(no subject)
Jessica, Pappou, and I left Jacksonville Friday the 3rd and drove to my parents' house. Yia Yia wanted to go the next day with my aunt and uncle, which worked out great because we had so much luggage that it filled up Yia Yia and Pappou's car to the point that there was no room for Yia Yia! We had dinner at home that nite, Mom, Jess and I went to the mall later and that was all.
In local news, the tennis team that my mom is the captain of, "The Fabulous 14", won 1st place for the season in their division in Palm Beach County.
Saturday, the rest of the 10 of us arrived. We had lunch at Mirasol, then we found out that the 20-person bus we hired to drive us to Miami broke a belt and was going to be late. Instead a Hummer limo came to get us. My 8 and 11 year old cousins were thrilled. I guess that says a lot about adults who ride around in those.
Mom, Dad, Yia Yia and Pappou were flying first class, so Jess and I went with them to the first class lounge at the airport and had some drinks. Then we boarded.
This reminded me of Amy because there was a little plastic something for everything, and there were many things, and it all fit perfectly.
Jess and I had a few mini-bottles of wine on the flight and took the Ambien Mom gave us thinking, "Oh great, this will really knock us out." -- yeah, for about an hour, then I was in a crappy, groggy state for the next 8 hours flying.
We landed at Charles de Gaulle early in the morning, 7 AM I think. We were pretty exhausted but excited to be there. Shortly after this photo was taken there was some raised-voices about a slip of paper that I supposedly needed to get into the country, but was never given on the plane. In the end I didn't need it, as I protested to my parents, and it was over. Just to let everyone know that everything wasn't always peaches and cream.
Waiting for our car. Paris looks like a country behind the Iron Curtain from the airport, everything seemed gray.
Yia Yia and Pappou.
We drove into Paris, which was a beautiful drive, and arrived at our hotel:
somewhere very close to here:
Paris is an Olympic candidate city and there was a street fair on the Champs-Elysees that day. It was very very crowded, but they were doing really cool stuff like letting people play sports with Olympiads.
We walked down the Avenue Montaigne to see the Effiel Tower. When I was a kid, my friend Matt Montaigne always said that his grand father had been the mayor of Paris and that the avenue was named for him. Yeah right. But I have wondered whatever happened to Matt for years now.
On the avenue we saw the Hotel Plaza Athenee, which was where Carrie and the Russian stayed in the final episodes of "Sex and the City".
The Effiel Tower is very very tall. I thought it was maybe taller than a most buildings but nothing very tall. Stupid me. The tower lords over that area of the city in a magnificent way.
This photo was really dark, now it's just distorted:
We took a boat tour on the Seine:
This bridge is like way famous. I think they built it in 1901 for an exposition.
Everything in the part of Paris we were in looks roughly like this:
It's all amazing and beautiful.
Napoleon tagged this bridge, "Shorty wuz here."
Notre Dame:
This structure is amazing. It sits in old Paris, which is an island in the Seine. Much of the older areas of Paris were once islands that have been bridged together and filled in. Notre Dame is very very very tall and very imposing. If we had more time there, I would have liked to have gone inside. My parents and grandparents did the next day but Jess and I were doing other things.
We went back to our hotel, which reminded me a little of the one that Brenda and Donna stayed in in Paris that summer on 90210.
Agree?:
It was very tiny. They use every centimeter of space in European cities.
The view outside our window.
We were very exhausted at this point, we'd been up for about 18 hours with so sleep and things were getting tense, so the four of us broke off and fixed that:
Wine really is cheaper than water in Paris. The pub made really good sandwiches.
We walked back to the tour and on the way I thought of Christopher Paul:
This time we went up in the tower:
The tower, as I said, is very very very tall. The cable cars inside the tower make two stops, one at a lower observation deck and one at the very top. I heard that going in the tower was a waste of time because you will recognize nothing and lines can be up to 3 hours long. There was no line at all that day.
The first level views were amazing:
The city is laid out so perfectly.
It is so geometric and beautiful. There is a concert going on in this picture. The music was so loud you could hear it all the way up where we were.
Going up higher was sort of terrifying. I didn't want to do it, but my family was set on it. I don't like heights, it's illogical, I know.
But it was worth it.
We had dinner somewhere on the Champs-Elysees that nite then the four of us went to the Lido, which is like a wayyy famous cabaret:
I tried to take a picture inside, but it my hand was slapped by a waiter. It was like an dinner club, with huge, glimmering, chandeliers and little tables. A lot of fancily dressed older people were dancing to a Lawrence Welk-style band when we walked in. The show began shortly after. A gigantic ball of feathers came down from the very high ceiling, to music, and out came a singing, topless, showgirl. But you'd (or me really) never notice it because there was a lot of plumage and glitter everywhere. There were some almost-naked guys, and a girl who did ridiculous gymnastics on a perch high above the audience in a bodysuit that made her appear nude. There were costumes, and more plumage, and big, semi-nude production numbers down fake stairs and umbrellas. Put it this way, there are photos of celebrities watching the show in the lobby and one is of Shirley McClain from, I dunno, the late '70s. It's all very "naughty", but naught. Pun!
It was ok to watch for a while, but it was all in French, and it was nearly midnite France-time and we had been up for over 24 hours, so we left just before the end.
And that was the first day. Many more to come.