Trois Jours a Paris

Here’s a quick recap of my three days in Paris plus one day in Le Havre. The glorious luxurious RyanAir flight landed at Paris Beauvais (which is actually 50 miles North of Paris = blatant lies by having Paris in the airport name) around 9am. After the really long shuttle to downtown Paris, we were walking down the Champs Elysees with our big backpacks and the Arc de Triumphe in sight when it was just about lunch time. We stopped at a ‘Quick’ the name of a fast food burger joint in France and Belgium, my childhood favorite by far. We walked to the hotel after that and checked in around 1pm.

The main parts of the day after that was the Louvre Museum and Notre Dame Cathedral. Did a lot of walk-around sightseeing, checking out the different monuments and such. Grabbed dinner at a McDonalds (fast food day=money saving day) then called it a night a little on the early side given that we had gotten 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Also, before I go any farther, I need to give two thank-you shout outs. First to my friend Eran and his sister who sent me an incredible itinerary of things to do and the order to do them all in the three days that I would be there. Also to my sister, who sent me a great list of stuff to do too. Without them I would've been lost not knowing what to do at all, so thanks to all of you, you really helped!

Jardin Luxembourg Eiffel Tower View

Thursday was productive. Versailles in the morning followed by a nice lunch in its gardens. After riding the metro back to Paris, we visited the Pantheon, which was really cool. I hope people reading this blog see the funny irony of Rousseau and Voltaire being buried directly across from each other. Across from that was the Jardin Luxembourg which was really neat. Just a medium sized park in the middle of Paris with a stage set up where some guys were playing jazz. It was a nice relaxing stop to break up the day. We then walked to Shakespeare and Company, an old bookstore that Hemingway and those fellows used to frequent in their time. Neat place. Then it was off across the river to the Centre Pompidou with its crazy architecture. We ate our sandwiches there while watching an impromptu performance of Michael Jackson dances by the most random assortment of people, both young, old, female, male, black and white (no they didn’t do that song though). They did Thriller, which was awesome. I was tempted to join in, having the 2 hour Thriller class at Eppley under my belt from last Halloween – shout out to my partner Cristin Carey! After some more wandering around the city, we ended up by the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero across the Seine to watch the light show. It was underwhelming but still neat to see all the lights flashing about on it. It looked cooler simply lit up at night than with the light show though.

Crowded steps of Sacre Coeur

Friday, I feel like was spent mostly in some sort of line. First up was the Eiffel tower, which was a multi-hour ordeal in itself. Ticket line, line to walk up to second floor, line to elevator to the top, line down from the top, etc etc. Totally worth it thought of course, after all, it is The Eiffel Tower. Paris from 300 meters high looks pretty darn cool. After that, we took the metro to Mont Marte, which was one of my favorite areas of Paris. It was up on a hill, away from downtown area so it had an awesome view of the whole city. Sitting on the steps of Sacre Coeur enjoying a guitarist street performer was really fun. Great way to spend the late afternoon time period. The area itself was a small artsy area with lots of cool shops and places to eat. Definitely recommend doing that to anyone going to Paris.

Au Revoir, Paris - Io sono ancora italiano.

After waiting in another line at the train station to buy the Le Havre tickets, we continued on venturing through the city and stumbled on a good cheap dinner joint with excellent Tortellini Pesto (wow I had missed Italian food, albeit after only a few days) then settled down on the Champs de Mars, the field leading up to the Eiffel Tower, where we hung out for awhile along with what seemed to be every other young person in Paris. It was cool how so many groups of friends were there picnicking with snacks and drinks as the sun set. I wish we could do stuff like that in America. It was so relaxing, just lying on the grass, enjoying a cold drink with the Eiffel Tower looming in front of you. I don’t have much faith in American college kids that they’d be able to do that as maturely/peacefully as the French kids were doing it though, not to mention that you can’t drink in public in America anyways, and also have to be over 21 (in France it’s only 18 – and in Italy, the age is - well, it’s Italy..). That just about wraps up Paris.