In this essay, I will be presenting an unbiased perspecti...HA. Read on if you'd like to read about our time in Paris. Despite the number of tourists per square inch and the astronomic gastronomic economic consequences (well that sure was laconic), I actually liked it quite a bit. We met this guy from New Jersey (I think...) in the airport that absolutely hated Paris for those reasons, but you know what they say: http://bit.ly/yXnBPv. To be honest, a ton has happened since Ty and I visited Paris (translation: I'm way behind on blogging). Since then, Taisa and I visited Madrid, spent several days in Sevilla, a couple of my friends and I explored the Basque Country up in the north of Spain, our semester came to an end (with papers, finals, and everything else that the end of any semester entails), and our orchestra went to China. I'll be blogging about those in the weeks to come and have this vision that maybe, just maybe, I'll be caught up enough some day to blog about things within several days of them happening, as opposed to months. But now I'm just blabbing. On to Paris. Originally, I would've probably attempted to split this post into two, but in the interest of catching up on blogging, I'm just going to make this one huge super hiper (Rafaell is the besttttttt everrrrrrrr - shout out to mah man on da wes' coas' the big "R" forever) long post. Enjoy! (Sorry, I got "hacked," as they say these days...)
The plan was to meet my sister in Paris, so I booked myself a flight from Sevilla to Paris Orly about a month beforehand. The day before, I found out that Tori, Steph, Emily, Kayla, Katrina, and her sister Sarah (see Sarah, I told you I'd give you a shout-out!) were all on the same flight as me. Made for a much more enjoyable travel experience than flying alone. Once we got into Paris, Kayla, Katrina, Sarah, and I grabbed the RER B line into town (Orly is a convenient
I parted with the ladies at Châtelet Les Halles, one of the bigger stations in the city, and after two more transfers finally met up with Taisa. One of our good friends from Ty's Westmont days, Nick, actually lives in Paris currently, and he had graciously offered to spend time with us doing touristy things and showing us around. On our way to meet up with Nick, we made a stop at the Arc de Triomphe. My favorite part was probably the bro on the bottom right. I'm pretty sure he's saying something along the lines of, "What the? Really? Are you serious?"
Here we are! The weather the first day in Paris was a little on the gloomy side, as you can see (looking at this picture now after our China trip, what immediately comes to mind is smog, even though in Paris it really was overcast - if the city pictured were Beijing, it very well could have been a sunny day and still looked like this).
Picture with the flowers for mom. Picture with the metro for Filly...heh heh heh Fil :)
Our first meal in Paris! If you want to eat cheap in Paris and eat tasty food, baguettes and cheese are the way to go (we went for Camembert the first time). We found a little boulangerie/pâtisserie on our way towards the Eiffel Tower that had the best apricot pastry I have ever had. And it was under €2 too! Incredible, considering a meal at a not-very-expensive establishment can easily run you over €12.
A Seine-sational river... (insert Dsan's pun laugh here)
We found a famous monument! The name always escapes me.
Long exposure with the 70-200. It was kind of breezy, so I was worried the shot wouldn't work, but I spread the GorillaPod out pretty far and it ended up being pretty stable. Exif: 3 seconds, f/10, ISO 200.
Another long exposure. See if you can find the crazy heptagonal bokeh. Not exactly sure why that appeared where it did! Exif: 4 seconds, f/13, ISO 200.
Ty and I outside the Moulin Rouge. Some French (I'm assuming) bros jumped on the opportunity to take a picture with us as well; I'll put that one up when I put up all the Paris photos on Facebook. Bottom left is the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, top right you can see the Arc de Triomphe, and bottom right is an unusually empty Parisian metro.
The next morning we met up with Nick again and continued exploring. It was beautiful out - perfect weather!
The original facepalm.
More French-like things.
I believe this is Rue des Petits Carreaux. It's an awesome little street with cheese shops, bakeries, cafes, etc. We ordered coffee at a little cafe, then grabbed more baguettes and cheese, some jamón, and a jar of probably some of the best jam I've ever had so we could go eat...
...at the park!
Next we headed to the Pompidou, a modern art museum, which had great views of the city from the top level.
Some of my favorite works at the Pompidou.
After the museum, Nick had to head off, so Taisa and I deciding to keep walking about until it was time for church. At the top of this picture is some important building (if I remember correctly, it's a government building) and at the bottom is a restaurant that Mando and Hannah and I ate at when we were in Paris with our high school's jazz band five years earlier. My sister was luckily patient enough to let me try finding it.
Notre Dame.
Some more sights we saw during our meandering. People at cafes in Paris sit side-by-side and look out at the street. It's kind of interesting; we did it earlier that day when we were at Petits Carreux, and it was pretty fun people-watching inconspicously.
I really liked the river in Paris a lot. Taisa and I walked along it for a good bit; made for a really nice afternoon stroll.
Then we decided it was time for a photo session.
A couple hours after leaving the museum, the time for church came, so we ventured towards the church Nick had been attending in Paris, which had an evening service in English. At church, we met several of Nick's friends, with whom we went out for food afterwards. Two of these friends that I should particularly mention are Chrissie and Owen. Chrissie, as it turns out, is actually Snow White (she works at Disneyland Paris) and Owen is an aerospace engineer (let me know if you prefer another title, Owen) in England. We also found out that the two of them weren't working the next day, had plans to go to Disneyland, and had two extra tickets. What are the chances? Our flight out of Paris was the next day (originally), but it was in the evening, so...
...we went to Disneyland with our new friends! Please note the Don Quijote and Sancho Panza in the Small World ride.
Because Chrissie works at the park, a lot of the other actors and actresses working that day knew her. This included Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, who took a good ten minutes of their time to mess with us, dance with us, and skip with us. Lots of fun. Well, after a good numbers of rides, dashing madly to catch up with the Stars 'n' Cars parade, and meeting a coworker of Chrissie's from Cadiz (a town really close to Sevilla), the time soon came to part. Chrissie and Owen, if guys are reading this, thank you so much for spending time with us obnoxious Americans :) Anyhow, we bought our metro tickets for the Orly Airport and began the long haul from the completely opposite side of Paris. Little did we know...
...we'd be spending another night in the city of light. We got to the airport, found out that are flight was cancelled, and then spent the next three hours waiting in a line with probably about one hundred people in it. We made some good friends, including a young family with a rambunctious young daughter named Luisa and another Spanish family with grown kids. One of the sons was a prison psychologist in the Grand Canary Islands, and we even talked about Don Quijote a little bit in Spanish because he saw that I was reading it in line.
We soon found out that the moody French air traffic controllers decided to go on strike, so our flight to Barcelona was cancelled. We headed back into the city at essentially midnight and walked around til we found a decent-looking hotel. We talked to the man working at the desk, and he told us it was full, but directed us to another hotel in the area...who also had only one guy on staff, but this one didn't speak English, Spanish, or Russian (we asked, just in case... :). Some five to ten minutes later we had communicated things sufficiently with each other and he directed us to our room. We were a little bummed about not getting to Barcelona that night, but happy to have a warm room for the night. And thankfully, the next day God bestowed us with the best weather we had had yet! With the sudden turn of events in our travel plans, we realized we now had a chance to go up the Eiffel Tower. Consequently (I don't use that connector often), we headed over toward that direction.
Tulips at a park right near the base of the tower. They were in full bloom and magnificent (I hardly ever use that word either).
And there she is! Is a tower a "he" or a "she" in French? I don't know. I'll stick with "she" for now.
A pretty incredible engineering feat, the tower is. #yoda
Views down from the tower. The park in the upper right is where I took most of my Eiffel Tower photos from.
We exchanged photo-taking favors with a Russian couple we met on the top of the tower. Also, I found out I had grown a little taller while studying in Spain. Afterward, Ty and I splurged a bit and had lunch at a cafe that was about a block from the tower. We could see it/her/the tower as we were eating (although you can't really tell to well in the picture).
Finally, we made it back to Paris Orly...to find out the flight we had been re-scheduled onto had been canceled as well. It soon became evident that Barcelona would no longer be in our travel plans for that week. The Iberia staff placed us on a flight from Paris to Madrid, but it was scheduled for late morning the next day. You know what that means! Airport sleep-over. Less comfortable than it already doesn't seem. We made several more friends while waiting in a couple hours of new lines, include the previously mentioned angst-filled guy from maybe New Jersey and the girl you see pictured above, also named Luisa (I think). It was her birthday that following day that we would be in the airport! Poor girl. She was super sweet and was handling the situation really well. Props, new friend. Props.
Well, believe it or not, eventually we got on a plane out of Paris. We were going to Madrid! And that will go in the next blog post. Congrats on making it this far in this post. You have proven that you are a true friend. Or that you just like spoilers and read the last lines of this post.
Anyhow, I should go. We're leaving to go mountain biking in Utah in forty minutes, so I have to pack up a few last things. Pray that the trip goes well and that there aren't any injuries!
Tsa luego!
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