Parisian

I will apologize in advance for my spelling. I know NOTHING about French.

After 16 long hours in the bus, we arrived in Paris on Monday 16 March. Actually, the bus trip was not bad at all. I slept nearly the entire time, and there were few enough people that Anna and I each got our own seats. We stopped every couple of hours for a rest break, and the driver would make an announcement (in Spanish, of course) every time. If I paid attention really hard, occasionally I could make how long the rest break would last. Once we reached what I assume was the French border, two police officers got on the bus and delivered a very bad piece of news: our passports will not get any stamps by driving across borders. Or at least it doesn’t look good. The officer flipped through my passport, compared my incredibly awkward picture to how I looked at 5:00am, and handed it back to me with a “merci.” I will be visiting 11 countries in total with little to no stamps to prove it.

Anna and I were wiped out after our bus trip, so we decided our best option would be to rest, relax, and catch up on email correspondence in order to store up energy for a touristy Tuesday. So that’s what we did. We wandered around our section of Montmartre for dinner, but not much else.

We started Tuesday with the New Europe free walking tour. I swear by New Europe; the company is brilliant. Their free walking tours (the guides work on tips-only) work as advertisements for their other tours. A tour of the city on the first day is also a great way to get your bearings and to help decide what sights you do and do not want to visit. We met at St. Michael’s fountain. We gawked at Notre Dame. We walked along Pont Neuf. (King Henry IV held a masquerade ball celebrating the opening of this new bridge. He had an artist chisel the faces of his guests across the width of the bridge, and by the looks of their faces, the wine was in abundance. This is also the bridge from Bourne Identity.) I took a picture of the fountain where Anne Hathaway threw her phone in The Devil Wears Prada. I got really excited when I saw the bridge where Big kisses Carrie in the last episode of Sex and the City. We walked through the Louvre (where 4 businessmen in power suits ate McDonald’s for lunch…talk about a funny sight) and around the Arc de Triomphe and in the runway gardens.

Our tour guide talked a great deal about World War 2 throughout the tour, but this was my favorite story. Napoleon (the nut-job he was) built himself a tomb. The tomb is positioned so that it is lower than the ground, leaving the observer no choice but to lean over the railing to have a look, inadvertently bowing to Napoleon. Hitler visited Paris only once, and he made a point to visit Napoleon’s tomb. Refusing to bow to the deceased emperor, he arranged for two of his soldiers to hold mirrors so that Hitler could get a look through the reflection; however, the soldiers held the mirrors at the wrong angle. When Hitler took a step backwards in order to get a glimpse of the tomb, he stepped on another soldier’s shoe and stumbled, his hat falling to the ground. Hitler scooped down to pick up his hat just as he realized that not only was he bowing to Napoleon, but he had also removed his hat, a sign of even greater respect. He threw a temper tantrum and ran out, not forgetting to arrange the immediate execution of the two soldiers who held the mirrors.

After the tour, Anna and I took a trip up the Eifel Tower. The top floor was closed, so we could only go to the second (but my fear of heights kept me from being too disappointed about that). The view was breathtaking, but in a way I would not have expected. I’ll get to that in a minute. After our descent back town to ground-level, we celebrated with a nutella crepe. Yum.

On Friday, our last day in Paris, we started off with an art museum. I generally do not enjoy art. I’ve never studied it. I have no talent for it. I have little patience with it. Some people do not like reading or listening to classical music; I do not like art. I did promise Anna, however, that I would visit a few museums with her, and so we visited the Musee d’Orsay. Anna chose the museum because while the Louvre has the most impressive collection of artwork stolen by Napoleon from the edges of the world, the Musee d’Orsay has the best Impressionist collection (Anna’s favorite). I will admit this in writing: I enjoyed the museum! I really like the Van Gogh collections; you cannot tell from pictures of his paintings how elaborate, colorful, and textured they are. An impossible task.

We finished off our last day in Paris with the New Europe tour of Montmartre. Paris used to be made of small, winding streets (like Montmartre is even today); when the inner city was demolished in order to build the long tree-lined boulevards we know today, Montmartre was made a tax-free residential area to encourage people to move there. Two groups took advantage of the tax break: the wealthy bourgeoisies and the starving artists. We saw the Moulin Rouge. We saw Van Gogh’s flat and his favorite restaurant. The owner of the restaurant allowed him to eat for free occasionally, and he purchased the only painting Van Gogh sold during his life. We saw where Picasso lived and his favorite restaurant as well. Picasso used to woo the waitresses with sketches to get free meals. When the owner found out, he told Picasso he could eat there occasionally in exchange for a few canvases a month; when Picasso hit the spotlight, the owner was able to retire to the south of France with his wardrobe full of Picasso originals. We saw the only vineyard left in Paris. We climbed the hill to the Sacre Coeur. GORGEOUS! The cathedral is glistening white! We also saw bits and bobs from the film Amélie, one of my favorites! We saw the café where she works, the market where she shops, and the carousel at the bottom of the hill from the Sacre Coeur from the final scenes.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Paris or not. As it turns out, I really did like Paris. It is a gorgeous city, and the buildings are so ornate. From the Eifel Tower, these gorgeous buildings spread as far as the eye could see, specked here and there with lush, green gardens. Paris is beautiful. But…since Edinburgh holds the key to my heart… I compare everything to it. Paris is beautiful because the buildings and the gardens are beautiful. It’s a superficial beauty, I suppose. On the other hand, Edinburgh—or Scotland in general—is beautiful because the land is beautiful. I miss Edinburgh.

We finished the tour and our trip to Paris with a Nutella crepe. Naturally

Pictures to come soon.