For all of the qusi-negative things I’ve heard of Paris, I had a preconception of liking Paris but not loving it. Many people I have spoken to have said that, in comparison to other European cities, Paris is a bit overrated. After having been there for 4-ish days, though, I must say: I disagree.
The same goes for the people. Many different people have told me Parisians are rude and hate people who cannot speak French. I’m not sure who these people were talking about, but everyone (save the workers at our hostel) was nothing but nice to us. I won’t say people were as friendly as they were in Antibes or Nice, but that’s to be expected; Paris is a large city.
As I said last entry, I only completed my thoughts of the Southside concert and previous week’s journey en route to Paris. That goes to show you the literally 3-ish days I have been in Trier in the last few weeks, but I’d say it has been well worth it.
So, Paris: we arrived in Paris after fighting the difficult-to-understand ticket buying process for the metro system around 12:30am. I’ll note the metro later, but allow me to paint a brief picture of the hostel we stayed in: the morning before we arrived (about 12 hours prior), the entire block to the left of our hostel caught fire and was still smoldering and crowded by fire fighters. Oh boy.
The hostel, ironically called “Friends Hostel,” could not be farther from its name; the staff was wholeheartedly rude and sexist, and the neighborhood… well, let’s just say it wasn’t exactly friendly. BUT, the price was right, it was located literally across the street from a metro station, and it was not very far from the rest of key places of Paris via the metro… so it worked.
After checking in, part of our group who had made reservations later than the initial 6 of us found out that the hostel, due to the fire, only had 2 beds for 3 people. So two of the Japanese girls, poor things, had to share a bed the first night and change hostels for the remaining nights. Fun fun!
Anyway, we did finally get to sleep for a minute, and after waking up at the ungodly time of 7am, we made for Paris.
A brief note on Paris’s metro system: it’s easy to understand and navigate, but you’d better have coins to use it. The ticket machines are all automated, and only accept coins and prepaid rail cards. Each pass is something like 1.70 Euros, and ten passes cost 12 Euros. Should you not have 12 Euros in coins, you’re pretty much screwed.
Or so we thought. Come to find out, it’s common practice to bypass the metro entry control systems. At any stations with turnstiles, you can use a single ticket and, provided you’re careful not to turn it a complete turn as you walk through it, you can squeeze as many people as you like through on a single ticket. No one was watching anywhere we went, so unless the station had the Barcelona-styled full doors for one entry per ticket, we just all squeezed through on one ticket, which is valid for 2 hours.
The weather, unfortunately, was bipolar the first day. We woke up to rain and cold. I would not say it was as cold as it was at Southside Music Festival, but it was fairly miserable. So, to escape this, we decided our first stop would be the Louvre.
It’s huge, that’s about all you can say. You couldn’t see everything in there in under a week, even if you looked at each piece for only ten seconds. Yes, I saw the Mona Lisa (we all did, but we broke into small groups or, in my case, individual for the visit), and no, it was not impressive. But I expected that. It was hilarious to see so many people huddling around the small portrait, though.
Did I mention how huge the Louvre is? Apparently it was originally a palace which was added on to over and over through the years, so it truly is a complex. The pyramid thing with the fountains probably would have given the kings that lived there a stroke, but I thought they were quite cool. We even saw this automated cleaner climbing up and down the pyramid, just as a creepy crawler cleans a pool… nifty!
Being that I’m not that into art, I can’t really comment on the finer points of the Louvre. Still, I can appreciate how epic the buildings are and the art within them (although I still prefer the Vatican). The fact that it is free for students and EU citizens between 18-25 is not bad either, although I paid the traditional 10 Euro entry fee due to my ignorance of this fact at first.
Also note the length of the lines. We found the original line spanning the entire length of a shopping mall that joins into the Louvre underground, but luckily figured out that there are more than one entrance. So, rather than wait in the long que to get in, we found another entrance and got in almost instantly! Luck.
I won’t detail the rest of the day, being that it’s difficult to describe every detail, but needless to say after two hours we were pleasantly pooped of art and explored the city. Paris is huge, and there is much to see… and it’s quite beautiful, so there is no possibility of boredom.
We did make it to Notre Dame in the afternoon. Just as any other cathedral, it’s quite gorgeous. Unfortunately, we did not get to go inside due to the line’s length, but seeing it from the outside was game enough, and we enjoyed a mini-picnic on the bank of one of the branches of the river that causes the cathedral to be on a mini-island in the heart of Paris.
Thursday, our second full day there, we made first thing in the morning for the Eiffel Tower. It opens at 9:30, so get there around 9am as we did and avoid the long line that forms soon thereafter. Students get a partial discount, so the elevators to the top only cost around 7.50 Euros, which isn’t bad!
Man, was it worth the trip up. Again, it was a bit overcast in the morning and cold at the top, but oh it was a great view! The tower itself is actually nicer than I was expected. Although it was outwardly ugly in terms of raw brown-painted metal beams everywhere, when you see it up close and look at it as a larger picture, it’s quite magnificent!
The top even has a small room with wax figures of Edison and Eiffel that look eerily real. Apparently Eiffel used to entertain guests such as Edison at the top in a small apartment… who would have thought? I sure hope they had the elevators we took, because that would be a LOT of stairs.
After spending a little more than an hour in the tower, we again explored the city for the rest of the day. We stumbled upon a huge protest in a large park below the tower, and it was certainly classically French. The protest, from the best I can understand, was against the president… but you would never guess it was a protest. Really, it was more of a party than anything else… complete with a stage and band, food/drink booths, and people dressed up in the garb of whatever profession they belonged to. I was amused.
Some of the girls, naturally, wanted to shop, so the evening was dominated by a bit of mall hopping. I was not interested (surprise), so I claimed a bit of Starbucks (yes, Paris is full of them… happiness!), a crepe and Belgian waffle, and wondered about a bit myself.
When night came, I realized I had missed the pub crawl I originally wanted to join. Oops. While some of them rested, I walked about the ghetto district we were staying in searching for a supermarket when, to my surprise, I stumbled upon an amateur music festival minutes from our hostel. French rap. Even more surprising than my finding of this random Thursday night festival was my surprise at how entertaining the French rappers were! I stayed for the better part of two hours, thoroughly enjoying the entertainment and cheap French beer.
Upon my return to the hostel and the rest of the group rested, we got on the metro again from the hostel after resting for a few minutes and headed to the red light district to see the Moulin Rouge! It was quite neat to see the famous windmill I’ve seen in the movie of the same name, but the entry was something like 80 Euros per person with a line spanning at least four blocks.
So, we bought bottles of wine in a still-open supermarket and explored a bit, making our way up the only large hill in Paris to a cathedral with a view of the city. I have no idea what it was called, but the view was quite nice!
Friday, our last day in Paris, we decided to visit Versailles, the former seat of the French monarchy and site of the massive and famous French Royal Palace. Versailles is merely a thirty or so minute train ride from the city, and we reached it easily minus hopping the wrong train and having to change a few times.
Versailles itself isn’t much to brag about, but the palace is truly fit for kings; even the iron fences are [at least painted] gold! In my opinion, once you’ve seen one palace/castle, you’ve seen them all… but it was still well worth going in, especially considering it was free. It was Vatican and Louvre-scaled and styled, and honestly it’s hard to say much else.
Having seen so many magnificent buildings and artwork, the “wow” factor simply becomes numb at this point. Even so, you would NEVER see anything even comparable in America… or likely any other part of the world save Europe.
After returning to Paris, the girls wanted to shop again, so two of us (the girl who largly organized the trip from Bulgaria) found a few bottles of French sparkling wine (1.90 Euros a piece, I may add) and some cheese, and decided to dine on wine and cheese on the bridge known as the romantic bridge in Paris while watching the sun set behind the Eiffel Tower.
I have no idea what the bridge is called, but it has a metal lattice railing containing hundreds and hundreds of locks (as in MasterLocks and whatnot) denoting the love of hundreds upon hundreds of couples. How romantic… although, sarcasm aside, it truly is. In fact, I must say: in terms of romantic cities, I don’t think I’ve seen anywhere that can compare to Paris.
For whatever reason, drinking alcohol is not allowed on the bridge (only the one bridge—everywhere else in the city is game), so we had our wine and cheese anyway. Just more discretely. It reminded me of being back in America! Still, it was quite lovely, and the two of us had a great time before heading to see the Eiffel tower at night for our last time in Paris.
At first, I was not very excited about seeing the tower at night; how much different could it be than it was in the day? Wrong. It was awesome! The entire tower glows golden all night, and upon each hour the whole tower sparkles for 5-10 minutes via an elaborate series of strobe lights. Wow! It was magnificent, and I took ridiculous numbers of pictures from various spots with great views of the tower.
Reluctantly, per the metro cut-off time of around 1am, we returned to the hostel. Unfortunately, we had to catch the train back to Trier by 7am the next morning, so waking up the next morning was fun to say the least.
And, as I said, three of us had to go straight into class for a seminar on Creativity from the train station. We were roughly 30 minutes late (10:30am rather than 10am), and within ten minutes of our arrival I had to give my presentation. While unexpected (I thought I would get to go on Sunday due to our trip), it went relatively smoothly; the seminar was the most loosely organized class I’ve ever attended, and the Ph.D. student directing the class was quite chill.
I had heard earlier in the week that Trier was hosting something called the Alt Stadt Fest, meaning old city festival, so after class I decided to check it out. I’m so glad I did! The city closed the entire pedestrian district surrounding the ancient Porta Negra and set up 5 different stages with various local-ish bands playing [so I was told] Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Many booths were set up to sell various crafts and foods, too, and Saturday night was absolutely packed.
I spent most of the night hanging out with other Erasmus students, spending the better part of the evening watching a Bee Gees cover band. Yes, I watched them… and yes, I liked them. I doubt the Bee Gees themselves could have put on a better show! Although I only knew the most popular songs, the band was quite entertaining and made me realize how you can get high-quality shows for free, much unlike the expensive Southside festival tickets I bought earlier…
After Sunday’s class, I also attended the festival with a different group of friends, but as it was the last day of the three day fest, it died down relatively soon. That suited me just fine; I was home before 1am for once, and was quite content to read the magazine called Tybee Breeze, the free publication my grandmother sent me in the mail noting the events of my home island, and sort some pictures from Paris. I did, after all, take over 700 pictures of the short trip… almost as many as I took the entire week of Krakow, Barcelona, and Rome!
This week should be relatively calm. I have to finish two presentations: the first on General Motors and its marketing and branding, and the second on a film called “Lonestar” for my American Minorities in Film class. Neither should be too difficult, and I have actually already done most of the work needed for them; it’s time for finishing touches.
I also need to write two papers: the first on Kurt Vonnegut and his assertion that time is meaningless, which should be relatively easy being that it is only 6 pages or so and I’ve already made an outline. The second paper will be a bit more of a pain, though; it is about John Kennedy and his speaking style, and must be upwards of 15 pages. I’ve not started on it.
Unfortunately for me, my incessant grumbling about the weather has finally paid off and the weather is now awesome. That is good, minus the fact that I need to do work and not hang out outside all day like I want to be. You can’t win for losing sometimes…
This Saturday, I think I may join a few people and visit Koln, a city relatively close to Trier, just for a day trip. I’m also thinking of doing something the weekend of July 7-10, as it is my last truly free weekend in Trier. I’ve thought of Venice or Alghero, Italy, being that I can fly there for relatively cheap… but I just found out a big party is also happening on July 8, which would be far cheaper for me in the long run. It depends on how froggy I’m feeling by then.
Finally, I spent the better part of last night organizing my final plans for travel. As of now, although I haven’t yet bought the tickets due to waiting on confirmation from my cousin stationed with the Navy in Rota, Spain, my plan is thus:
Leave Trier July 19 (Tuesday) for Rota.
Leave Rota for Madrid July 23
Leave Madrid for Rome [again] July 25; visit a cousin and see Gaeta, Italy
Leave Rome for London July 30
Leave London for Amsterdam August 3
Leave Amsterdam for Dublin August 6
Leave Dublin for Chicago, IL, August 8
Leave Chicago [after a day layover to see the city] for Atlanta, GA, August 9
Drive home August 9 or 10!
How’s that for a travel schedule? At least this time it won’t be largely 2 day turnovers; that’s what gets hectic. Only Madrid will have that, and I’m only going to Madrid because it’s cheaper to fly to from Rota. I could have gone back to Barcelona, but I decided it would be dumb to go to a city I’ve already seen when there are so many other places I could go.
But we shall see; RyanAir changes its prices every ten minutes it seems, so when I finally book these tickets (whose price from Trier all the way to London is less than 200 Euros total… I had already bought tickets from London to Amsterdam to Dublin to Chicago to Atlanta), the price may be right to slightly modify this. Who knows!
For now, I’m tired of planning. At the same time, I’ve got lots to do including another class today, so until later… au revoir!
Facebook link to Paris:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2134850821541.2122662.1554191092&l=16b790ee27
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2134940143774.2122663.1554191092&l=c5c23ed2cc
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