Nott What You'd Expected...

Paris. In a Nutshell. A Parisian nutshell.

So, in yet another painfully picture-less blog, i ask you to trust me. Paris is amazing.....

We decided (Hil, Mary, Brandon and I) to leave Koln, Germany early in hopes of being in the city of 1,000 smells before Emily /Keri and Alex arrived on the 29th...

In what can only be described as the worst travel experience of my life, I discovered the joy that is the 'stereotypical obnoxious foreign-speaking traveller'....Our train to Paris was overbooked, so in spite of our best efforts to locate four of the maybe 10 empty seats on the entire retro, trashed train, we (And really i mean Brandon and I) were woken up, moved, yelled at (In French), and harassed for a few terribly embarassing moments of the trip. While in the US or UK I might be embarassed to wander around with my pack looking for a place to sit next to a complete and very foreign stranger, a comfort in knowing that i could only hope to be veiwed as the slightly annoying as opposed to halaciously incompetant foreigner was a pleasent surpise...

We arrived in the city at 5pm, and immediately were confused and amazed at the overwhelming sea of people that hearded themselves out of the station. The city, so far, has been a swimming swarm of people- peeing in gardens, sleeping in piles of coats, and jumping over metro turnstiles... quite the experiences...

After throwing our bags in our first hotel, we sprinted to the Eiffel Tower, so Mary could get her first freak outs out of the way.... Apparently, her room at home in Minnesota is full of Parisian memorabilia, and the video that i'll post later shows her reaction after her first view (hilarious...)

The site of such an iconic figure, a monument to all that Paris and Europe are- was beautiful, glowing in an orangish, tanish aura that -while it blocked out the entire top 30 meters- seemed to penetrate even the most oppressive of cold Paris nights....

Hil met up with her cousin and spent the night in a separate hotel, while Brando and Mary and I spent the night in one of Paris' finest two star (really?) hotels...

Day Two (Dec 29th) was slightly more frustrating- not on my account, but in hearing of Anna's, Alex's, and Emily's trips into the city, i felt genuinely crappy. We had anticipated on meeting up at noon at the Garden Hotel, but because of ATM malfunctions, bad directions, and creepy men in white vans, Alex didn't arrive at the hotel until 430. Emily had managed to make it in earlier, and despite riviting French remakes of old American movies, was half passed out on the bed with Keri when we heard an anxious knock at the door.

The four of us checked into our hotel (roughly 100m from the huge Bastille monument at the centre of a huge roundabout), and the girls took long overdue showers.... no offense...
The gang met up with Brandon's friend Ambroise (our French Connection) at the Eiffel Tower for my second straight day, and from there we wandered the streets in a confused stupor- in awe of the city as well as its huge expanse of restaurants. We settled on a crappy Italian place, but my stomach was full of French bread and some kind of raisin and pan au chocolat from earlier, so all was not lost.

Ambroise was intent on getting the group to come out to a crazy party next to the Moulin Rouge that apparently didn't get started until 3am, but Alex and I passed out to La Boheme (feeling sooo French right now...) and woke up in the middle of the night feeling like crap for skipping out on our French buddy's hospitality.

Our lack of planning last night meant that we were completely without contact this morning... I am still unable to send texts, although i recieve them just fine... two texts informing me "Where are you? Are we still meeting?" as well as "Ok, we're meeting under the tower now" left Alex and I in the dark..... Rather than attempt to meet up with the group at a random time and place undisclosed to us, we decided to trudge around the city and try to hit up as much random touristy crap as possible.

We deftly navigated the metro system, managing to see the Louvre (outside, tomrorow is all about it's classically adorned innards), Notre Dame, The Champs Elysees, the huge Oblisk, a few palaces here or there.....at which point we randomly and accidentally met up with the rest of hte gang, who had planned on climbing the Eiffel Tower at 1130. I felt dumb, but it was great to meet up with Anna again, and introduce Alex to the gang.

Alex and I stood in line for the Tower before dangerous winds forced them to shut down the top floor, which by all acounts rendered our trip there completely useless. We made plans for an early morning ascent (in about 6hrs, actually), and continued our assult on the city.

We met up with the gang yet again at 6 for a quick look inside of Notre Dame, a nice insense-filled break from the wind and cold, after which we ducked into the metro station and made our way back towards the Bastille district.

A tame Parisian night is closing with our plans for New Years somewhat in place, a nice night of cheap salami, wine, and bread for dinner slowly digesting, and a terribly campy and nudity-filled show on showgirls blaring on the tv. oh the French.

Tomorrow the tourism continues- early Eiffel, Lourve-viewing (the actual Da Vinci code movie was filmed there! ) i kid. We did, however, hear those exact words uttered in another langauge as the french guards carrying AK47s walked by....

The plan is to camp out on some bridge within viewing distance of the tower, but far enough away to be able to walk the 3-5 miles back to the hotel afterwards. Cheap champaign in tow, tomorrow will be a chaos-filled, possibly paitience-testing day camping out on the Seine.

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Amsterdam is our first post-2006 stop, with Berlin and London waiting in the wings. This trip has so far been amazing, and i'm interested in what the next and final week will bring....

until next year.

posted by Kevin @ 12:06 AM