Here I am, back from my European vacation. There's so much to tell through words, pictures, and even videos so over the course of the next week, I'll be be describing each phase of our trip, starting with Phase I - Paris, France. The most difficult part for me about going to France was toning down all the making fun of French people I had been doing leading up to the trip. For example, I had done a lot of "haw, haw, haw"-ing, a lot of extra vowel pronunciation, and general trailing off the ends of words into a sort of slow motion vomit sound. For example, the Louvre was more like the "Looooooouuuuaaaa" in Sean-speak prior to the trip. I won't lie, some of the jabs continued in private and under my breath with Carrie while we were there but I did my best to respect the French to the extent they deserve it (haw haw haw!!!!).
One thing I realized as soon as I got on the Metro from the airport was that graffiti makes as much sense to me in France as it does when I see it in America, which is none at all. One thing I really liked about France, or at least Paris, is the ambulance sirens. They sound kind of like the sirens from an old Madden video game, like when the ambulance used to drive out on the field and run everybody over. Real old school and I like it. Much less loud and obnoxious than our American sirens. One crazy thing about those goofy French though is that, while the Japanese commit sepuku when they are shamed, it appears that the French go with the more romantic method of poison injection. They even have a poison store!
Ok fine, so I made that up. It's actually a fish market. Paris was a pretty sweet time but it's definitely expensive. It helped to have Carrie to communicate, though they pretty much all speak English in some capacity. The most disappointing part of Paris was that we could not find a crepe place to save our lives if you can believe that. We walked everywhere and I guess we saw them but never when it was time to eat. This proved to be a running theme as we traveled elsewhere too. Paris is a beautiful city to walk and we sure did a lot of that. We were even treated to a Thanksgiving dinner right by the Eiffel Tower, which was fantastic. Before that though, we paid a visit to the military museum where Napoleon is buried and I immediately gravitated towards the weaponry like the red-blooded male I am. I'll skip this though because there are way better pictures to be had from France, like this one:
That's on the Metro. I can't read French but the message I took from this was that putting your hands in the doors to keep them from shutting will make you really sad. It doesn't appear to hurt though. After Thanksgiving, we took a short jaunt over to the Eiffel Tower, and I must say that if you go, dusk is a great time to do it. It's great when the lights come on.
They also had a cool light show, which caught some of the light rain that was coming down in the light. I took a video found here. Eiffel Tower - not a disappointment, but ironically, on this small, enclosed space, we got more lost than we were at any point during the trip (which included a lot of driving), which I decided to document with this brief video. Now is a good time to mention that all future videos will be on youtube as it's much easier to upload that way. Also, we didn't walk over there, but did you know that close to the Eiffel Tower, there's another statue of liberty, pretty much exactly like ours? I did know actually because I went to Harvard so am naturally blessed with such knowledge as a result of rubbing my diploma every day before bed, but still I think it's a cool fact.
A couple other typical sights from Paris, you can find the rest on facebook soon.....
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