"woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head..."

May 22, 2006 18:00

GREETINGS. wow, it's been too long since i've actually written anything of substance in here. instead i just tease; giving you juicy tidbits and then LETTING YOU HANG LIKE A CATHOLIC DURING OLIVER CROMWELL'S RULE! oh, historically relevent jokes. how i heart thee.

so! from france i have come. i guess this necessitates and super-long-ridiculously-detailed entry o-death.... and who am i to ignore necessity?

WARNING: procede only if you want to read a lot.

soooo....


france! oh, the sights. oh, the sounds. oh, the tastes and... other feelings applied to the other senses that i can't be bothered to remember.

paris was le bomb (hyuck hyuck) and i enjoyed it greatly. it was quite a lot like rome, really... as kirsten got sick of hearing. oh well. we all know europeans are all the same anyways. our hostel was oh-so cute with a very friendly/helpful front desk lady. the room was small but comfortable and the bathrooms were... clean. small, humorous, but clean. we came into limited contact with the other patrons. i fear my dream of traveling across europe with only my wiles and the help of kind strangers has yet to become a reality.

so i guess a breakdown would be prudent....

PARIS, 2006 (a time that will live in INFAMY!):
DAY ONE
~we had a very nice flight, full of all the pleasures british airways can provide. i am so marrying a british man. my resolve strengthens yet again.
~i watched walk the line and ricky gervais' new show. i was subsequently very impressed and do not sleep the whole flight.... my only distraction writing in my journal with no light whatsoever because i was too polite to turn on the little light. how nice am i.
~we get to london, change planes, and land in paris; going through customs without a hitch. we are pros.
~then we try to get to our train. perhaps pros we are not.
~we finally get on the train, feeling good save my embarassing scuffle with the ticket-machine when i tried to bring my luggage through. i leave such bad memories behind.
~we get to the "perfect hostel" after an inordinate death march. never has a name been so appropriate.
~aaaaand... we die. until we finally wake up again to go to a internet cafe, buy some nutella, and then pass out again. sleep is glorious.

DAY TWO
~we get up to the lovely sounds of paris bustling about us. and baguettes. mmmmm...
~we run around, hitting such sights as (forgive my french spelling because i will butcher all these names and make all the french shudder subconciously across the sea at my atrocities against their language...) la madeline, the opera house, place de concorde, jardin de les tuilleries, the outside of the louvre, running around beside the seine (while stalking an old man and his little dog), and the effiel tower.
~we then go on a boat sight-seeing thingy after i get harassed by an italian man. i swear, there was probably one in the whole city and somehow he found me.
~during the boat tour we see notre dame, some bridges, and i learn where oscar wilde lived. and then i promptly forget.
~we go up into the tour de effiel and it is AMAZINGLY HIGH! so high. it is ridiculous. i felt like i was in a plane. and we, like, walked the WHOLE WAY UP. ha. i keed. me, walk? pishaw.
~by then, we were quite tired from journeying around the entire city of paris. i decide to decipher the subway system, which proves to be fairly easy except for, you know, finding the actual TRAIN. we wandered around for a good half an hour. i was annoyed. such is life, i fear.
~we go back to our hostel and we die again, this time not actually waking up at all. i basically slept from 7 at night until 7 in the morning.... quite effectively taking a coma. oh, how i rock at sleeping.

DAY THREE
~we venture to the louvre, in all its museumy glory. with the pyramide shining about us, we descend into the depths of its learned majesty. and go and look at old stuff.
~again we are hit on upon and again i deftly deflect it. and by "deftly" i mean "stutter out that i'm from the united states before saying i have to go and find kirsten and run away".
~we saw the mona lisa (ah!), the captured and dying slaves by michelangelo (i've almost seen all of his work now. suck on THAT, art history!), and the code of hammurabi. of course, i couldn't actaully find the code for a while because, you know, it's only a GIANT PILLAR OF STONE. so i wandered around for about 20 minutes muttering (rather loudly) "DAMN YOU HAMMURABI! REVEAL YOUR CODE TO ME!" the people around me were consequently frightened seeing as kirsten had (quite intelligently) distanced herself from me.... making me look even more crazy. thanks.
~i also saw some stuff by rembrandt (such a mind-numbingly boring man... goodness gracious me, he was dull) and went to the basement to see the fort that was the louvre in the very old days of old. it was sweet. very medievally.
~after being there for a fair amount of time we were both quite tired of seeing maddona and childs as well as saint sabastian (so he got shot by a bunch of arrows and lived! big deal! i saw a stone mason guy who got an actual big rock stuck in his head and lived and are there a million pictures of him??? NO) and i refused to look at the medieval art except to mock it so we left.
~we then walked next to the louvre and went to this little stand thing that ended up being owned by my soulmate. he was this beatles enthusiast and had these old lps and i bought the white album (complete with a big poster and four headshots) and let it be. i also wanted abbey road, but fate had other plans. i never saw him again. he was my beatles angel in the form of a cute little old french man.
~we then go back to our area only to find a little open-air market had sprung up in our absence! we buy fresh bread and LE FRAISE! there was seriously a man singing "LE FRAISE! BELLE LE FRAISE!" at the top of his lungs for the whole time we were at the market. i swear, the word for strawberries is going to be the only french word i end up remembering.
~we then go to a tiny grocer who ends up being the cutest old man EVER. i dub him my souvenir to take home. he never suspects what awaits him. we buy other food from him and go back to our hostel to pig out since we hadn't really eaten the past two days.
~after eating i TRY to go pass out again, but kirsten has none of it.
~we go to the sacre coure (a very pretty cathedral on top of a hill) and get yelled at for taking pictures. unbeknownest to the patrons of the church, though, i take some very sneaky video. i am so hxc.
~we then wander around montmatre in the horrifyingly touristy area. i thought it was funny and loved it. we ate at some garishly french restaraunt and got nutella-y crepes and creme bruelle (sp????). yummmmm. the little men dressed up all french-like was cute. and sad.
~we go back and pass out. again.

DAY FOUR
~we awaken once more to venture to the musee d'orsay, the museum of mainly impressionist art in what was once an old train station. very cool.
~we wait in line forever, where we are entertained by a water-man, a man conducting the line, a woman with the biggest ankles EVER (i mean, i can't usually judge, but this was fantastically defiant of nature), this guy and girl flirting with each other, and two old women who seemed like they could be related to kirsten (seeing as they seemed "very lithuanian" according to kirsten).
~once inside, we see van gogh (is it wrong to have a huge crush on a dead tortured artist who was bipolar?), renior, monet, manet, cezanne, pissaro, and more. it was fantastic. I LOVE impressionism so freaking much.
~we wander about for a long time until we decide it's time to venture out again.
~since it was raining, we decide to forgo our original plan of going to notre dame and instead go to this psychotic shopping center called galleries lafayette. it is insanity.
~both expensive and massive, i decide to just wander around like a lost sheep in the middle of a hail storm. i lose kirsten, stress out, find her, and then lose her again. besides the moments of panic, the experience is funny and the place is pretty impressive.
~we then head back and sleep again. we have such an exciting night life, no?

DAY FIVE
~we wake up and head to the southern part of the city to see the catacombs! probably the freakiest thing i have ever done... besides the graveyard at midnight in england. that was raw terror.
~basically the catacombs are FILLED with bones... piled bones that were taken from overflowing cemetaries. creepy as shit. skulls are everywhere and the majority of the bones are kept within walls made of piled femurs. and it spans for miles underground... chock-full of anonymous body parts. awesome.
~after an hour of trying not to be freaked out and feeling a bit overwhelmed, we come back to the surface.
~we then made our way to the jardin luxembourg which was cheery and pretty. there were so many people just lying about but it was nice and felt like its own little community.
~we then ate lunch at mcdonalds... because kirsten thought that was cool for some reason and i was too hungry to argue.
~to be fair, the mcdonald's was right down the street from the pantheon (the french version), so after we ate we went to go and see where all the famous people were buried. we saw victor hugo (yay!), russeau, and emile zola. it was pretty sweet, though i think everyone thought i was an insensitive asshole because i was all "who the hell is that?" about the french president who was assassinated. whoops. my bad. i was just wondering why victor hugo had a small little bunch of wilted flowers and he got an assload of stuff on his tomb.
~we then found a cafe where hemingway used to chill and where brett and jake form the sun also rises are supposed to first meet in the book. i was very giddy, suffice to say. we then found a bookstore called shakespeare and co which is built in a renaissance style and run by expatriates.... basically a dream come true for the likes of me. i spent a good amount of time in there and bought a copy of the works of oscar wilde as well as the sun also rises for keri (both oscar wilde and hemingway wrote in the upstairs of the bookstore).
~we then went to notre dame which was very sweet. cool cathredral... absolutely gorgeous stained glass. definately lives up to the hype. i love gothic architecture.
~we also went to the conciergerie where a bunch of people were executed during the first revolution, including marie antoinette and eventually robespierre himself. i thought it was sweet. we stood where the prisoners were led to their executions.
~we then went to cetre pompidou and saw SPRAYING MAAAAN! i was mad though because he wasn't spraying that much. silly spraying man.
~we caught a metro and headed over to the moulin rouge. it was stupidly small. a disapointing sight for a disapointing movie and a stupid lifestyle (i hate the can-can). BUT we did end up going to the cafe where amelie was filmed. so cute. and heck yes to corque monsieurs!
~we then headed back and found glorious sleep once more.

DAY SIX
~we wake up later than the earlier days and venture to the hotel de les invalides where napoleon's tomb is. we see his tomb and his signature "grey frock and cap" as the caption put it. it was pretty sweet, seeing as i like the teeny emperor.
~we then go to the army museum which is right next to napoleon's tomb and i get giddy over ancient swords. yes, i am a 9-year-old boy.
~we then go shopping again because i forgot which way we were going and end up going to a shopping center kirsten wanted to go to. joy. BUT i do end up buying knock-offs of chucks and i lurve them. also, as we walked back along a street i find the CUTEST SHOES EVER for 9 euro. i am in love with them. they are, how do you say? ah, yes. ADORABLE.
~i can't really remember what happened the rest of the day. i believe kirsten ventured out alone to find an internet cafe and i read. i'm an old woman, give me a break.
~aaaaaaaand... SLEEP AGAIN!

DAY SEVEN
~we go to versailles! it was fucking huge. i mean, really, it was crazy. oh louis XIV. such a silly absolute monarch.
~the highlights were seeing the sun king's bed (kin-kay) and the area king louis XVI set apart for marie antoinette. it was called the queen's hamlet and was sooooo cute. there were all these little houses and i got about 4 feet away from a swan! they are giant birds. GIANT. i decided that i wanted to live there.
~at the threat of impending doom via thunderstorm, kirsten and i decide to go on back to par-ee. it proves to be a good idea, seeing as it starts to rain.
~and the rest of the day is lost to me. i don't think we did much... i think we forced our cute little old grocer man who we went to every day to tell us his favorite wine so i could buy it for my dad.
~we also got hit on by another internet cafe man... who tried to entice us into his backroom with wine in those little bathroom cups and spaghetti-o's. mm. so tempting.
~we go back and let golden slumbers fill our eyes again.

DAY EIGHT
~we go to the pere lachaise cemetary. we saw the graves of jim morrison as well as oscar wilde and chopin. it was pretty sweet. pere lechaise is an insanely big cemetary that spans 105 acres and is chock-full-o graves. it is cooooooool.
~we made it eventually to the round-about where the storming of the bastille happened after going to a not-so-friendly cafe. alas, the bastille itself no longer stands but i tried to feel the currents of the revolution anyways.
~i evetually found victor hugo's house which was very cool... except everything was in french and i kept feeling like i was making the floor squeak too much because the museum patrons kept looking at me like i was being too loud. oh well. i couldn't really help, you know, moving.
~we then did our last real paris thing by going to the wax museum! it was hilarious and a good time had by all. i just like posing with fake famous people. and pretending to be terrified by the pavoratti monster was way too fun.
~we slept our last night fitfully seeing as some big soccer bonanza was happening and the entire city was fucking insane. so many drunk men. and there was a raging thunderstorm at the same time, not to mention the prospect of an early flight the next morning so i had difficulty sleeping. eventually, sleep came.

THE RETURN
~we get a taxi a mere 5 hours after i am able to go to sleep and pile in, only to find that the man is certifiably insane and (later proves himself to be) a bastard. he takes us on the car ride of death, getting us to the airport in 25 minutes instead of the actual hour it should have taken. scary as hell man.
~and he drops us off at the wrong terminal, which is very bad, seeing as the airport is probably 4 times as big as BWI... almost the same size as heathrow. this is why the cab driver from hell is not only an insane driver but also a bastard.
~Luckily we were still over 3 hours early so we ended up getting on the plane okay, though the search for the right terminal is accompanied by much cursing on my part, including the statement "i hope that asshole bastard gets into a car accident"... i think some of the people around me spoke english too. oh well.
~the plane ride is pleasant, the british superb, and we arrive home once more.

anyways, if you read that whole thing, congratulations. you have more stamina than most.

in summary: the french were nice, paris pretty, and kirsten and i did not kill one another. therefore, it was a success!

so i started work today and that was grandly boring. as long as i can stretch stuff out, it goes okay. i'm excited to be home for an extended period of time and hopefully this summer will go well. i'm thinking it will and things such as going to the beach with my wives, visiting richmond, and seeing spamalot makes me think that my thinking is correct. yaaaaay.

ok, that was way too much writing... even for me. my brain is fried. my apologies for my rampant misspelling and grammar errors but i can't be fucked to care right now.

adeui, my pets. adeui.
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