I thought that I could handle waking up at 3 a.m. if it meant I'd be spending the day in Paris, France -- one of my lifelong dreams. Our train was due out at 5:40 a.m., and with 3 of us to get ready, it meant an early wake-up call, and an extremely long day ahead. Our cab showed up on time -- early, in fact -- and we were rearin' and ready to go. Sleepiness curbed our excitement a little bit, but not enough to put a damper on our readiness.
The weather called for a rainy day, so Nik and I had spent the day before securing appropriate footwear, which turned out to be worthless. Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful that it was a beautiful spring day, but I would have really dressed differently.
Our ride on the Eurostar was just over 2 1/2 hours. In the time it would normally take me to get from Louisville to Nashville, I made it to a whole different country. Pretty wild, eh? Anyway, our first mistake was that we had absolutely no plan after setting foot in France. I speak very basic French, and the reality of the language barrier hit me in the face as soon as we stepped off the train and ventured into the station. I became overwhelmed with anxiety and nerves as we made our way downstairs to the information and ticket desks.
I cannot even begin to estimate how many people were scurrying around: some locals, some transients, others just like us. As we made it to the back of the line, I could feel every hair on my body stand up and every nerve ending start to tremble. My frustration reached a boiling point, and I finally just turned around and yelled, "Hey! Do any of y'all speak English? Is there a tour bus or somethin' anywhere?"
Yes, I said "y'all." Nik burst out in laughter, and she nearly peed her pants.
We discussed various routes of navigating through the city, and since we had a pretty limited cash reserve, we ultimately decided to go balls to the wall and buy Metro Day Passes. Phil is a GENIUS when it comes to reading tube maps, so between his map-puzzle-solving skills and my basic French, we concluded that we could eventually make our way back around to the station for our 9:13 p.m. departure.
Our first stop: The Eiffel Tower. We got there, we saw the long, long, long line to go up, and we went past it. There was construction on the tower, so one whole side was out of service, forcing the queue to a 2 1/2-hour wait. Eff that. We made our way along the park, took some pictures, and sat down to make a plan. It was pretty uneventful. We also got a whiff of some yummy food, but we couldn't figure out where it came from, so we kept going. At the edge of the park, there was a glass structure with "Peace" inscribed on it in different languages...unfortunately, it had suffered some vandalism, so appreciating that was out of the question, too. Just past the fountain was "a nice building," according to Phil. It turned out to be some kind of barracks or cavalry building...but at least it was nice. And pretty.
We made our way down some random streets, circled a few blocks, and ended up down a back alley of small shops. This actually worked out for us because it allowed us to save loads of money on food since it was off the tourist strip. We found a cafe that served kebabs, burgers, and pizza, so we went in and grubbed for a bit. Just a few doors down was a shop that sold all American food stuff...Big Red, A&W Cream Soda and Root Beer, Nerds, Wonka candy...LOADS of stuff I was dying to get my mitts on, but paying 2.50 Euros for a can of Big Red seemed a little extreme.
Our next visit was to L'Arc de Triomphe and Champs des Elysses. We began to notice that finding landmarks in Paris was easy because all you have to do is follow the crowds. This is where things started to turn for me. By this point, my feet were so swollen and in such excruciating pain that we had to sit for 30 minutes for the symptoms to subside so I could walk back to the Metro. I felt like a whiny little turd, but I cannot describe the pain I was in. We also never really got a decent view of anything because there were so many tourists...there were people everywhere. More people than a Black Friday line at Wal-Mart. But, we were trying to make the best of it because we were in Paris. THE Paris. We kept saying it over and over to convince ourselves that the trip was worth it.
Next stop: The Louvre. OH.MY.GAWD. Seriously, I thought this would be an event of a lifetime. I was really excited to see some of the most famous works of art of all time. So, we get there, and we stand in line. And we stood in line, and we stood in line, and we moved a little, and a little more, and got to the front, then we're stopped to let people in a priority line go ahead. This line was for people with Museum Passes...nothing anywhere said we needed any kind of pass to get in, and nobody said anything about there being a fee for anything. We finally got through security, and made it to the main lobby of the museum. We took our maps and pinpoint the highlights of what we wanted to see, and made our way upstairs. Well. Whaddya know. There's a fee. We sulked for a moment before ultimately deciding that Nik and I would pay the 10 Euros each while Phil sat in the lobby and waited. We went back downstairs, waited in line again, got our tickets and started our venture. Our main objective was to see Mona Lisa...it was also everyone else's. We had to walk up 7 stories, to the top of the building, to what seemed like HADES from the heat and overcrowding...actually, there are probably fewer people in Hell.
Obviously, there were signs everywhere that said "No Flash Photography," but obviously, there were also idiots everywhere that ignored those signs. They weren't in English; they were picture signs with a big red X over a camera flash. Universal. Anyway, the blatant disrespect immediately pissed me off, so this was already going badly. We followed signs and lines and stairs and corridors, and finally made it to the room where Mona Lisa was hung...in the middle of the room behind a thick double glass frame (for obvious reasons). I was hoping for some sort of spiritual awakening, or some sort of awe to overtake my body as I neared the centuries-old masterpiece. Instead, I was overtaken by rude, brash tourists who reeked of sweaty armpits and had no tact or sense of order. It was seriously like a mosh pit at a Nirvana concert. Seriously. I stepped to the side and let Nik take the pics she wanted to take, and was just hoping to God I didn't go ballistic on some of the douche bags in that room. She emerged from the pit of doom, and we made our way -- quickly -- around some more rooms of paintings...lots of paintings of Jesus and boobies and Napoleon, all in same room.
We decided we'd go to the Greek Sculptures and visit Venus de Milo before GTFO there. I have never seen so many Asians in all my life. I'm not really sure why this is..maybe it's vacation season for them, I have no idea. They were everywhere. And not only were they crowding around each sculpture, but they were taking pictures of each other in front of the sculptures, like they were hanging out with Aphrodite in the museum. It was the most dumbfounding thing I'd ever seen.
Finally, we left. I was so aggravated because I really wanted to be able to appreciate everything in there, but it was so devalued by the tourism and commercialism that I wanted to vomit on that pretty little glass pyramid out front so everyone could see. Of all the places in the world, I never expected the Louvre to be such a miserable place.
We carried on to our last stop: Notre Dame Cathedral. Again, I had a much more enlightening experience in London at Westminster Abbey. There were lines out the wazoo to get to the viewing area of the church. It was completely underwhelming because there was absolutely no spirituality there at all. I wasn't looking for God to come down and open the doors for me, but I was expecting to absorb the history of the place. Psh. Yeah right.
After we spent all of 10 minutes there, it was still about 4 hours before our train departed. We went to a cafe across from the station and ordered crepes and coffee. The waiter spoke little English, so it was up to me to order in French. I pulled it off! I placed our entire order in French, and even managed to impress him a little bit. We spent the rest of the day in Paris at the train station, waiting to leave. We sat in a pub for a while, then checked in at the earliest possible time. Oh yeah, UK Border Patrol gave me a hard time (again) coming back into the country. As if my day wasn't shitty enough. I was interrogated again, warned about not working again, told that I have come to Immigration's attention again...for heaven's sake, just LET ME IN. I can say that this woman was a lot more polite than the woman at my first encounter, but I was over it. Seriously.
We couldn't get on the train soon enough. Thankfully, we made it home at a reasonable hour, and we were safe. We plopped that Wednesday night, and we didn't move until Friday morning. That's right...36 hours of immobility.
Paris: been there, done that, ain't doin' it again. Au revoir.
