Nothing is Too Wonderful to be True

I think that Europe is a girl’s paradise simply because when you’re craving chocolate, you don’t need to go to silly things like Hershey’s or Nestle; instead, you can indulge in random French and Swedish chocolate. Happy. (Well, not happy, I’m lying in bed after enjoying many painkillers and still feeling the cramps, but you know what I mean.)

So this weekend I spent in my lovely town of Paris; the original plan was that my friend’s mom was going to be there, we’d go together, I’d stay with her, so on and so forth. But then it ended up that my friend wanted to stay longer than me, she couldn’t get another bed in the room, and she ended up spending most of her time with her mum. Luckily, I had mentioned the trip to my crazy, crazy Bro and she was like “PARIS! Heck yes!” So she and her two friends, whom I had met in London, decided to come. So I hung out with them instead. A very different experience from that first time all on my own, but it just made me love the city even more.

It was the same schedule as when I went the first time. I got up nice and early on Friday morning (about five), got on a train, went to Paris. This time, though, I knew exactly where I was going and how to get to my hostel. I went and dropped off my backpack, the entire time wondering what I would do with my day, since Cally and Deane weren’t arriving until evening. I had wanted to do something I hadn’t before; Disneyland had popped into my head, but the price tag was a bit daunting (44 euros for one park, about 65-70 dollars). So I realized when I saw a poster in my hostel what I was going to do: I went to Versailles. About five euros round-trip on the RER train, free entrance for EU students if you show your student visa. (A tip I learned from Jennifer, otherwise they’re rather snooty and won’t accept just my student card.) Other costs included the guy checking my passport winking at me and saying something suggestive about my “Kiss me, I’m an anteater” shirt, though it is France. I think I deserved that one. Worth it, though? I think so. It was AMAZING, I wandered around the palace for hours, and had no doubts that the Parisians in the late eighteenth century were pissed. After, I went out to the gardens, but didn’t wander for too long… it was cold and getting dark, and it’s an hour’s trip back into Paris. Still fantastic, though. So I returned to Paris, chilled in the hostel, chatted with a (kind of creepy) guy from Egypt, who couldn’t tell that I was reading and didn’t really want to be disturbed. My friends arrived rather late, around nine, but we went to dinner (I chugged bad wine!) and then walked over to La Tour Eiffel. I still love it. As we were sitting on a bench talking, though, we had three French guys come up to us and start chatting. One spoke English about as well as I spoke French, while the other two spoke none, really. It was an amusing experience as we talked, I translated, it was awkward as they repeatedly told me that my two friends were “super sexy” (thanks guys, really charming, I’m not translating that). But I think we all had a good time, at the end of it all we gave our goodbyes and walked off, laughing and rather having enjoyed the night.

Day Two, Saturday. We slowly got up, got out, grabbed breakfast, got on the metro. Since we weren’t able to do la Louvre the night before, we did that in the morning. Gorgeous museum, I had a good time, especially since we spent a good part of our time in the Egyptian/Greek art. Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo say hi. We got out about noon/one, wandered until we found a slightly less expensive café for lunch. (So I don’t have to say it, we didn’t have a single bad meal in Paris. It was all amazing.) Then we went back to the hostel and snoozed until our free tour at four, where we found Henri, who had flown in that afternoon. The tour was fine, I had seen all of the places and known a good bit of the things she said, but other things I found quite amusing. The weather had been raining off and on, and it got fairly cold a ways in, then started raining two and a half hours or so after we had started. This is when Deane, who had been freezing despite my hat, umbrella, and hugs, subtly insisted that we cut out, so we did. At la Place de la Concorde, we managed to fight our way through the Diabetes people to the metro, and we went to Montmarte for dinner. After dinner and a bottle of wine, naturally we all felt better (there was generally a trend, we’d be cranky before and jolly after) so we went up (raced up, more) to Sacre Coeur, my personal favourite view of Paris. We ooh’d, we ah’d, we bought another bottle of wine, we went down to the red light district of Paris, we wandered, I bought a crepe. It was good, I really love these mofos. We headed back to the hostel and the four of us had a room all to ourselves – sweet!

Day Three, Sunday. We got up even later than the day before, missed breakfast. Went to la Place de la Concorde since it’s one of my favourite places in Paris, and I thought the others should get a proper viewing of it. Then we headed up les Champs-Elysees, which was all decked out for Christmas, like much of Paris, though nothing was turned on yet. We had a nice time being tourists and me the tour guide, we went in the Disney store, we frolicked. We waved at l’Arc du Triomph, since we were hungry and cranky by then (and my lovely cramps were complaining by now), then popped into the metro over to the Pantheon. I had seen a tempting crepe shop my last time in Paris, and Deane had wanted to try crepes before she left in the afternoon. It was heavenly, let me say. Deane had wanted the Eiffel Tower to be her climax, but we assured her that she could have multiple ones. We ate, we headed to the Tower, and then we walked up the stairs to the first level. There, Deane was happy, and the two of us decided to head down so she could catch her flight and I could show her to the metro, and the other two decided to go all the way to the top. When I got back to the Tower, I ended up waiting about an hour at the bottom, cold, crampy, and with a dead phone.

Once Henri and Cally got down, though, we went back to the hostel, I charged my phone, I was happy. For dinner, we decided to do escargot (we were going to do it the night before, but time and cold had changed that), and I had looked up a restaurant, so I called Becky to meet up with her and we headed over there, by Les Halls. You might remember that I got miserably lost around there my first time in Paris… Guess what happened this time? We ended up going the wrong direction, but we glanced at a couple of cafes and one had escargot as an entrée (appetizer for all you Americans), so we decided to eat there. Possibly the best decision of Paris, this place was the most mind-blowing restaurant ever. The escargot was… interesting. I actually really liked the taste and texture (it was in a basil sauce), I just couldn’t get past the fact that I was eating a snail. But I ate it! Then for my main dish I got this lasagna that was beyond words, and the salad was orgasmic, and the whole thing was just the best plate I’ve had so far. I preferred the overall dinner in Venice more, but for one dish, that lasagna and salad wins. Anyway, after dessert we paid and left (the one bill that took us less than five minutes to split!), then (big surprise) went to the Eiffel Tower, grabbed some wine, and just sat there for an hour or so, talking, watching the Anniversary light show… No creepy French guys this time, minus the guys selling the souvenirs. On the way back to the hostel, we took the metro since it had started to rain, but for some reason Henri’s ticket wasn’t working. I gave him mine, then convinced some random cute French guy to let me go in with him. It was fun. When we got back, Deane’s bed had been taken by a French guy from Strasbourg, I think he said, but he was walking around without pants on… a little weird. We had some good conversations in French, though, which made me happy.

Monday morning I got up, got dressed, left. Instead of reading Gulliver’s Travels like I should have, I doodled and reminisced. As I watched the Eiffel Tower disappearing behind buildings, I had quite a sad moment when I realized that I don’t know when I’ll see it again. I’m quite certain that I will, when I live in Geneva I’ll certainly come over all the time. But when that will be, who knows… I do know for a fact that after I graduate UCI, whether or not I take some time off before grad school, I’m traveling again. I want to hit up more of Europe, more Eastern Europe, and I’d love to see southeast Asia while I’m still young, and Africa, and… I need to stop dreaming and start saving, eh? Which leads me to other things. I’m still at the point where I’m looking forward to coming home in a month or so, especially since I just registered for classes. I got a “maybe, give me a week or two” response from my advisor back at LARC regarding a job, but hopefully if that falls through Natalie can hook me up at her theatre. Life in Bordeaux has still not changed. I got my appointment for my medical visit, and it is happily not at a time that’s inconvenient, though I might have to leave a class early… On that note, classes are still meh. I find myself still not caring; it’s really something where I only really care about the end result. I just find that my European interests spread past class, it’s strange for me. I’ll work extra-hard when I get back to my 20 units of UCI winter. I did, however, switch out of my one psych class (it had been painstakingly boring and repetitive) into an English/American class. Which is kind of cool.

The best part of this whole thing? Even in France or Italy, people still look at my wallet and think I’m awesome. My poor, poor, empty wallet.