Thursday, August 2, 2012 (Paris day 1)

We got up in the morning and caught the train to Paris. It was the first uneventful travel we've had while we've been here. When we got to Paris, Catherine was at the train station and we walked like an hour to catch a hop on, hop off bus that would take us to the Eiffel Tower, which was about a 5 minute walk to the hotel. Cherisse's suitcase caused problems and made me want to punch her again, but we got there. We learned in Dublin to use the hop on, hop off bus pretty much as a public bus, because it goes most places we want to go and you get a two-day pass, so it works great.

My first impression of Paris was that it's disgusting. It smells awful, like old pee and vomit and cigarettes and a hint of decomposing body. There is trash everywhere. I mean everywhere. And there are beggars all along the streets, plus these guys (most of them are just teenagers) who swarm you and shove mini Eiffel Tower key-chains in your face and try to sell them to you. I hated Paris immediately. There are so many tall buildings so tightly crammed together you can barely see the sky, so the whole city is claustrophobic. Everyone says Paris is romantic and beautiful. Um, what? How is that romantic? I guess it's romantic if your idea of romance is trash and cigarettes and a million people and concrete, but it doesn't really do it for me. I might just be a country bumpkin, but I'll take a wheat field and a fishing hole any day. Even Cherisse, who claims to love big cities, admitted that it was gross and really not enchanting at all.

We went and saw the Eiffel Tower. It's huge, but it's really not actually that pretty. And it's a TV satellite. Again, how is that romantic? There were SO MANY people there, too. I have issues with the general public, so this did not please me. We didn't go up, because the line was literally a mile long. At least. Plus it's really expensive, and even more money to use the elevator. So we took the obligatory pictures in front of it and tried to get the whole thing in it, which is really hard because, seriously, that tower is enormous. Then we went to the cathedral of Notre Dame. It was really pretty, but Dublin kind of Gothic-ed me out. It was free admission, so we were going to go in, but the line was really long and it was almost six by then (the hop on, hop off bus stops sometime around six, so we had to be on it by then so it would take us back to the Eiffel Tower so we weren't super far away from our hotel), so we decided we'd go in the morning. We walked around close to the Eiffel Tower and our hotel for a bit and found some food, then we went back to the hotel and watched the Olympics and got on the internet. Super interesting thing to do in Paris? Maybe not to some people, but it was fun and it was nice to have some down time, because we haven't really had a lot of that on this trip.

Friday, August 3, 2012 (Paris Day 2)

We got up in the morning and went to the Louvre. Now, I hate Paris, I'll admit that freely, but I LOVE THE LOUVRE. I love museums anyway, but this was amazing. I would love to spend like two days just in the Louvre! It's huge, so there would be plenty to see. And it's only 10 euro to get in—it's free if you're a citizen of an EU member country, so Catherine got in free. We looked at French sculptures first, and they are amazing. It's astonishing to me that they are SO detailed. I mean, they have muscles. I remember learning in history class about artists sneaking to graveyards and studying cadavers so they could get the muscles right, but I could never have imagined how detailed those sculptures are. And how can they do that with a chisel and do it out of a block of stone?? I was freaking out. I still kind of am. I wanted to touch them so badly but I'm a good museum goer and refrained. They just look so life-like! We also went through this part of the museum that's all set up in the style of Napoleon's palace. His palace was so ornate, and I remember thinking I didn't blame the poor for hating the rich during the revolution. It was almost appalling the amount of overkill in that place. So much gold everywhere! It was gorgeous, but so over the top. And we saw Hammurabi's code! I'm such a nerd that I was losing my mind. The first recorded set of laws! This is a big deal to me, obviously. It was so cool. I don't know if I've ever seen real hieroglyphics. I think every school needs to go on trips to museums all the time because kids would like history a lot more if they could see what they're learning about. It's so cool to make connections to what you're learning and it helps you learn. Plus you learn more and remember what you learn when you're excited about it.

Then we went to find the Mona Lisa—it took a long time to find because the Louvre is so giant, and I wanted to stop a lot and look at everything. I just wish the info cards had English. They were in French (obviously) and some of them had Spanish translations, so I could get the gist of the Spanish, but I just wanted to know everything about every exhibit and everything I was seeing. I wanted to stop and look at all the Renaissance art we were passing. I've never seen the real paintings—obviously I've seen pictures in history and humanities classes, but it's not the same. I could actually see the brush strokes and see the canvas underneath. Maybe I'm just hugely geeky (well, okay, no maybe about that—I know that for sure and I really am not ashamed of it), but I loved it. It makes it so much more real, so much easier to think of an actual person painting that, when you can see the brush strokes. I just think it's so amazing that people can do things like that, produce art. I can't do anything like that, so I'm completely in awe. I'm running out of adjectives to describe the things I saw, but that's because they're indescribable! I think the Mona Lisa was a bit overrated, though. Everyone in the whole museum was cramming into this tiny space to see one painting, but there were so many amazing paintings. And I know it's Da vinci and he's amazing, and I think he's super cool, from what I've learned in school, but I was more impressed with the sculptures than the paintings as a whole, plus there were other paintings I thought were more impressive. Plus I had to fight a crowd of like a million people to even see the Mona Lisa, and I could barely see over people's heads. I have a memo for Europe: there are things called air conditioning and deodorant. Please, if you won't employ both, at least pick one! Everyone would be happier.

I wanted to stay in the Louvre and look at every exhibit in the museum, but Cherisse and Catherine wanted to leave. I would almost be willing to go back to Paris just for the Louvre. It was really the only thing I'd go back for. We needed to go to the train station (about an hour away from all the touristy stuff) to print Cherisse's and my train tickets for the way back to Catherine's house, because it said to allow at least 45 minutes between printing the tickets and the train ride, and the train left at 7:45 am. We certainly didn't want to do it in the morning. We stopped and got food on the way, and stopped at a Starbucks to use the wifi, and I was excited about stopping at these shops along the river Seine. All along the river, they have these booths where people sell souvenirs and postcards and whatnot. I don't care about that, but they also sell second-hand books—that's what I wanted to check out. What I didn't think about: they were all in French. Bummer. If there were any in Spanish I would've considered that, because it would take me forever but I could read it (I'm still in like chapter 6 of 1 Nephi in my libro de mormon...it's taking me soooo long), but all I saw was French. I still like the idea of the used book shops though. I just love books in general. The bridge over the Seine has all these padlocks with people's names on them, and I guess it's supposed to be lovers or something? I don't really know what the deal is, but everyone says the locks on the bridge on romantic. Huh? I don't see the romance there. The bookshops are more romantic to me. I'd much rather have a guy take me to a used bookshop than write my name on a lock and lock it on a bridge, but maybe I'm weird (okay, again, no maybe about that, but whatever).

After we got our tickets, we got back on the tour bus and rode it for about an hour, going back to the Eiffel Tower to get to our hotel. We got dinner and went back to the hotel and watched Friends while we waited for it to get dark because Cherisse really wanted to see the Eiffel Tower lit up. You can tell we weren't in love with Paris, because we did a lot of TV watching. In Dublin we didn't stop at all, because we loved it. Paris? Meh. The Louvre was great and the bookshops were great, but I feel no pull to ever go back to Paris. I'm sure I'd love the countryside of France though. I pretty much love the countryside anywhere. When it was dark, we went out to the Eiffel Tower. As unimpressed as I was with the Eiffel Tower and Paris as a whole, I have to admit the Eiffel Tower was pretty all lit up. In the day, it's a brownish meta color, but all lit up at night it's gold. The beauty was ruined by all the people though—a million and a half people, and I'd say 80% of them were drunk or on their way there. They even managed to make the park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower unenjoyable (who knew a park could be unenjoyable?) by filling up every inch of it with either people or trash. So gross. And instead of little Eiffel Towers, the street kids were now shoving bottles of champagne, wine, and beer in my face. They swarm at you and like 4 of them will come at you at once. Besides being annoying, this is not a good business strategy. I felt like informing them they'd sell more if they spread out, but I don't think they really speak English. One guy saw us and said, “Lady Gaga, bling bling bling!” I'm not sure if he was calling me Lady Gaga or just saying whatever he associated with America, but I was not a fan either way. Anyway, the Eiffel Tower was really pretty but the people were not, and we hurry scurried out of there because people were drunk and getting rowdy and we don't even like crowds like that in our own country. We went back to the hotel and gathered up our stuff so the morning would be less hectic. We decided to leave by 6:30 so we'd have time to do stuff at the train station before the train left—we knew Cherisse and I would have to fill out immigration cards, since we're foreigners. We took a taxi to avoid trying to walk and catch buses and everything. It was hassle-free, but the taxi cost 10 cents per minute! I don't know if that's normal, but it sure seemed like a lot. But oh well, we got there.

It's good we got to the train station really early, because it turns out you have to go through security to get on a train. Who knew? We didn't have to from Germany to France, but apparently from France to London they're more antsy. It wasn't as strict as airport security, so it wasn't that bad, but the UK border control agent was grilling me and seemed pretty suspicious. I guess my 4'10” body, glasses, and 12-year-old boy outfit made him think I was a terrorist or something. Whatever, dude. Maybe he's just hyper-vigilant or maybe his shoes are too tight. Either way, I passed the test, he stamped my passport, and I'm now on a train to London, where I will catch another train to Doncaster, where we will walk to Catherine's house, where we will...I don't know what. Next week we're doing two days in Scotland and two days in London, but I don't know what we're doing Monday and Tuesday. We really want to go to Wales, but it might not be feasible. Catherine's dad got his car stolen Monday, so he obviously can't drive us, plus it's far. We might take a train, but that's pretty expensive, so we're not sure. I hope we do get to go, because I've always wanted to go to Wales. It's our ancestry! Plus we don't want to leave out Wales when we've hit the other three Celtic countries. But we'll see. Catherine was saying maybe we'd go to Cadbury World on Tuesday, which would be really cool—hello, real life Willy Wonka??--but that was before her dad's car got stolen, so...now we don't know. I'm sure we'll find plenty of fun things to do. Scotland is going to be awesome, and we're going to stand in line in London and hopefully get into the Olympics! We don't even care for what sport. I don't even care if we end up watching freaking table tennis—it's the Olympics! We're going to make USA shirts, because we didn't bring any and we can't go to the Olympics without proclaiming our patriotism!