Jennifer L | Blue Wave Studio

paris was absolutely wonderful and so pretty. the city is a close competitor to my favorite city of venice. it has something to do about the buildings with the iron gates on the roof, the view along the seine river, and the just the general feeling you get while walking around the streets of paris.

we started from barcelona where we caught a short train to cerbere (france) and then caught a night train from there. this actually worked out really well because instead of spending over a hundred euros per person on the only night train which happened to also be a hotel train to paris from port bou, a frequent transfer point from spain, we only spent 35 euros total for the both of us. we lucked out again and shared a compartment with a mother and her 16 month old daughter. i was embarassed when i tried to make small talk and asked her how old her son was. hey, babies look alike when they’re young! we agreed that the french night train was a whole lot better than the one we had taken earlier. we got bottles of water and a complementary pack of towelettes and earplugs and the beds were actually made this time.

while at our transfer point to the night train, julie found the bathroom at the train station, the really bad stinky smell and the lack of toilet seats (only the squatters were there) made a lot of sense afterwards, when we realized that she had taken us to a men’s bathroom and not a unisex bathroom (yes the absurdity of the idea of a unisex bathroom wasn’t very clear at the time then). as she ran past a man in the doorway of the bathroom who looked really confused, the man went back outside to check out the next door, which turned out to be a room with actual toilets aka the women’s bathroom! it’s been the running joke during the rest of the trip whenever we don’t know where we’re going that julie is taking me to the men’s bathroom! in any case, i think that was the first time i used a men’s bathroom and boy did it stink… i don’t know you boys deal with that. i’ve been told that at stadiums, you have troughs for peeing. i wonder if that stinks as bad as the bathroom at the cerbere train station.

to add to our tour of churches in europe, we visited both notre dame in the ile de la cite, a small island in paris and sacre coeur.

notre dame had similar architecture to the gothic church we visited in barcelona and it had the most amazing stained glass windows. although, many of the stained glass windows weren’t all biblical, the colors were amazing.

it took us awhile to get up to sacre coeur which is atop the montmatre area.

taking over 650 steps to get to the top of its dome, many of which were neverending spiraling stairs without any room to stick out your elbows, the panoramic view of paris was amazing – you could see the rooftops of paris and the eiffel tower in the distance.

we also visited the popular paris landmarks – eiffel tower, arc de triomphe, and the champs-elysses and satified our cravings for belgian waffles with chocolate, french fries (with really salty ketchup), crepes (julie will claim that i got drunk from apple cider), brie, and bagettes.

our waiter at chartier was really bad at service, but the steak and fries were scrumptious. we learned that when ordering meat, though, you should order up in terms of how it’s cooked because meat is generally overdone in the states. the best breakfast we’ve had, i would say, was the breakfast that was included with our paris accomodations at the hotel gerando. we had croissants, baguettes, butter, and jam, with orange juice and tea – a typical french breakfast.

the rodin museum in paris also had some of the most amazing sculptures. learning about how the bronze sculptures are made, i can’t imagine how long and tedious it must be to produce just one sculpture! my favorite was called “the kiss” made of marble – it really captured the romantic moment of a kiss. and of course, we got to see le penseur aka the thinker in the garden.

our new year’s eve experience was definitely a memorable one – of both craziness and insanity. we had heard from various people that fireworks were going to be on display at the champs-elysses and so we set off to the new year’s scene. unfortunately, everyone and their mother had the same idea and what seemed like all of paris came out for new years. getting on the metro required skills. i was squished into the doors and had the people behind me pushed even harder, i would have had bruises as a souvenir. it was like sardines! when we got to the arc de triomphe, there were soooo many people out there. and once the clock struck midnight, it was a bit anti-climactic. the only fireworks we saw were those that people set off on their own. it freaked me out a little when we saw the police come out with riot gear, but it seemed like they didn’t do a thing. there was a huge traffic jam around the arc de triomphe. people were cruising around the arc and sitting out their car windows and hanging out the sun roof yelling like crazy people. and the people on the streets were cheering them on and yelling back to them. the french really needed to beef up their logistics though – although they closed off the trocadero, the popular location to get an unobstructed elevated view of the eiffel tower, i was utterly surprised that they didn’t close off the streets around the arc de triomphe since it was very clear that people were just driving around that area for the novelty of it all.

our attempt to go home was even more madness. we had gone down into the metro tunnel, as did everyone else. having walked from the arc de triomphe to the trocadero, we had hoped that the people traffic would die down, yet this was definitely not the case. we got stuck in the metro passage tunnel with no way to go either way for more than 45 minutes – literally being squished with everyone else with no room to even move your arms. it was a good thing that neither one of us was claustrophobic or we would have gone crazy. a few people pushed through because a guy had hurt his foot, although, we weren’t sure if they were faking it and considered to even fake being hurt ourselves. one family was crazy enough to bring their child and baby stroller. the stroller was being passed overhead since there was no room for the stroller on the ground and julie got hit with one of the wheels. another crazy lady was screaming at the top of her lungs as she pushed her way through. we couldn’t tell what she was saying, but she appeared drunk and she may have been screaming because she didn’t like being pushed, but everyone was being pushed. after what seemingly felt like eons, we finally got to the metro gates and as it turned out, the metro staff were controlling the flow of traffic through the gates. one would think that they would control the madness that was outside the gates, but that was not the case. again, logistics problem.

the madness at the metro station (words just can’t describe):

i was really surprised at my recollection of french as i was able to read the information explaining the complementary gift from the night train and the screens at the metro station. because of that, we found out that the metro was free starting at 5:00pm new year’s eve and that certain trains were running all night which was really cool, but probably contributed to the metro station madness. i noticed a few tourists were still paying for their fares at the gate and i wondered if they only put the notice in french on purpose.

one of the other things we did on new year’s eve was our laundry. having travelled with recycled clothes, we were glad to have clean clothes to wear even if the laundry was expensive (6.80 euros for 6 kg – one small load, about $8.60). we were really confused because the machines didn’t have coin slots, rather there was one machine which controlled them all. i couldn’t remember the word for detergent, so it was a good thing a local parisien who was also washing his clothes there helped us out. it would not have been very funny if we had washed all our clothes with bleach.

new year’s eve was quite an experience. what was fun was the random people who would yell happy new year in french – bonne annee – some guy walking down the street said it to us out of the blue, a random guy walking by the laundromat opened the door as we were doing our laundry and yelled it, a guy yelled it out the window of a packed metro train as it was leaving, one of the guys sitting out the window of a car cruising around the arc de triomphe yelled it. unfortunately, one of the downsides to new year’s eve, was that many of the places closed early, so i will definitely have to visit the louvre and louis vuitton another day. but then again, i know i’ll be back again someday.

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