This was the vision I had in my mind for our first day in Paris: take the MegaBus at 11 p.m. on Friday and sleep through the entire 7 hour bus ride with dreams of crepes, bread, and wine floating around in my head. Wake up at 6 a.m. feeling completely rested and realize we are already in Paris! Find the Metro effortlessly which takes us right near our apartment and decide to enjoy a flaky croissant and hot coffee at a quaint cafe while we wait to check into our apartment. Around 10 a.m. after seeing the sun shine for the past two hours, we are eager to sightsee so we go to our apartment and find we can check in early! Put down our luggage as we are greeted with champagne by Gerard, our apartment owner, and we ask his opinion on things to do in Paris. After about an hour of talking with Gerard, who we have come to feel as though we have known him all our life, we set out to explore! Paris is our oyster!!!!!
No.
We board the MegaBus at 11 p.m. and realize the heater doesn't work. Arrive half-frozen in Paris after 7 long hours and possibly an hour of sleep. It starts to snow. Take the Metro to our apartment and after getting lost numerous times (why was I the one navigating?) we find our apartment which naturally had no one waiting to check us in because its 6:30 a.m. Start to feel frostbite set in, so we haul our luggage around Paris trying to find anything open. We find a laundromat.
We sat in that laundromat for a single hour.
Some of us stood.
And some of us slept to try and forget that we were slowly freezing to death.
8 a.m. rolls around and we figure we need to start moving before pneumonia sets in and we die before ever eating a crepe from France. Okay I'm being dramatic but it was cooooold. Thank goodness I finally bought that coat. We found a cafe that was just opening and got some coffee and a croissant. We must have looked miserable because this dog stared at us like this the entire time.
I shall name you Squishy and you shall be mine and you shall be my Squishy.
After our breakfast where we slightly unthawed (why would you keep the door open when its snowing...?) we adventured to McDonalds (hey in case you didn't know, we are American!) to use their free wifi and hopefully free bathrooms. The bathrooms did turn out to be free but you had to ask this nice young man to unlock them.
Seriously that was his only job.
After three hours of staring at each other and contemplating why we thought getting in at 6 a.m. was a good idea (no I wasn't the one who planned that...), we decided we needed a change of scene so we left McDonalds and wandered around outside where we quickly realized it was still freezing and snowing. After walking into every tourist shop lining the block we found another cafe where I bought a stick of bread to try and blend in and we sat for another hour and stared at each other. We then finally got the courage to ask the owners to use their phone and after some hand motions and pointing at the phone they finally understood what we meant and handed the darn thing over. We called the apartment we were staying at in the hopes they would let us check in early. After Maddie hung up the phone, she told me he said to call back in 30 minutes so naturally I bought more bread. We were entertained briefly when a man got out of his car and it started casually rolling down the hill because it wasn't in park. That provided some laughs. Finally after exactly 30 minutes we called the apartment again and he finally said we could come check in. Obviously we had to climb these 5 flights of stairs to get to our door.
Mount de Sales? Is that you?!
I guess it looked like we needed a drink because Gerard popped some champagne as soon as we put our luggage down. That bottle was gone in about a minute.
Outside our apartment!
The next morning we hopped on the subway and after being screamed at by a homeless man (probably a good thing we don't speak French) we went to the Paris Catacombs! Really cool tour that took you through the Catacombs that were created to serve as an ossuary at the end of the 18th century.
A quarryman named Decure sculpted the fortress of Port-Mahon, the largest town on the island of Minorca, where he is believed to have been held prisoner by the English.
"Quarryman's footbath", a body of crystal clear groundwater used to mix cement.
Entrance to the ossuary. "Stop! This is the empire of death!"
That is absolutely the Dark Mark from Harry Potter, am I right?!
Gilbert's Tomb which isn't actually a tomb.
Found one with teeth!!! He must have flossed!
After the tour we were surprisingly hungry for people who had just spent an hour looking at millions of skulls and bones but we passed a crepe stand and couldn't resist.
Banana and Nutella obviously. Classic.
After our delicious crepes we made our way over to the Notre Dame Cathedral. So pretty! The line was unbearably long but we got to skip it with our museum pass (thanks Rick Steves! whose a tourist now?! okay me...I'm still a tourist)
Why would you ever let your child do that...
After Notre Dame we went to the Centre Pompidou which is the biggest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe. We saw things like this cutlery holder:
This bunch of knees that kind of look like potatoes:
These black squares in frames:
This set of toothbrushes:
These razors:
Some pantyhose?
And this astounding collection of chairs.
Stacked chairs:
Folded chair:
Beanbag chair:
Metal chair:
Rolling chair:
And to end the collection, a purple chair:
Inspiring.
Clearly we don't understand modern art.
There were only so many chairs and toothbrushes I could look at, so we left after about an hour to make some dinner in our apartment and then go get a bottle of wine. We walked into a restaurant near our apartment after dinner and sat at a table near a couple, where they immediately turned to us, arms folded, like:
We weren't sure why they were so offended by us but it got to the point where we had to switch to a different table outside. Excusez-moi!
The next day we went to see the Musee du Louvre, which makes an appearance in The Davinci Code!
"Hahaha skip the Mona Lisa! But see it so you can laugh that you wasted time seeing it"-Megan McCawley
The museum was gorgeous!! A little overwhelming, I think we spent two hours on one out of four floors in one of the three wings, and most of the time I didn't know what I was looking at but it was still amazing to see. After the Louvre, we wanted to go climb the Arc de Triomphe to get a good view of Paris. We got off the subway stop labeled "Grand Arch" and was greeted with this sight.
That looked a little different than what I remember from my guide book, so we looked in the distance and saw the Arc de Triomphe.
Do you see it? No? Let me zoom in.
There it is!!!!!! Seems we got off on the wrong stop.
We got back on the subway and went right back to where we started.
Made it!
284 steps later....
We were greeted with our first sights of the Eiffel Tower!
It was unfortunately snowy and foggy, but still beautiful!
Eternal flame that symbolizes the tomb of the unknown soldier.
After climbing back down the 284 steps, we wanted to do something mindless and the aquarium was one of the places we could get in for free with our museum pass, so we hopped on the subway eagerly anticipating lots of fish and sharks. We got to the aquarium and it was closed. Naturally. We definitely aren't the best planners in the world but on the plus side we were really getting to know the French public transportation system and we each ended up with a bottle of wine so I would say it was a win-win.
After heading back to our apartment and taking a little cat nap, we woke up hungry so we decided to go to the grocery store. We were locking the door to our apartment and were halfway down the stairs when a French man barges out of his apartment and starts screaming at us to shut up. We immediately apologized when he started cussing us out! He wasn't completely fluent in English but he definitely knew his cuss words. The only words I knew in French were "please" and "thank you" so I didn't think that would have been an appropriate response so we just ran out of there.
On the way back we decided to take a really mature approach and be as loud as we could going up the stairs. In hindsight this probably wasn't the best idea but it was funny at the time. We were almost to our door when he comes barging out of his apartment and chases us up the stairs. After five minutes of arguing about him paying rent and saying we have a right to walk up the stairs, he told us he was going to call the cops. We were just like:
We went back in our apartment and fell asleep after a couple hours. Then we woke up to a knock at our door and this lovely email.
It turned out not to be the police but to be Gerard, the apartment owner, who had the police on the telephone. Maddie and I pretended to be asleep (great friends right?) so Sarah ended up talking to the police who were extremely nice. I managed to snap an inconspicuous picture while I was "sleeping".
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After Gerard hung up with the police he counted our wine bottles (I won't say how many we had...I mean come on its cheaper than water there) he said "First time I have had to come to apartment in three years! I was expecting rowdy boys but no, three girls!" But then he laughed and told us to make sure to see the Eiffel Tower at night so we didn't feel too bad, and we told ourselves we would write him a good review on Hostel World.
The next morning after we tiptoed down the stairs, we went to the Miraculous Medal Chapel!
We walked in during Adoration which was pretty cool, and the church was beautiful! I went to get postcards and then realized that I already had almost everything in the gift shop from when Megan visited.
Then we headed over to the Eiffel Tower, but it was still light out and we promised Gerard we would see it when it was dark out, so we took some pictures and then went to sit in a cafe and people watch.
Thank goodness we stayed for the sun to go down because the Eiffel Tower was even more breath taking lit up!! I was in awe.
After the light show we decided to head home and go to sleep because the next day we were heading to Brussels!
In the morning we went to get souvenirs and breakfast before having to catch our MegaBus at 11:00. As we got on the metro at 10:30 I had this realization that there was no way we were going to make it to the MegaBus in a half hour. Naturally we arrive at 11:10, and realize the MegaBus had already left. Dang you and your promptness! We talked with someone from the company and they told us we were going to have to buy a ticket for the next bus which wasn't leaving until 11 p.m., which would put us in Brussels around 3 a.m, and I got a flashback to when we thought it would be a good idea to arrive in Paris at 6 a.m., so we quickly nixed that idea and asked for another option. The man told us we could to Eurolines but he wasn't sure when the trains left, and we would have to go back to where we just came from to ask their office. At that point we were out of metro tickets but we had no other choice so we walked back to the metro. However, on the way back a passing lady just put her hand out and handed four metro tickets to Maddie. At first I thought it was that scam that I read about in Rick Steves, where
in Rome a lady says you dropped a ring and hands it to you and then you get beat up in an alley for stealing her ring. So I nervously glanced over my shoulder the entire way to the metro, but thankfully we didn't get beat up. I think Rick Steves is making me paranoid.
We get on the metro and head to Eurolines, where thank the Lord a train is leaving in an hour. We booked those tickets and sat and waited for our bus. This time the heater on the bus worked and we all had the row to ourselves! Some classy traveling right there. We arrived in Brussels safe and sound, where we checked into our hotel that was located in a prostitution area. More on that later.
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