Paris

Wednesday, May 2nd

I woke up in Paris and jumped in the shower which was, no lie, as big as a telephone booth. The whole time I was in Paris I didn’t have a nice comfortable shower.

I took the metro to Place de la Concorde and laughed at the Japanese tourists who all do the same things and take the same stupid pictures of themselves in front of relatively meaningless landmarks. From there I walked to the Grand Palais and Petit Palais and then down the Champs Elysees where I visited the Adidas shop and then a café where I was able to grab some breakfast. I was nearly thwarted by some damn kid that didn’t seem to want to wait his turn in the line.

After grubbing, I walked to the Arc de Triomphe and then headed to the Eiffel Tower. I hit a couple of other famous sites, Notre Dame, Pont Neuf, Hotel de Ville, etc., before heading to the financial/skyscraper district, La Defense, which ended up being completely pointless. I tried to visit the Bois de Bolougne but it was also pretty lame so I got back into the metro and headed for St. Denis, just north of Paris proper.

St. Denis, it turns out, is the place where many of the former kings of France are buried. I took a long tour of the place and then headed back into Paris to visit Sacre Coeur and was incessantly hassled by the immigrant string trick dudes. They tell you they’re going to show you a trick and then ask you to let them tie your fingers up. Umm… nice try. I have to give them credit though: there were tons of tourists from all imaginable nations there and these guys knew how to swindle them in almost every language. I was impressed.

After Sacre Coeur, I tried to visit St. Sulpice (made famous in The DaVinci Code) but it was closed. While heading back to the metro, I saw the quintessential Parisian flaky dude. He was sitting in a café drinking wine, drawing sketches and looking über-douchy.

I stopped by Pere Lachaise cemetery but it was also closed so I went to St. Eustache and then headed back to the hotel. On the way back, I took a wrong turn and ended up next to the Moulin Rouge. It turns out that my hotel was in the red-light district. Neat!

I marched back to the hotel and planned on watching the other Champion’s League game (Man U v. AC Milan) but it was fuzzed out so I watched the French presidential debate instead. My understanding was limited but I can’t tell you how annoying Segolene Royal was in that debate. She was constantly interrupting Sarkozy and acting like a pompous ass while Sarkozy kept his cool. If I were French, I would have voted for Sarkozy without question. Even if I had to make a judgment call without knowing anything at all about their proposed policies, the caliber of the Royal supporters and her behavior during the debate would have doomed her in my eyes. Seriously though, fuck socialism…

Thursday, May 3rd

Woke up, showered and then headed back to the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Tons of famous people are buried there including Marcel Proust, Frederic Chopin, Balzac (seriously), Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and many others. Morrison’s grave has to be guarded because it became a place where loser hippies would go to have sex and do drugs, ostensibly to honor him. Wilde’s tomb is covered in red lipstick kisses; problem is they’re all from gay dudes who have chosen Oscar Wilde as a gay hero.

After visiting the cemetery, I went back to the city to visit the Hotel Cluny and Sorbonne, but first I had to get some lunch. I stopped in an Irish Pub because they had a smoking lunch deal which included beer. Problem was, the food was fucking terrible and the beer was a demi-beer – which is to say it was 0.25L. Fuck that. To top everything off, there were these dumbass Americans in there who were being the shithead tourists that give the rest of us a bad name. To make it even worse (for me) they started talking to a couple of French dudes having lunch near me and immediately began the whole, “We’re Americans but we didn’t vote for Bush!” shtick. Fucking can it, Ok? I mean, the politics of it all pisses me off to begin with, but the whole thing about throwing your country under the bus within two seconds of meeting a foreigner really gets to me. If you don’t agree with Bush, fine, but let’s keep it in house. I can’t explain why this pisses me off so badly but it does. If only they knew that France would be electing a candidate they had nicknamed “the American” in a few days. Moving on though…

The next thing on my agenda was a trip to the Chateau at Versailles. I got on the train and was sapped of all my energy for some reason. I nodded off on the train and had to be woken up at Versailles. Everyone else had disembarked and if it weren’t the final stop, who knows where I might have ended up.

I toured the Chateau and then went back to Paris to see the Pantheon and the Jardin du Luxembourg. After that, I tried to find the next metro station and ended up at St. Sulpice again. I was able to go in this time and saw the line and other crap depicted in the DaVinci Code. The funniest part, however, was the church propaganda that they had published and made available to counter the effect of the book. After that, I headed to the Louvre to walk around and take a couple of pictures before my planned stop there the next day.

I went back to the hotel and chilled for a little bit before heading out again to see the city at night. I hit all the major sites again, including the Arc de Triomphe. This time, however, there weren’t any dumbass Canadian tourists approaching me and asking me if I spoke English. For some reason that irritated me; do I look French? Do I look anything other than American, what with my baggy pants, t-shirt and backward baseball cap? Not to mention the fact that I was also looking at a map and, therefore, obviously a tourist also. Morons. They were nice enough though…

The only other notable thing that happened was the scooter driver that got pasted by a taxi cab. This is the second time I’ve seen a scooter person get run fucking down by a cab (the other time was in Rome in 2002). Both times, they just popped back up. Since he wasn’t dead, and I was privy enough to witness a Frenchman being run over, I think we both went to bed happy that night.

Friday, May 4th

Not much to report here. I went to the Louvre and spent the whole day there. Luckily for me, the Louvre stays open until 9PM on Fridays, so I had ass-loads of time to spend in there.

And it still wasn’t enough.

I spent the first part of my visit touring the ancient Egyptian artifacts before making my way to the Greeks – the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory of Samothrace, etc. – and then to the Italian paintings where the Mona Lisa sits along with dozens of other masterpieces. From there it was the French paintings, the northern European stuff and then the ancient Persian stuff. Then, after nine hours, it was back to Montmartre for dinner and a rest before my flight back the next day.