Wednesday
2 March 2011
5:15am Holly offers our departing prayer in the front hall. Picture four very hyper girls who are super excited about going to PARIS!!!!
5:25am We shiver outside the tube station waiting for it to open at 5:30. Why didn’t we leave five minutes later??
5:33am We watch an entertaining discussion between a London man and the tube worker opening the gate.
Man: Oh, take your time. I’m just waiting.
Worker: You in a hurry? We’re opening when we always open.
Man: No, the tube opens at 5:30. That is when every station opens.
Worker: This station is licensed to open at 5:33. It is 5:33. Look at the clock.
Man: Your colleagues open at 5:30 every #%!$ morning!
Worker: Maybe for you they do…
6:20am Our passports are stamped at the London St. Pancras Int’l Train Station! We bought Paris metro passes from the concierge and got euros from an ATM
6:53am We have all suddenly realized how very little sleep we got the night before and four hyper girls turn into four sleep-deprived young women trying to find the traincars so we can get two more hours of sleep… I finally found my seat, sat down, and… wanted to fall asleep. But didn’t. Because this handsome young French businessman sitting beside me wanted to talk to me about going to Paris. Oh the sacrifices a girl makes… We chatted for an hour and a half until he pulled out his i-phone to check his email. All it took was a five minute lull in conversation and I was gone.
Just so you know, the Eurostar trains have the best headrests for sleeping EVER.
<Skipping one hour ahead to Paris time>
10:25 am I wake up as we pull into the train station. My new French friend offers to show me to the metro and I happily took him up on the offer! Considering my group assignment was to figure out the metro system, I considered this very convenient. ;) My friend and I met up with Holly, Michelle, and Emily outside the train and we all walked to the metro. Everything we were told about the metro was true. It was crowded, dirty, stinky, fast, efficient, and not too terribly confusing.
11:00 am I walked out of the metro to feel Paris Sunshine on my face. Aahhhh… It felt so good. Across the river was Notre Dame cathedral in the middle of the bustling city. Michelle quickly took charge – her assignment was to figure out our river cruise. She took us straight to the dock where we bought tickets for the “BatoBus,” a hop-on, hop-off river cruise. Cruising down the river Seine was like a dream. I just stood out on the deck and felt the sun on my face. It was 45 degrees and a beautiful day. And I was in Paris.
Our boat stopped at lots of attractions throughout the day including the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, Hotel de Ville, Champs-Elysees, the Eiffel tower, St Germain-des-pres, and Notre Dame. One of our favorite stops was the Louvre. I knew it was a huge art museum, but little did I know...
Apparently, the Louvre was formerly a Royal palace, and boy do the French know how to build a palace! This made me double sad we didn’t have time to see Versailles. But, anyway, the Louvre was amazingly large and ornate and beautiful. Set up in three wings around vast gardens, its magnificence really stunned me. We took tons of pictures and just loved taking in the scenery.
We enjoyed just walking around at the different ports and I really just loved cruising down the Seine river and taking in the city views.
4:00pm We had travelled full-circle and made it back to Notre Dame where we got the best crepes ever. Really. They were amazing. I wish I could go back just for the crepes. There were four or five little crepe shops just all in a row on a street beside Notre Dame. My crepe was stuffed with slices of ham and melted cheese and it was basically one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. Really. We just stood by the cafes, 20 feet from Notre Dame, and ate our crepes while admiring the gargoyles and gothic architecture – cool, huh?
5:00pm Popped out of the metro in front of the Eiffel Tower ahead of our 5:30 ticket reservation. I couldn’t see it immediately, but as we turned the corner around the building in front of us, it suddenly loomed over me. The Eiffel tower was bigger than I ever dreamed. I feel like I’m saying that about everything in Paris. Basically, I thought Disney World was magical until I got to Paris.
As we walked up to the tower, we passed row after row of young salesmen all with little mats covered with little Eiffel towers they were trying desperately to sell to us. I was eye-ing one of the little towers when suddenly every salesman in the area starting sprinting! Behind were three policeman on bikes. It was basically one of the funniest things I have ever seen. It was like a game of cat and mouse. The policemen didn’t actually try to catch them, just scare them off. Apparently the safe zone was over the bridge or in the grass beyond the tower. Each salesman had handles on either side of his little blanket so he could just pick it up like a bag at any moment. And as soon as the policeman came back, they would just scatter again. I’ve never seen anything like it.
5:30pm Our reservations didn’t get us very far into the line. It still ended up taking us almost an hour to get into the elevator to the top.
It was freezing and the wind was blowing hard, but the view was amazing. We got up to the top right around sundown and we got to watch all the city lights go on. It was so cool to watch.
8:00pm All four of us are huddled around a map in a metro station trying to figure out which road our hotel is on. We finally found it and checked in. After a day full of walking and climbing stairs, finding out our room was on the third floor of practically vertical stairs was like death. We finally embraced our fate and as we crawled up the stairs, dear Holly, who is not exactly the most cheerful in the group, seemed to muster every particle of enthusiasm left in her being and let out a chipper “I LOVE Stairs!!!” I couldn’t stand it and just burst out laughing. This made it ten times harder and by the time we reached the top our legs and sides were aching and it took about five minutes to get the door unlocked.
8:30pm We finally convince ourselves to leave our hotel room.
9:00pm Pictures of the Arc de Triomphe! Pretty awesome, but not nearly as cool as the Eiffel Tower. On our way out of the Arc de Triomphe and starting down the Champs-Elysees, we argued about whether to combine our initials (Holly, Taylor, Emily, and Michelle) into Team THEM, Team METH, or Team T-HEM. Negotiations continue.
(“There’s no I in Team!” “No, but there is a ME when you move the letters around.”)
10:00pm We finally give up on finding crepes and go to a little chain sandwich shop called Pomme de Pain. I got a petite chocolat chaud (small hot chocolate), croissant, pain du chocolat (pastry w/ choc in the middle), and a framboises fromage (delicious yogurt/cheese thing with berries). Yes, that was my dinner. Don’t make fun. I was only in Paris for two days.
11:00pm Crash in the hotel. Out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
