because I won’t be staying in sketchy hostels, I’ll be staying with the May’s, my friend Courtney’s family, that I’ve known since I was nine. I’m excited to see them and to go to London. I went a couple of years ago on the way to Kenya, but I was with a group of eighteen loud, singing Americans. I’ll be nice to experience the city a little more on my own. And hey, now that Obama is president, maybe they’ll be a little nicer to Americans.