Visit & Venture Part 1 (un)

Mom arrived in the Düsseldorf airport bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, wheeling 2 suitcases on December 17^th. We hung around in the Mönchengladbach area for a few days, visiting Köln and Düsseldorf, and being frozen by the wind at a Borussia Mönchengladbach fussball (soccer) game. Then on the 21^st, we left gladbach to venture into unknown territory: Paris, France. Except that Thalys, our train company, had a different idea. Their workers decided that the 21^st wasn’t a good day for us to leave, and decided to go on strike. The Deutsche Bahn, being the kind people that they are, put us up in a Koeln hotel for a night, and we tried (successfully this time) to begin our venture again at 6am the next day, neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed.

Which brings us to… Paris. Beautiful, clean, enormous, rich, busy, prideful Paris. We both loved Paris as soon as we dragged our bags up the 17 cases of stairs from the underground metro and emerged on the Pont Neuf Bridge, the oldest bridge in Paris. From our first glimpse, we could see the Eiffel Tower, the steeple of the Notre Dame, the Seine, and some very typical sweet Parisian streets. We stood there a few moments taking it all in. And then some deaf and mute people, flapping their arms in our face and blowing us kisses, trying to get us to sign a petition and give them money, almost mowed us down. Are they really deaf and mute? How did they know to point to the English section of the petition? Huh? Tell me that. Also, don’t understand why they all just blow kisses at us? Is there a reason? Can someone please fill me in on this? I don’t mean to sound heartless, but I just don’t believe them. I’ll give money to homeless people, but I don’t trust these people that all look like they’re from the same exact family claiming that they are deaf and mute (Oh, and for the trifecta, their petition also claimed they were orphans). Have you ever known 7 siblings to ALL be deaf and mute? So after fighting our way out of the flailing arms, we made our way to the island in the middle of the Seine, where our hotel was set. It was on a cute little park in a very old building (of course). After getting our key and making our way up a skinny spiral staircase with all of our bags to the 6^th floor (which was about 20 flights of stairs), we both fainted for a few minutes. I then immediately opened the window and breathed in the cool air while taking in our view. It was a very cute, quaint hotel room and just what I was expecting a Paris hotel to be like. It was perfect for us. Minus the part where the toilet was outside on a balcony and extremely scary and potentially spidery in the dark (which it gets to be at 4:30pm here). That was not a perfect part for an acrophobic girl, but I would still return to this hotel for purely the charm.

The view from our hotel window.

After our fainting spell, we were both tired and hungry, so we decided to get something to eat and then visit Notre Dame (a few blocks from our hotel) and the Eiffel Tower (way too far from our hotel). Both were, of course, beautiful. At the Notre Dame, we were accosted again by some new deaf and mute girls, and we watched a bird man who had 20 little birds flying all around him and using him like a tree. We accidentally got too close to him and I had a minor heart attack as birds started flapping in my face and one dived at my head, brushing my ear with its wing. We also had our first experience with the scary gun men. Apparently in Paris, they have military (I guess?) men walking around with GIANT guns and berets and serious faces. We later met a friend who told us this was to keep the gypsies away from the tourists. If that’s the case, it’d be nice if they’d smile every once in a while so we know they aren’t glaring at us in anticipation of shooting us. All these things make it a better experience, though. We took pictures, I took a picture for a guy who wanted one of himself in front of cathedral, and we marveled at all the little statues and the detail put into the façade. I was glad that it was nighttime by the time we made it to the Eiffel Tower. It was unbelievable at night. I was not really sure how I would feel when I saw it… is it overrated or is it really that wonderful? And it’s really that wonderful. It’s just overpowering, I think is the right word. How could the Parisians have hated it when it was first designed and built? We made our way up to the very top in the elevator. Mom started to panic as the people below grew smaller, and I got more excited. We first stopped off at the middle, which is in the open air. It was refreshing, seriously cold, windy, and beautiful. We could see the Arc de Triumph, the Ferris Wheel, and all the other little lights that adorn Paris. Then we got on the elevator to go to the very top, which was not as exciting. It was enclosed, you couldn’t see as much, and packed with smelly, aggravated people. So we quickly went back down to the middle. Dinner that night consisted of ham sandwiches on French baguettes with pommes sitting underneath the tower.

Notre Dame

The next day, we explored the Louvre and the many tourist shops surrounding it, took some more pictures of families, strolled down des Champs Elysees and counted the Shi-Shis, accidentally wandered into stores and bought things, perused and purchased gifts at the Christmas Market and ate scrumptious Churros (mouth is now watering). Not at bad way to spend Christmas Eve-Eve. I do have to say that the Mona Lisa is not THAT small. All of my life, I’ve heard people talk about how small the Mona Lisa is and walking in, I was looking around the walls for a painting only a little larger than a special edition postage stamp. It took me a while to spot the normal-sized portrait painting hanging on the wall in a room off the great hall. It really is not THAT small; it is about the normal size of a typical portrait. Other than the size, it looked exactly how I expected it to look since it’s not possible to get close enough to see any more detail or brush strokes than you can see in your average textbook or art book. In one of the souvenir shops that we visited, there was a sweet girl that could speak very good English (unusual in Paris), and she asked us all kinds of questions about America. Next time we come back, she would like to go back with us to America, she said. This was a good thing to hear in Paris, where so far we hadn’t run into anyone who wanted to speak English to us or who really wanted to help us at all. It’s not even that they are rude. They are perfectly pleasant; it’s just that they don’t care. At one point, the nice shop girl asked us where we were from… and this is how this conversation went, just to show how it goes when most Europeans ask where we are from:

Mom and me: We’re from South Carolina.

Shopgirl: (looks really puzzled)

Mom and me: It’s near Florida (as we’ve grown accustomed to saying).

Shopgirl: (recognition dawns her face) Ohhhhh yes, Miami!

Mom and me: (smiling and nodding) exactly!

Shopgirl: That’s near L.A., right?

Mom and me: (faces drop, realizing it is hopeless) ummmm yeah, sure.

Mom outside the Louvre

Me outside the Louvre

The famous Mona Lisa

On Christmas Eve, we decided to go to Euro Disney since most of the city would be closed. We were so excited! Disney is one of our favorite places in the world, and this was in Paris! And it was amazing. They have 2 parks: a main park, which is basically like Magic Kingdom in our Floridian park, but not as big, and a MGM park. We just went to the main park since we only had the day. It was a happy day, which you can’t help but feel when you are at Disney, because it’s the happiest place on Earth. We rode all the rides we could, ate a lot of food, and took lots of pictures. The only big differences from Disney in Florida were the songs being sung in French and the size of the park. We got back on the train to Paris (about a 40-minute ride) and were soon joined by a family with 3 kids. They were wondering aloud in English if they were on the right train, so I assured them that they were. Once they heard our American accent, they asked us where we were from and we told them SC. Their faces lit up, exclaiming, “Are you serious!? We’re from South Carolina, too!” It continues to amaze me what a small world it is: the same compartment on the same train, at the same time in the same city on the same day.  What are the odds? We talked to them for the remainder of the journey. They were from Charleston and an extremely nice family. Maybe we will be able to meet them in Charleston sometime.

Our last day in Paris was Christmas Day and then we were leaving for Bruges. We decided to do one of the sightseeing double-decker bus tours so that we could see everything that we hadn’t gotten to see yet. A definite on my list was Moulin Rouge, one of my favorite movies/musicals. It was an okay bus tour, as those things tend to be, but it got the job done and accomplished what we wanted it to: we saw A LOT of Paris over 3 hours, and hopped on and off as desired. After scurrying back to our hotel to fetch our luggage, we made our way to the train station and onward to Bruges, Belgium.

I hope to visit Paris again. We had a great time and couldn’t imagine spending Christmas in a more beautiful backdrop. It is a huge city with so much to do. There will always be more to see.

A few things we learned in Paris:

• We need to start perfecting our Australian accents rather than our British accents. Everyone asked us immediately if we were from Australia. I’m really not sure where that comes from, apart from our blonde hair, perhaps? Or maybe our slight southern accents? We were puzzled. Although we do spend a bit of time talking in British accents and trying to perfect them, we realized maybe Australian accents are where our talents lie. **To clarify: we only joke around with each other speaking in other accents. We don't speak to strangers in different accents.
• French Croissants taste the same as German Croissants. Not sure why France gets all the hype for Croissants? They all taste delicious to me.
• I never want to drive a car in Paris. They have no rules. And if they do have rules, I am utterly baffled by them.

This concludes Part 1 of our European Christmas & New Year’s Extravaganza… I will continue with our trips to Belgium and The Netherlands over the next couple of blogs.