Blogging is hard
Sorry folks for leaving this so long... Paris has been absolutely packed, and we've only had downtime now so we finally got on the internet. Actually, we got on the internet about 3.5 hours ago, but I'm only getting to blogging now. This would be the downside of having a relatively unplanned trip -- needing to periodically sit down and actually plan stuff. We were theorizing that we would go to Madrid tomorrow, then Barcelona, then the south of France, then Italy. As it turns out, there is nothing at all available in Barcelona on this upcoming Saturday. The upside of having a relatively unplanned trip is that we called an audible and now have a flight booked from Barcelona to Rome (leaving on the Saturday afternoon), and are now going to do Italy, and then head back to the south of France after that. Anyway, doing all the bookings took a lot of time, and so I get to type this now.
Notre Dame - This was the first thing we did in Paris. As Yaron mentioned there was a chance encounter with friends froms school, that was cool (that reminds me of the song that Zack wrote when there was the competition to pick Bayside's new school song, "Bayside is a school that's cool and you know that it's true (know that it's true, know that it's true). The girls are the hottest and the guys are the hippest too (oooh ooh ooh)"), but the neatest part of Notre Dame, I thought, were the gargoyles on top. I expected them to be all scary and serious, but actually they were just animals being goofy with funny faces on...what's not to like about looking at that while also having a look at all of Paris?
Speaking of "a look at all of Paris", last night Craig and I went to the top of the...
Eifel Tower - The funny thing about looking out at a city from its most famous monument is that the actual view that you get doesn't look too much like the city in question at all because said monument is missing. How do you know you are looking at Paris unless you can see the Eifel Tower! Regardless, the view still was good, we went all the way to the top and the whole thing (getting in line, going up, then going down) took about 3.5 hours and was well worth the money. Paris has so many straight lines, it's neat. Certain streets don't seem to curve at all, and the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, and the Louvre all form a straight line. Really neat. When you get down, you are bombarded with people trying to sell you Eifel Tower keychains and blinky models for 1 and 5 Euros respectively. I wanted to see if I could get something for 20 cents.
me: "I have 20 cents"
shady salesman: "1 euro"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman: "80 cents"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman puts out his hand, I put 20 cents in it, then says, "you can look at this *points to blinky thing* for 5 seconds"
me: "give me my money back"
shady salesman: "fine, here."
then he gives me a keychain for 20 cents! woohoo! now they only made 19 cents off of me!
We went to the Eifel Tower to cap off a pretty amazing day. While Yaron was writing the blog about the delicious food (and he wasn't understating it... I've had escargot, scallops, french onion soup, pastries, crepes, STINGRAY!, and more!), Craig and I went to Versailles. On the way to the RER station (commuter rail) a french dude stops me and points to my sweatshirt and says,
"my great grandfather.... he was there!", I looked down and realized he was talking about a different Waterloo. We go to RER station and meet a couple of guys from Vancouver on the train. They're nice people that we end up seeing later on. We walked around Louise XIV, and Marie Antoinette's gardens, which were pretty crazy with lots of statues and green and niceness. Then we went into the palace itself. First we saw the residences of Louis's daughters and his son (the Dauphine) and were thouroughly unimpressed. Then we went into the main palace and boy does it suck to be his kids. It was so grand and lavish and amazing. I was thinking that because of all this democracy garbage that we believe in these days, we won't ever be leaving this kind of legacy because nobody could ever justify that much expense on a palace or anything, while still being accountable to lots of people...oh the days of meaningful monarchies. Speaking of unnecessary luxury, after the palace, we stopped at a local boulangerie and picked up some delicious mousse pastry thingies.
After the Eifel Tower we hopped the Metro home and on the way up the exit escalator, there was a drunk guy peeing on the escalator about 20 steps ahead of us. He was disgruntled because the following day's election (today) were going to likely result in a right wing guy going in office. Apparently he's been compared to Bush, and so naturally there are lots of people not happy with his leading the polls. So the guy starts yelling at us in french for no reason, then he sees the flags on our packs and immediately starts talking in english, explains about the election (in his drunken sort of way) and goes on his merry way. Nice that a Canadian flag still gets ya somewhere.
Sidenote: Did either of us mention that there were a couple of Tim Hortons in Dublin? Anyway...
Oh, so apparently if the election goes in the way of the right winged guys there will be riots in the streets, complete with car flippings and what not! neat! We've been hiding out in this internet cafe to stay safe though.
In the Louvre, in the French Sculpture room there was a bunch of statues with strawberry plants running thorugh (real ones, with wonderful smelling strawberries growing). Now THAT's art.
OH, and I wanted to mention a quick thing about Queen's Day in Amsterdam... The city is a semi circle, essentially. The party that was Queen's Day was where the streets were jam packed for about a 30 minute walk out of the city centre in almost all directions of the semi circle. That's easily millions of people, with artists and food (mmm, haring) and music and all other good stuff.
Anyway, there's obviously more to post, but it'll have to wait.
Notre Dame - This was the first thing we did in Paris. As Yaron mentioned there was a chance encounter with friends froms school, that was cool (that reminds me of the song that Zack wrote when there was the competition to pick Bayside's new school song, "Bayside is a school that's cool and you know that it's true (know that it's true, know that it's true). The girls are the hottest and the guys are the hippest too (oooh ooh ooh)"), but the neatest part of Notre Dame, I thought, were the gargoyles on top. I expected them to be all scary and serious, but actually they were just animals being goofy with funny faces on...what's not to like about looking at that while also having a look at all of Paris?
Speaking of "a look at all of Paris", last night Craig and I went to the top of the...
Eifel Tower - The funny thing about looking out at a city from its most famous monument is that the actual view that you get doesn't look too much like the city in question at all because said monument is missing. How do you know you are looking at Paris unless you can see the Eifel Tower! Regardless, the view still was good, we went all the way to the top and the whole thing (getting in line, going up, then going down) took about 3.5 hours and was well worth the money. Paris has so many straight lines, it's neat. Certain streets don't seem to curve at all, and the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, and the Louvre all form a straight line. Really neat. When you get down, you are bombarded with people trying to sell you Eifel Tower keychains and blinky models for 1 and 5 Euros respectively. I wanted to see if I could get something for 20 cents.
me: "I have 20 cents"
shady salesman: "1 euro"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman: "80 cents"
me: "20 cents"
shady salesman puts out his hand, I put 20 cents in it, then says, "you can look at this *points to blinky thing* for 5 seconds"
me: "give me my money back"
shady salesman: "fine, here."
then he gives me a keychain for 20 cents! woohoo! now they only made 19 cents off of me!
We went to the Eifel Tower to cap off a pretty amazing day. While Yaron was writing the blog about the delicious food (and he wasn't understating it... I've had escargot, scallops, french onion soup, pastries, crepes, STINGRAY!, and more!), Craig and I went to Versailles. On the way to the RER station (commuter rail) a french dude stops me and points to my sweatshirt and says,
"my great grandfather.... he was there!", I looked down and realized he was talking about a different Waterloo. We go to RER station and meet a couple of guys from Vancouver on the train. They're nice people that we end up seeing later on. We walked around Louise XIV, and Marie Antoinette's gardens, which were pretty crazy with lots of statues and green and niceness. Then we went into the palace itself. First we saw the residences of Louis's daughters and his son (the Dauphine) and were thouroughly unimpressed. Then we went into the main palace and boy does it suck to be his kids. It was so grand and lavish and amazing. I was thinking that because of all this democracy garbage that we believe in these days, we won't ever be leaving this kind of legacy because nobody could ever justify that much expense on a palace or anything, while still being accountable to lots of people...oh the days of meaningful monarchies. Speaking of unnecessary luxury, after the palace, we stopped at a local boulangerie and picked up some delicious mousse pastry thingies.
After the Eifel Tower we hopped the Metro home and on the way up the exit escalator, there was a drunk guy peeing on the escalator about 20 steps ahead of us. He was disgruntled because the following day's election (today) were going to likely result in a right wing guy going in office. Apparently he's been compared to Bush, and so naturally there are lots of people not happy with his leading the polls. So the guy starts yelling at us in french for no reason, then he sees the flags on our packs and immediately starts talking in english, explains about the election (in his drunken sort of way) and goes on his merry way. Nice that a Canadian flag still gets ya somewhere.
Sidenote: Did either of us mention that there were a couple of Tim Hortons in Dublin? Anyway...
Oh, so apparently if the election goes in the way of the right winged guys there will be riots in the streets, complete with car flippings and what not! neat! We've been hiding out in this internet cafe to stay safe though.
In the Louvre, in the French Sculpture room there was a bunch of statues with strawberry plants running thorugh (real ones, with wonderful smelling strawberries growing). Now THAT's art.
OH, and I wanted to mention a quick thing about Queen's Day in Amsterdam... The city is a semi circle, essentially. The party that was Queen's Day was where the streets were jam packed for about a 30 minute walk out of the city centre in almost all directions of the semi circle. That's easily millions of people, with artists and food (mmm, haring) and music and all other good stuff.
Anyway, there's obviously more to post, but it'll have to wait.