Baguettes, Croissants, and Bonjours

After an awesome fall break, Michelle and I could not ignore our imminent and unavoidable futures. That future was two nights, 3 days in Paris. Rbitrarily I decided to two, not 2, and 3, not three there. I like it. I did have my first week of internship then, but Paris is too important a journey to really include other things in a blog post about it.

So Michelle and I wanted to leave Friday night, but the problem became getting a cheap plane ticket. Apparently easyjet doesn't actually make things easy, it just makes it cheaper. Who knew right? So we had to settle for a 7 am flight out of London Luton Airport. Would have been even easier if that airport was close or easy to get to, but my first statement is continuing to hold true. Michelle and I had to get up at 3 am in order to catch this flight on time because of travel time and things, but our real problem became actually getting up at 3 am. Thats because we didn't. Haha, our college years certainly have not gotten rid of our lack of being able to wake up for things properly. So I wake up at 4 am. First words out of my mouth you ask? Sorry, it wasn't a word. It was a curse word! A big fat cursey word.

So then we had to 1) get a cab 2) get a train 3) hope all went well so we actually got to the plane on time. It didn't help that once we got the cab I realized I had forgot my passport. Stupid Joe, screwin' things up for the rest of us. Long story, much shorter, we made it to the train station on time and luckily got to our plane as well. Luton was really small so customs took like 10 minutes max.

The plane ride was fine, as we arrived in a rainy Paris day. Ugh come on dude upstairs. Couldn't you just shine some warm sun for once? Michelle bought us some nice two day metro tickets with her great French(she got a wink as well of course). Then we set off on our Paris adventure. First stop? Hostel. The place was called Hotel de Paris, so we knew it would be a great tourist trap. It actually was pretty good in terms of what Michelle and I needed, and the staff was kinda nice as well. We dropped off our stuff there, took a quick quick nap, and then set off to be the greatest tourist there ever was. Pokemon style.

We went to Notre Dame Cathedral first, because Michelle had planned out the trip extra well. She had directions to and from every single place. What a great girl. Notre Dame was really cool and was my kind of church. It really was humongous, but there was some sort of reverence that enveloped the place that I had never experienced before. Just a humble place to worship the big dude.

 

We then headed off to the Pantheon. Ta Da! It was this place where a bunch of cool people were buried, where there was a bunch of awesome artwork, and science abundant. Namely, Foucalt's pendulum. Literally the most scientific way to prove the Earth is orbiting that I could ever think of. Can't argue with science.

The coolest part about going to the Pantheon was that we were tired and hungry, which meant lovely and delicious crepes. Mmmmm so good, chocolatey, yummy, and delish. Paris does it so well. I think my Mom might have actually gone to the same crepe place, since her hostel was really close to the Pantheon, but oddly enough she didn't actually go into the Pantheon. I'll never understand that logic. Michelle then took me to the most famous part about Paris. Whats that you say? You have no idea what I'd be talking about? What? Its not that old? Well thats right, we went to the not that old Eiffel Tower. Both the scourge and the blessing of Paris. It only took us a couple hours to get to the top, as we waited in a line that included a drunk guy telling me that he wouldn't hook up with Michelle because he was married. Great job dude, I like your moral fiber. At the top of the Eiffel Tower, we saw pretty much all of Paris as well as this weird thing going around the roof that pointed out where countries were and how far away on a map. We felt obliged to take a picture for the Parks of the world.

That night we got some nice wine, chilled out, while Michelle learned about crack babies on the French BBC. I'll never understand the fascination, but I'll guess it was more of a car crash effect. The next morning we got up and went to the Chateau de Versailles to soak up some free French rich culture. All these museums were free so we decided to go like everywhere. Versailles was extremely nice with spectacular architecture and artwork.

It really had everything you would have expected. Nice paintings, gold all over the place, expensive furniture, odes to royalty, lovely gardens, and modern Japanese art? About that. I'll never understand why this was there, but apparently the French found it necessary to have weird Japanese art randomly throughout Versailles. It had to symbolize something, but I couldn't really pinpoint what that was. Japanese people, cartoons, anime, colors, not French stuff? Whatever, it seemed awesome to the Asian tourists.

                                                   Me trying to look like one of the statues.
                                                           I'm better at advertising Nike.

We then went back into the city of Paris to visit the Louvre, which was basically much more of the same. Loads of classical art that was really old. The sculptures were amazing, the paintings were stunning, I thought the Mona Lisa was smiling at me, but thats still up for debate. My favorite part was actually the one Monet painting we saw. I love Monet. If you wanna give me a really expensive artwork at some random point in time, throw me a bone and get a Monet. NOT Manet jeez.

Last stop was the Pompedou? I put a question mark there because the museum was so modern, even sentences about it shouldn't be the samE. The building was made inside out in order to emphasize how modern the stuff was. I have to admit it was really cool and modern, but I can only take that stuff to an extent. After looking at artwork all day, I was pooped. This painting was really cool though. Look at the effects!

We decided to catch a late dinner, met a couple of women lover's in a restaurant who new a bunch about the US, and then came back to the hostel. Soooo tired at this point. I then got on my morning plane back to London, and Michelle started the second leg of her fall trip to Prague. So jeal. In the end, Paris was rainy, but fun. Thank God Michelle can speak the language.

Guys...Bridget is in London right now. Its a DC takeover!