Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Paris, Day One

Sunday we had to get up early yet again, our train to Paris left at 8:20. Yet again a night with not enough sleep! We were quite a sight in the train station: two girls, each wearing backpacks, lugging around 3 big suitcases and one small one. Ridiculous. We got on our TGV with no problem, managed to carry our bags up the stairs because of course our seat was on the top level. Anna slept on the train while I spent two hours organizing photos. I have gotten pretty much all the pictures of Hope, Brooke, Anna, Michael, and Jeffrey, and then some of Mike’s so I had a lot to go through! Now they’re all organized in folders by date, ready for me to go through and pick out which ones to order (which will be happening on our flight to the US). When we got to Paris we easily found a cab to take us to our hotel, there was no way we were lugging everything through the métro. We got to our hotel about 10 minutes before check in time so we waited and then just fell asleep when we got to our room. We woke up around 4, took our time getting ready, and then headed into Paris. Since our hotel was by Orly airport it was pretty obnoxcious getting into the city. We had to take a shuttle to the airport, a bus for almost 7 Euros to the RER train, and then the RER train to the métro. Pain in the butt. We had planned to meet Alex and John, two guys who also studied with us in Chambéry and just happened to be in Paris this weekend, at 9 in front of Notre Dame. We were obviously early, and very hungry, so we decided to find somewhere to eat. While walking down a little side street full of restaurants a man who owned a Greek restaurant convinced us to eat there. It was 12 Euros for bread, a starter, main dish, and dessert, and he threw in a free cocktail “because you are from the states.” I’m pretty sure everybody got a free cocktail though. Dinner was delicious, we ate til we were more than full (a rare things this trip…unless we were at Mark and Joy’s) and just enjoyed the restaurant and Paris. It took 2-3 hours for dinner but the timing was perfect. But the time we had finished eating it was time to head to Notre Dame to meet the guys.
They were late. Typical. But it was fun because there were several entertainers around to watch-a man juggling and balancing on a rope, a band playing…never a dull moment in Paris! And we talked to a couple people in French, two different fairly lengthy conversations, we loved it! I LOVE being able to just understand people and communicate with them, obviously I can do that in America but it’s just cooler here. I’ve been learning French since I was 12 and now I’ve finally been able to use it on a daily basis. The guys finally showed up a little before 9:30. We stayed in the area for a little longer, watched a band of some sort play, and then went back to their hotel so they could change and so we could figure out somewhere to go dance. Googling ‘clubs in Paris’ didn’t return many reliable results. It was frustrating. We finally decided on ‘le monkey club,’ got its address (right off the Champs Elysées), and headed out. Apparently ‘le monkey club’ doesn’t exist. There was a club right near where it should have been, but they wanted 30 Euros for us to get in. No thank you. Alex and John had tried to get into a club called ‘Queen’ last time they were in Paris but had been denied. It was also on the Champs Elysées and they knew it was only 20 so we walked a little further til we found it. Thankfully they let us all in with no issues. But when we got downstairs we were shocked to find out that it was a gay club! Oops. We tried to make the best out of it and dance but it didn’t last long. We left, very upset, and the guys wanted to find a bar. We looked around for a while but nothing looked good so they took a cab back to their hotel. Doing that would have cost us 40-50 Euros so we decided not to. But the métro wasn’t running anymore because it was too late. Our plan had been to just be in a club until it opened again but that failed. The Champs Elysées is really lit up and full of people even at 3 AM so we decided to walk around some. We were in Paris, who cares if we wasted 20 Euros on a gay club (although that is a little upsetting)! We found a café/pizzeria that was open late. We each ordered a coffee and split some chocolate mousse and just enjoyed the night. Our four hour naps helped us to not be tired and miserable so that was good! We asked our server when the métro started running again. Unfortunately it was after the café closed. But he was really nice and even after they closed he had us wait inside while they cleaned up the place. We got to talk to him and a bunch of the other servers/employees (in French) and then when the métro finally started running again he walked with us because he had to take it home too. It was really nice! We made it back to our hotel and just slept until we woke up.

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