Paris # 1, travelling

I bought the train tickets too late. Because I bought them late, they were too expensive. But I HAD to go to Paris. There was no waiting for another time. It was Now or Never.

The woman at the train station told me "The train is booked, you don't have a seat. But, usually some people don't show up. I'm sure you'll find a seat".

When I travel, I like to throw myself upon the mercy of the Universe. "Oh, please provide me with food, shelter and a bit of mortal comfort" I ask it. I am able to endure enormous amounts of suffering because usually what the Universe comes up with for me is better than nothing. I have a well developed sense of "Good Enough". Laura does not. She is always out looking for something better. She does not enjoy playing the "Hey Universe, I'm yours" game. Not one bit. Not not not. I guess that makes Me infuriating to travel with. Sorry, Laura. I sometimes forget that you don't get points for being miserable. But..I digress.

We got on the train and soon realized that there were no seats. And if there were any empty seats in the train-proper, it was a fluke and their owners would soon be back to claim them. I accepted this. I wanted to sit on a bench in the luggage room, because I sensed that this would be Good Enough. Better than sitting on the floor at any rate and we certainly weren't the only saps without seats. Laura wouldn't have it. We sat in the lavish second class seats until their proper owners came, and we had to move back to the luggage room. Luckily those seats were fairly comfortable. I was happy enough.

Travelling in the unofficial Third Class compartment.

France looks a lot like eastern Washington. Flat-ish and agricultural and barren. I'm pretty sure we saw Washtuchna. Or Lind.

When we got to Paris, the first thing we did was go to the Tourist Information. After our fiasco in Neuchatel, we're pretty good at orientating ourselves first before we got trudging off into the great unknown. At least we had a fairly good idea that Paris was a big place.

Paris should be embarrassed. Their tourist office, at a major train station no less, was piss poor. It wasn't even big enough to be a decent closet. It was entertaining to see how many tourists could awkwardly cuddle up and fit in there though. I avoided getting elbowed by anyone and we got our maps and got out. I was looking forward to having a Parisian say snotty things to me and give me bad directions though. Sad that I didn't get that experience.

According to Rick Steeves, everyone should start at Notre Dame. So we did. Laura says that it has the most flying buttresses EVER IN EUROPE. Or something superlative like that. Neither of us actually know what a flying buttress is, but we took a guess and admired the architecture in our own way.

The church was CROWDED. We saw lots of carvings of bible scenes, lots of big paintings and a statue of my favorite Saint: Joan of Arc.

There are big speakers hidden cleverly throughout the church and every so often someone gets on the loud speakers to say "shhhhhhhhhhhh". And it works. There are hundreds of people in the church and it becomes silent as a tomb in a matter of seconds. I suppose that "I'm a bad child and my teacher is going to yell at me" instinct is ingrained in us all, regardless of our country of origin. Or it's respect for sacred places. Something like that. Either way, the guilt or respect only lasts for a few minutes before everyone is chattering again.

From Notre Dame, we were going to go to Saint Chapelle, because it's supposed to have nice stained glass, but we figured that our knowledge of biblical things was rudimentary at best, so what would we get out of it? And plus: we would have had to stand in line, in the rain, and pay to get in. We decided that we had seen enough churches. (Paris: Big Old Church, check).

So we walked across the bridge and saw this handsome fellow. We found the Shakespeare and co. Bookstore, which is somehow affiliated with the City Lights bookstores in the states. It is very small, very dirty and very crowded. Upstairs there are books that are not for sale and small, dirty, bug infested (well, they LOOK like they are potentially bug infested) beds that people can lounge on during the day. I'm sure that 60 years ago when all the great writers were still writing, and the bookstore was still relatively well kept secret, and the beds upstairs really were for people to crash, the place would have been cool. To me, it just seems like a pretentious tourist trap.

"Hey, why don't you stand over by that typewriter and pretend you're a dirty hippy and I'll take your picture?!" I would have liked it a lot about 10 years ago, when I still had grand ideas about being dirty and traveling through Europe on a whim you know...maybe ending up in Paris if the wind was blowing in that direction...you know maybe meet some really swell folks who would let me crash with them and stay up late talking about you know...stuff.


Truth is, Paris is Expensive. Very Very expensive. Did I mention I spent a small fortune and all I have to show is a small Eiffel tower, some postcards (they're in the mail!) coffee, and sandwiches. Not enough coffee and not enough sandwiches either.

And because Paris is Expensive, I booked us a nice little hotel in a lovely Ghetto. We got off the train and Laura immediately said "I'm not staying here" I told her that it was just a matter of perspective: a hundred years ago it was a nice neighborhood. She was not having it. But we did stay there and it was fine, there was 24 hour security...Thanks Universe.

Here's a photo essay of our day.

From Notre Dame we walked to the Eiffel Tower. This was a bad idea. It was a very long walk and it was very windy/rainy/grey/depressing. Typical Paris I guess.
This man has lots of pigeon friends outside of Notre Dame. He was carrying several around on his shoulders.
This is Charlemange. The public toilets are located underneath him.

We are having FUN!

Notre Dame, check. Eiffel Tower, check. Miserably long walk in the rain, check. Perfect vacation so far.