Location: The Chunnel (we think)
Listening to: A very upset baby behind me
I'm trying to remember what a sleep “cycle” really feels like – it's been awhile. Emily and I are on our train to England, and in hindsight it was probably pretty naïve to think of the chunnel as a massive aquarium with glass walls and jellyfish. Actually, it's tough to tell which tunnel you're in since you go through a few, hence the title of this post.
Paris was great. As with literally every other city I've seen (except Barcelona or the beach towns), I feel like I spent about 1/10th of the time I wanted to just to see the touristy things. Paris is the tourism capital of the world, so you don't feel especially out of place when your only French is non-verbal. I'd been warned that speaking English and not French would be a problem here, but I didn't find that to be the case. The people were generally very nice and happy to help out the ignorant Americans.
As usual, I was ridiculously optimistic in planning the itinerary for yesterday. Two hours each in the Louvre and Versailles after a two hour walking seemed perfectly doable. Traveling one hour to see Versailles after what turned out to be a 3.5 hour tour plus a coffee break ended up seeming like too much. Here's what we actually did:
- 10ish – Went to see Notre Dame. Emily and I are both pretty “churchy” people, but somehow it didn't occur to either one of us that it was Sunday. It was pretty weird touring this national monument during a mass. I walked right by the altar during the Eucharist. I admire those who are able to worship in that environment – it was too much of a circus for me. That said, the cathedral was incredible. I was much more impressed and moved than when I saw it (and sang there) in 2004.
- 11 - “Free” Walking Tour. I've done these now in Hamburg, Berlin, and Paris, and been extremely impressed every time. The company is called Sandeman's New Europe, and they do (among other things) tips-only walking tours in some of the biggest cities in Europe (I know they're also in Amsterdam, London, Munich, and a few others). The tours have been really good every time, and the tour guides are always young, smart, energetic hosts. They also do paid tours (keep reading) and Pub Crawls. I did the one in Berlin – I think I wrote about it at some point. All I will say is that of the 5 I've now experienced (4 in Barcelona), the New Europe crawl was head and shoulders above the rest. They didn't pay me to write any of that, but if Mr. Sandeman sees it and wants a tour guide for Barcelona I hope he drops me a line.
- 3ish – Arc d'Triumph. Our walking tour essentially went from Notre Dame down the Seine to the Louvre, then turned up the axis of Paris and stopped a little short of the Arc. I told Emily she had to see it, so we walked up there. It was really cool to see again, but we didn't do the museum because we thought we could get in free to the Louvre. Not the case. We walked around the pyramid in the Louvre courtyard several times before figuring out it was an entrance, and then decided not to pay the €9.50 to see it for the hour before it closed. Instead, we went up to a train station to buy our overpriced tickets across the channel.
- 6 – We took another New Europe tour, this time of Montmarte. If you've been to Paris and haven't seen Montmarte, you haven't really been to Paris. It is an incredible area. The bottom is home to the famous Moulin Rouge and other similarly family-friendly entertainment options ranging from the curious to the proactively perverse. It's the red light district for Paris – nothing like Hamburg, but I'm not sure even Amsterdam could hold a candle to Hamburg. As you work your way up the mountain (more of a hill, really), you go through the “Impressionist” neighborhoods. Picasso, Van Gogh, and company lived, ate, slept, drank, painted, and sold their works here, much like the modern street artists still do today in a world that looks pretty familiar except for the brothels they loved. At the top sits the Church of the Sacred Heart (I can't remember how to spell it in French), a beautiful and very unique cathedral. It's made of a special kind of stone which emits calcite when it gets whet, meaning the face of the church is self-cleaning whenever it rains. It's really interesting to see because it's nearly a bleached white in the areas where the rain usually falls and black with soot in the dry spots, giving it an extra illusion of depth and complexity (especially from a distance). Unfortunately this tour wasn't free, but I'd still recommend it. It was about a 2.5 hour tour and they do give you a glass of wine in a little cafe at the end.
- Rest of the evening – Eiffel Tower, round two. Emily and I went back to the hostel, talked with one of our roommates for awhile, and then went for a little picnic supper at the Eiffel Tower. The lines were huge and we were feeling tired (and very broke), so we just sat at the bottom and watched everyone else go up. More than any building I've seen, it seems to grow in size as you get closer to it. I think the six hours of walking tours took a little bigger toll on us than we anticipated, so after eating our supper we were more than ready to sleep a bit before our train in the morning.
That pretty well brings you up to our train ride. As I said, it seems that every time I visit a city I feel like I've cheated myself by not staying longer, but I'm really excited to meet Bryan and Val Murray. These two hosted my mom when she was here, something like 30 years ago. It should be a fun couple of days.
¡Hasta luego!
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