Vive le France! Part Deux

Want to know one interesting fact I learned about France during our trip to Paris…for some reason, their promotional posters for the movie Hangover 2 call it “Really Bad Trip 2.”  At first I thought, well, that must be the closest translation…then I realized the poster was in English…very confusing.  Ah, the French and their quirky contradictions…

-  As always, you can find all the pictures in the photo album.

-  We kicked off our journey with a short train ride from Cambridge to London.  Even though the ride was only forty-five minutes, I felt like I became significantly stupider (case in point…I don’t think that’s even a word) during it.  I guess that’s what sitting within listening distance of two high school age girls will do to you…

-  Second leg of the trip was from London to Paris on the Chunnel train.  We were pretty excited when we boarded and immediately behind us came about 53 or so 12-year-olds. Apparently we ended up in the same car as a French field trip.  Turned out better than I expected as we got to speculate on whether the rather loving boy-girl duo sitting in front of us was boyfriend/girlfriend or brother/sister.  The jury is still out.  Overall, the train was excellent…I would highly recommend it.

Fine looking train

Fine looking couple

-  Our journey from the train station to the hotel was a bit rough…but we managed.  Since we never plan ahead, we had to kind of guess our way onto the subway and manage to avoid the guys trying to sell fake tickets (or something…I remember they do this with cabs in New York).  Unfortunately, my makeshift Google map wasn’t so accurate and we ended up getting off the subway several stops too soon.  We actually knew our hotel’s name though and had a rough idea of the address…so we were good. 

Our Hotel

-  Since our hotel was right down the street from the Arc de Triomphe, we checked that out extensively our first night. I’d heard from reputable sources that this was perhaps the best sight in Paris…I would agree.  It was very arc-like.

-  Ate dinner outdoors at Vesuvio on the Champs-Elysees.  Weather was brilliant, food was magnifique, and the waiter loved us.  Can’t beat that.

-  On day 2, we checked out the Eiffel Tower (from the ground), the Louvre (from the outside), and rode around during the afternoon on the hop-on, hop-off tour buses.  I can’t emphasize enough how much I love those things. 

Moulin Rouge (great movie, by the way)

 -  We hopped off at a couple of places…most notably the Sacre-Coeur Basilica.  This is the pretty white church up on the hill overlooking the city (see below).  I’ve failed to mention yet that all of the city was packed with people.  All the big sights…and many of the lesser ones…were jammed.  Paris is definitely doing ok with their tourism right now, that’s for sure.  Anyway, as we walked in the front gates of the Sacre-Coeur grounds, the usual collection of street hawkers converged.  In case you’re interested, the going rate for miniature Eiffel Towers and such seems to be 1 euro.  New twist at this place though, a couple of guys stopped Michelle and I and wanted to put some string on our fingers.  I resisted, knowing that this would ultimately result in me paying money.  He was quite persistent though and promised that he wasn’t going to cut off my finger (that was a relief, I guess…though that had really never crossed my mind).  They ended up making us matching sacred bracelets that would ensure us peace and love forever. My guy wanted 10 euros each.  I felt that was a bit steep…so I offered zero.  We settled on five for the pair.  What a sucker…we got freaking peace and love forever for just five euros!

-  Made our traditional stop at the Hard Rock Café on Sunday night.  Now we’ve been to Hard Rock’s in Barcelona and Paris.  Turns out the people at the table next to us were also from Florida (according to our waiter).  We didn’t interact, obviously.  The whole multi-lingual waiters thing in Paris (and other European cities) makes me wonder, do they get paid a lot better than in the States?  I mean, I heard our waiter speak at least 3 or 4 languages just while we were there with different customers. I’m such an idiot compared to these people.

-  We finally made it inside the Louvre on Monday.  Pretty impressive place.  Right when we went in, I was like, “Forget the rest of this crap…let me at the Mona Lisa.”  In a matter of minutes…and after a bit of crowd jostling…mission accomplished.

Yeah, take that other works of art!

Renoir!  (Always reminds me of the movie Amelie now...love that movie)

Degas

Monet

-  After seeing Mona, we were able to look at some of the lesser works at our leisure.

High Five (classic)

No High Five

 -  We also got inside Notre Dame.  Solid church.  Nice flying buttresses.  No hunchbacks.  

-  Did I mention we hit up McDonald’s on the Champs at least twice for snacks/meals?  We really like to get a bit of local flavor whenever possible.

-  Going up in the Eiffel Tower involved a Disney-esque wait in line.  During the wait, I was asked approximately 97 times if I wanted to buy a miniature Tower.  One time, however, a guy walked right in front of us and didn’t even ask…I was a bit offended.  Unfortunately, we only got to go up to the second level (due to the crowds)…which was about the only disappointment of the trip.  Spectacular views though, especially with the city lights at night.

"I'm so hyped up right now!!"

-  All the crowds at the Eiffel Tower got me thinking…maybe I could rig up a big monument back home in Titusville.  I know we have the space center and all…but what we need is a big, tall thing.  Something people can pay to go up in…look about for a few minutes…and leave.  Then we could attract street hawkers to sell miniature whatevers.  The first two I’ll recruit are the Kenyan and Senegalese gentleman that made our bracelets…they were brilliant.  I think this idea has a lot of potential.

-  I would have to say that Paris is probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever been to…even better than Titusville.