welcome my friends to paris

First of all, I just have to say that although I was excited to go to Paris, I'd heard that the people were rude and the city is dirty.  That was all somewhat true, but Paris still surpassed my expectations.  It helped that I had this song stuck in my head the entire time -- wish I could have found the actual scene to watch it, but Youtube has really cracked down on posting videos.  We took the Chunnel to Paris early Tuesday morning.  The Chunnel is basically a train that goes beneath the ocean and connects London and Paris.  I'd like to say that I found that really awesome, but since it's just a dark tunnel, you can't see anything and it doesn't seem all that amazing.  After we got to Paris we left our stuff at the hotel and headed to the Champs-Elysée and then the Arc de Triomphe.  You can actually climb stairs to the top of the Arc, so that was pretty cool.  Afterwards we walked to the Eiffel Tower and then we were able to climb that -- but only to the second level because the top was closed.  I kind of wanted to die by the time we finished the stairs (the Arc was over 350 steps and the Eiffel Tower was 806 up and 806 down.  We counted).  Then I felt depressed when I looked at the Eiffel Tower from farther away and realized that the second level isn't even halfway up.  But the view was still amazing and I'm glad to say that I got to climb it.  And, of course, we rewarded ourselves with crepes.  Let me just say that crepes in Paris are delicious -- the plain butter and sugar ones are the best.  We found a little crepe place in the Latin Quarter that serves the best crepes known to man.  That night we took a river tour on the Seine.  We got to see the "padlock bridge," which is a really interesting idea.  Couples write their names on a lock and hook it onto the bridge, then throw the key into the river to symbolize their love for each other.  I didn't get a picture of it, but I found one here if you're interested.  After the tour, we watched the Eiffel Tower light up.  It actually sparkles -- it's beautiful.

The next day, we went to Notre Dame.  Although I didn't see any hunchbacks swinging around up there, it was still amazing (and don't worry, if you're wondering what that awkward squatting/leaning picture is, we were trying to be hunchback look-alikes for the benefit of everyone who expected to find Quasimodo at Notre Dame).  We got to go into the treasury and see some of the relics, although I wasn't sure what most of them were because the French haven't realized yet -- or more likely don't care -- that English is the universal language and they write inconsequential things like signs and museum plaques solely in French.  Gotta love those people.  Spain gets it, Italy gets it . . . But whatever.  After Notre Dame, we went to La Conciergerie, which is where Marie Antoinette's cell was (and now the building is currently a Modern Art display -- I was genuinely scared of some of the exhibits).  Sainte-Chapelle was next.  It's a church with floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows.  It was incredible.  My picture couldn't do it justice.  Just imagine those windows on all four walls.  The entire church is basically made of glass.  We also managed to stop at Luxembourg Gardens before heading over to the Pantheon, where we saw the crypt where Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Louis Braille, and the Curies are buried.  Paris has a modern art museum called the Pompidou, where we saw some Kandinsky paintings (basically the only modern artist I like!  The colors he uses are beautiful).  Next was the Louvre (and meeting some American LDS missionaries on the way there because all the missionaries were meeting for a regional conference.  The church really does make the world smaller).  I got to see the Mona Lisa, which is way smaller than I thought it would be, and tons of other really famous paintings.  I was impressed.  You could spend days in the museum, but since we were all tired and our feet hurt, we probably didn't give it the time it deserved.

Thursday we started the day out with a trip to the Bastille market, which is basically a swap-meet full of jewelry, flowers, bread, and fish.  Did you know that shrimp have big black eyes and they look like little aliens staring at you from French fish carts?  I prefer the de-eyed, cooked and breaded shrimp that I eat at home.  Luckily we got some macaroons after, so I didn't have to think about the fish heads or big black shrimp eyes.  I had no idea what macaroons were, but I might be addicted to them now.  Family, prepare yourself for plenty of macaroon experiments this summer.  Sacré-Cœur was next.  It's a church on a big hill, and when we went there it was foggy and so beautiful (the picture I posted is a little scary, but trust me, that place was amazing when I wasn't standing in front of it looking giant and sleep-deprived).  We squeezed in the Moulin Rouge (don't frequent that neighborhood at night!  Or really any time for that matter) and the Paris Opera House.  Although the Louvre is much bigger, I really loved the Musée de Orsay.  We focused mostly on the Impressionism room, so I got to see tons of Monet (including his water lilies paintings), Degas, Renoir, Manet, and Pisaro.  I'd studied so many of the paintings there in art and humanities classes, so it was so cool to see them in real life.  I'm still not completely sure what the Hotel de les Invalides is, but we went there to see Napoleon's tomb.  That probably would have been way more interesting to me if I'd actually known any French history and seen the names of anyone buried there -- other than Napoleon -- before.

Later that night we headed back to Saint-Michel, near the Notre Dame, for dinner.  While we were sitting on the edge of a fountain waiting to meet up with some friends, we saw a man walking toward us unzipping his pants.  He proceeded to step into the (empty) fountain right behind us and . . . to borrow a term from The Other Side of Heaven . . . "relieve his waters."  I honestly didn't even know what to do.  I was torn between this desire to laugh and to make a run for it and yet I was frozen, just sitting there, listening.  Honestly the most awkward thing I've ever experienced.  Christi and I just sat and laughed so that we didn't feel so scarred by the trauma after the guy walked away, zipping up his pants as he went.  But our three-course (€10!! So cheap!!) dinner -- French onion soup, Burgundy beef stew, and crème brûlée -- more than made up for it.  I hadn't tried crème brûlée before, and honestly it didn't sound that amazing, but I was wrong.  It was delicious.  I've already decided to dedicate my summer to learning how to make macaroons and crème brûlée, but I've also decided I want to try to eat healthy and lose this Europe weight, so if you're interested in taking extra dessert off my hands, you know what to do.  I also tried pâté, which I wouldn't recommend unless you love duck liver.  But it was bound to happen after Ireland's black and white pudding incident.

Friday we checked out of the hotel and headed out to Versailles.  This palace is spectacular.  Everything is ridiculously ornate and flowery.  I can't imagine actually living there.  The gardens were also incredible, but since it's still cold, there were only empty fountains and shrubs and no flowers.  I'd love to see them again in the spring.

Paris is a beautiful city.  However, it does have its downsides -- it's dirty, it's smelly, people like to walk next to you and push you out of their way (even if you're not really in their way) and then say, "Pardon" like that somehow makes flinging someone off the sidewalk polite.  They hate having to speak in English, even though they all know it, and somehow seem to expect you to learn French because obviously it's way more useful for an American to learn French than Spanish, seeing as there are so many French immigrants in the United States.  I got in the habit of saying, "Sorry, my French isn't very good!" which is a stretch since I know a grand total of three French words (bonjour, merci, au revoir), but people had a tendency to be much more understanding after that.  Still, Paris was really great.  There are definitely very friendly and polite French people -- trust me, I met some very helpful and happy Parisians -- and the city itself is gorgeous.  And the food?  I was in heaven.  So although I have plenty of countries I'd like to see before I head back to Paris, I hope I get to visit again someday.