2008- The Most Romantic City on Earth- Paris!

-Paris-

Paris is one hour ahead of London. We are now 8 hours ahead of Edmonton.

We arrive in Paris at 11:30am, and somehow find our hotel called the Three Crowns. Yes, you read that right, hotel. Chelsie, being very wise, figured by this point in our travels, we could be very weary and in need of a private room in a hotel to really catch up on some rest. Especially after our gong-show night in the train station with no sleep. She is so smart!

The hotel is located quite close to the Arc De Triomphe. This is sort of what our view is like of it, but from farther away. We don't go see it up close. I think this had something to do with the fact that we just don't care. We don't really care about much here. I don't know why, maybe we were too worn out. But that is basically our attitude towards our time in Paris in general.

Our room is ready, and it faces into the middle of a tiny courtyard. People's homes have windows that all face into this courtyard, and lines of laundry are strung up as high as I can see out the window in the small space.

The French accents are blowing me away, just like the English ones did at first. I love hearing the people talk!

We take a huge long nap as soon as we get into the room and settle in. The curtains close and the room is black like night. This is already SO much better than a hostel! Not to mention a private bathroom. What a luxury.

It's hot in Paris, 26 Celcius today! In the next couple of days we plan to go to the Eifel Tower, the Louvres and Notre Dame.

Our long nap takes us to bed time, still exhausted, we head to bed and plan for big adventures tomorrow.

In the morning we find a high-end grocery store. It's all organic and fresh, and we are loving it. Peanut butter has become a cheap staple in our diet as well.

As we walk around, we look for a place to eat lunch, and begin to realize the difficulty of our language barrier. We try to order sandwiches (like a french Subway), and have a hard time telling them what we want on them. It's not as easy to speak to the locals anymore!

We go visit a very popular park. I don't know the name of it, it's French I'm sure. It's literally stuffed full of people covering every free piece of space. We barely manage to find a bench to sit on. The weather is incredible, and everyone is out to enjoy it. People watching has become one of our favourite pastimes. So many people to see here, lovers laying on the grass, kids running around, parents reading books, groups of young people just hanging out. There is definitely a different feel in Paris. It's romantic in so many different ways, not just the "young people in love way". It's as if life isn't real here, people just have fun, hang out, and admire the beautiful city and all it has to offer. Le sigh.

Day 2:

I have no idea what constitutes "French food". We order pizza to share at a little french restaurant.
We then spend the day doing our sightseeing.
Notre Dame...whoa! Huge! and beautiful. We get in for free, don't ask me why, I can't remember. It's so grande inside, and hard to get the feel when it's just noisy with tourists. But I loved it, the stained glass alone was so cool.
We move on to the Eiffel Tower. We jump on an RER to get there. RER= double decker train. Sounds crazy, I know. Here is a photo though so you get the idea.
Instead of walking up the tower, we sit in the park beside it and just look at it, take a few pictures- you know the kind where it looks like you are squishing it with your fingers. Like I said, we just weren't feeling the tourist vibe here. It's a beautiful sunny day again, and friggen hot. It's at least 26 Celsius. There are SO many people trying to sell you little ornaments in the shape of the tower.  They have them on huge rings around their arms with tons of little ornaments hanging off. You almost have to be flat out rude to get them to leave you alone, especially if you look like a vulnerable, white, Canadian girl. The park is crowded (unlike in the photo I show you), and we people watch some more.

Paris has a very different feel than London. It basically feels much more unsafe. (Okay, in retrospect as I read what I have written in my travel journal, I realize that we were staying in the most posh area of London, and never really hit the gnarly sides of town, which every city has- hence, felt safer.)
But I do feel like I could be more easily pick-pocketed here, or get picked up by some dude. The men here are way more flirtatious and bold!
Couples (or families too) are way more affectionate in public. In Edmonton, that kind of PDA would not be overlooked, that is for sure.
We probably should have seen the Eiffel Tower at night, it's apparently way more mesmerizing. But Chelsie and I don't really care. I think it's harder to want to do those sorts of things when you wish your significant other was there to experience it with you.

We check our emails after (still homesick), and I get an email from Kenton saying that he is emotionally in tact and hanging out with friends. Thank goodness. I knew this time away would be hard on us both. He is worried for my physical safety and I am worried for his emotional well being. He also tells me that he sold his red Volkswagen. He had been trying to for a while, so yay!

Chelsie and I go for dinner and have the BEST dessert since entering France- creme brulee! She let's me tap the top of the hardened sugar surface with my spoon to get that satisfying "crack!" to the custard underneath. You can't come here and not have that.


This is our St. Christopher's hostel that we stay at after our night in the hotel. And this is the canal. Nice view from our room!

We try to take a stroll by the canal, and it is lined with people this evening. But the many groups of "creepy" men out that night throw us off, and we opt to stay in. We are staying at a hostel tonight, another St. Christopher's, but this one is considerably nicer than the last few of it's kind.
We are in a mixed room though, and the bunk beds are assigned. I have a "moron" sleeping underneath my bed (as I quote in my journal). At the crack of dawn I hear snoring and farting, and then he is getting up and getting his stuff together with his girlfriend to take off. My bed felt like it was on a stormy sea the way it shook and flew around because of how much this guy moved. Lovely.

This is a room similar to the one we stayed in. No, the monkey-teddy bear is not mine. Obviously.

This restaurant is the main floor of the hostel. Definitely a step up from the St. Christopher's in basically every place we have been so far!

After I get over being grumpy from my rude awakening that morning, we eat and head to the Louvres. We set aside a whole day to look at this place, because it is that big. It's incredible!
We see the Mona Lisa, numerous paintings, pottery, sculptures, tapestries, artifacts, and the craziest part of the whole place (to us)- Napoleon's Apartment. It was UNREAL. The luxury of his living space is hard to believe. My digital camera stops working as soon as we enter this part of the exhibit. Why me?

It takes us several hours to go through the entire place, and even then we are sure we missed a bunch of floors. My favourites were the white sculptures. I don't know if I will ever be able to fathom how someone can create those pieces of art.
Out of all of the "toursity" things we have done so far, this one is my favourite. I never read The Davinci Code either, so I have no idea what the excitement is about in that regard.
We are worn out, but we head to Montmarte, a part of the city where the movie Amelie was filmed. We spoil ourselves with another great dinner, totally loving the pastries and bread here in France, and call it a day.

I should mention that I overdose on chocolate croissants. Every time we pass a bake shop, we need a chocolate croissant. Each one is better than the next. This is our guilty pleasure the whole trip, and it's probably why we don't lose any weight from walking 6 hours a day on foot around each city we visit. We have found the 'perfect' balance of eating whatever we want and walking it off. Yum!

Chelsie and I both agree that we are looking forward to going home, despite how much fun we are having travelling around together. The stress of finding our way around, making sure we are safe, the toll our bodies are taking on crappy sleeps, etc, is really getting to us. We did not feel one bit settled in Paris, (could be the whole language barrier too is so much harder), and are looking forward to moving on again. But it's not going to get any easier. If anything, it will be more challenging to find our way around a smaller, less commercialized French town that knows even less english than Paris.
Well, at least we have Chelsie's dictionary to help us. Right?

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