Hello again friends! Finding time in our busy days to write this blog is a lot harder than I thought and it is really bugging me that I am falling so far behind. Mostly because the longer I wait to write each entry the more I forget the feelings and details. Right now I am on a night train on the way to Barcelona and am about three days behind on entries. I have taken lots of pictures and have already picked out a few that would go well with the stories I have shared with you, but on this mini computer and with my time constraints it is difficult to add them right now. I will probably go back later and add them, so come back later!
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Thursday was probably my least favorite day so far in Paris, perhaps because it started off with crappy breakfast. They do say it’s the most important meal of the day! We had breakfast at the café outside our hotel and I shouldn’t have been surprised at the poor food/service as they haven’t been as friendly as some throughout our whole stay, but they are really the most convenient option for small things like coffee. I will give them props for providing us with fresh squeezed orange juice. I’ll tell ya though, it’s not as great as it sounds. It was lukewarm and extremely thick and pulpy. I prefer my orange juice with no pulp and to be cold- I guess I’m just a minute maid kinda girl.
The big event for the day was to be the Louvre, the biggest and most famous museum in the world! We got there early and skipped the lines, and although I knew it was the world’s biggest, nothing prepared me for just how big. It was the biggest building I’ve ever seen. Period. It’s wings had wings upon wings who had wings. Ridiculous! I spent the majority of the day with my mouth open, marveling at the beautiful/weird/interesting paintings, sculptures, and artifacts.
I’m glad we went, but I had a few complaints. For one, apparently it is very difficult to air condition a building of that size, and carrying a bag, scarf, jacket, audio guide, and camera made the 5 bajillion steps going up and down extremely HOTTTT! We were all sweating throughout the duration. We saw many famous works, the most notable of which was the Mona Lisa, and again in truth I was rather disappointed. There were gobs of people crowding the painting and it was roped off so that you couldn’t get close enough to really see it. I took a few photos and left, throwing a few bows on the way because people were being real assholes/pushy. I couldn’t decide if the other artists with paintings in the room should feel honored that they were asked to share it or disappointed that all of their work was largely ignored next to the famed painting.
We took a break for lunch at which point Michael decided he had had enough of the museum and we agreed to meet him after we finished looking around. After splitting from him we went back into the museum and discovered a large crowd of people had gathered, many were carrying large banners and flags and a man was speaking excitedly into a megaphone (in French, duh). Museum security came out of the wood work and despite all of the commotion they seemed pretty calm. We were extremely confused and couldn’t tell if they were celebrating something or if they were angry. I can tell you that a museum is one of the last places we expected to encounter this situation and we didn’t know if we should be alarmed or if it was normal. I asked a cute guy next to us what was going on and he basically said that actors (and make up artists?) were protesting something and that they were very angry but it was too complicated for him to explain in English. It was very interesting to see the reaction of the museum security; it seemed that as long as the demonstration remained peaceful they were content to let it proceed. We didn’t stick around although I kind of wish we had.
Eventually we left the museum and met up with Michael who had amused himself by bar hopping while we were occupied at the museum. We decided to explore the area and ended up walking down the Seine River which had lots of street vendors peddling various souvenirs and books. To our surprise (I guess you could say I spent the week in a state of perpetual surprise :-P) we encountered a young girl who approached Michael and offered him a wedding band she had “found” on the ground. We immediately recognized it as a scam, as the ring was obviously not his and she was not very good at her trade. I waved her off but Danielle swears she saw the girl’s hand damn near inside Michael’s pocket (once again, Americans-1, Pick Pockets-0)! I couldn’t help but stare at the girl as I tried to figure out her scam, and to my amusement she hissed at me to”F*** off”-probably the only English she knew, I reckoned J. She walked on ahead of us and we saw the shameless girl try the scam on five other tourists right in front of us! After she realized we weren’t going to interrupt her she seemed not to mind that we followed her, and would turn around to kind of smile at us after some of her failed attempts. We noticed that she had two older women ahead of her that were clearly with her, and a few days later on the same strip we saw another woman running the same scam and concluded that they were part of a band of gypsies who ‘claimed’ the area.
Apparently while bar hopping Michael had acquired a healthy buzz and after all the shopping he began to insist that we stop for more beer. Well hell it was only 4 in the afternoon so we tried to space it out some but eventually ended up taking shelter from the rain at a little sidewalk café on some side street. True to form, Michael began double-fisting beer and being his usual charming self. The poor waitress spoke very little English and Michael was giving her a hard time. It was rather embarrassing and I was sure the young woman would spit in my cappuccino, so I tried to communicate to her to ignore him. To our amusement she definitely got the message and apparently knew enough English to assure me that she understood and “not to worry for she had a boy like him at home!” Hahahaha.
The rain stopped and we resumed our wandering and stumbled upon an ice cream shop that was pretty awesome. It was similar to Cold Stone Creamery with the many different flavors and waffle cones, but the texture was completely different than what we were used to.
At this point Michael was 5 beers in and insisting on more- and it was still only about 6pm. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but we weren’t looking to spend the next 8 hours binge drinking and encouraging his drunken obnoxiousness. Besides, unless you like beer, liquor here is about $13 bucks a pop! Despite our discouragement, we lost, Michael won, and he disappeared into the city streets without so much as a cell phone or a map. Oy vey. The possibilities ran through my mind: Pick pocketed? Ass kicking? Hopelessly lost? Arrested? We supposed that we could handle most of those except that if he was arrested they probably wouldn’t let him call internationally and so he could sit in jail and we wouldn’t even know for days. Anyway, his wandering off kind of put everyone in a bad mood and next thing you know we were spending almost an hour trying to figure out how to get back to the hotel from the metro stop we were at. One thing led to another and BAM, our first big blow up. We ended up taking a taxi home in stony silence.
So as you can see, Thursday pretty much blew. Friday went much better, and I’ll tell you about that asap!
<3 Ashley
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