I'm Baaack!

And home this afternoon unfortunately, as I've got some sort of nasty cold thing going on and needed to get some rest. We'll still go to Avenue Q this evening, but after the whirlwind weekend we've had, I couldn't face a day trooping around London as well. We had an absolutely wonderful time in Paris, and it went by in a flash. I'll tell you about it, do my best to keep it short, and I promise pictures will be forthcoming in the future. I need to get mine loaded onto the computer, and get some from Jo as well.

So we caught the Eurostar first thing Saturday morning, our train was at the obscene hour of 7:09am. But as always, I can't sleep on moving objects, so when I wasn't reading, I was drinking in the landscape. It is true what they say- the train moves one heck of a lot faster in France than in Blighty. They do have passport control and xray your luggage and all that jazz, but all in all it was much easier than a flight. So we arrived in Paris, figured out how to buy tickets for "le metro" and made our way toward our hotel. But we stopped off at Jardin de Luxembourg, which has a grand palace in the middle of it, and tons more...lots of sculptures, people doing martial arts, running, stretching, playing chess, playing boules on courts specially designed (bocce ball again), kiddie wading pools, with sand pits right next to them, and tons and tons of chairs for anyone to use. It is probably the best park I have ever seen. I felt so relaxed I even had a nap before we decided to move on. Since we were so close to the church of St. Sulpice (which features prominently in the Da Vinci Code), we had to take that detour, and see the Rose Line. It was a gorgeous, huge old church, and had the brass "Rose Line" running right through the middle of it, but there were signs everywhere denying that it ever had anything to do with anything other than science and astronomy, and certainly never had anything to do with the time line that now runs through Greenwich. Right, consider that bit of artistic license debunked. We continued on to our hotel, which for being a two star, was very decent. And the concierge spoke English, and was happy to help us...which would morph into a theme I'll talk about in bits and pieces as I go through our trip. Our experience with Parisians was sweet and sour, but more sweet than sour, and I think that had a lot to do with two blondes and gorgeous smiles ;)

We decided to spend our first afternoon at the Pompidou Center, famous for its exterior design, and for being the second largest exhibition of modern art, behind the MOMA in New York City. There were tons of street performers in the plaza surrounding the building, including musicians and magicians. As for the Pompidou itself, well, let's just say Jo and I decided that with certain exhibits, there's a fine line between being an artist, and being unwell (read sick, even).

We tried to get some pictures out over Paris from the top of the building, and then as we left, decided to head toward the river and find a nice sidewalk cafe for dinner. Only we got a little turned around, and ended up with our heads buried in a map, as tourists do. And amazingly enough, a French woman stopped to ask if she could help us find something...I have never, ever had anyone offer to help me in London when I'm looking at a map, and certainly had not expected it from a Parisian, but there you go. At dinner, our waiter fawned all over us, dubbing us "green eyes and blue eyes" and endeavored to make us laugh, and flirted with us until the meal was done. Alas, we had things to do...it was almost 9pm, but still very light out, so we headed to Notre Dame. At the plaza there, we listened to a classical guitar player who unbelievably enough at one point started to play Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody (remember I was singing that drunkenly with Nicole last weekend in Guildford because we heard it playing in bar?!), and watched two young people swing fire torches about in intricate patterns and movements. We walked into Notre Dame during the middle of a service, with gorgeous singing, and were beset later on by a couple of French men at different times while sitting down outside the church, who would blatantly stare, and then try to get a conversation going.

We moved on to the Latin Quarter, which was vibrant and addictively fun. We heard a lot of English being spoken, a lot of American English actually, all over Paris, but the Latin Quarter was a hodge-podge of international young people, and I was glad I'd thrown a pair of dancing shoes into my suitcase at the last minute when I packed Friday morning. What a night!

On Sunday, we had brunch at a small cafe near our hotel, where the waiter was rude, and a guy stared at me through the whole meal, even though his girlfriend was right next to him- I've never seen anything like the staring that French men do. It's unnerving. Maybe it's just in Paris, who knows. Anyway, even though it rained pretty much all day, we took the Batobus as planned (pronounced batobooos), because it let us hop on and hop off at sites like the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, etc all day long, and it's so much more fun to see Paris from cruising along the Seine than using the Metro...even when it's raining. We got the same boat guide our first couple of times, who paid us a lot of special attention, giving us free pens (which he then refused to give to the guy next to us, when he asked for one!), and advice at every stop that he was not sharing over the microphone with everyone else on the boat. The boat guide we had later on was even cuter, and we had to forgive him for staring, he had such a great smile! At the Louvre, Jo stopped to ask a male employee of the museum if he spoke English because she wanted to find the inverted pyramid. At first he told her he spoke very little, but then she smiled at him, and suddenly he was fluent in English, trying to draw her out in conversation about the Da Vinci Code movie, and how everything in the film had been changed and didn't look like they actually do in the Louvre. We only spent a couple of hours in the Louvre, searching out specific things (Mona Lisa- with a very rude guard, Venus de Milo, the medieval foundations of the original Louvre building, etc)...both because I'd warned Jo you could easily spend days in the Louvre, and because we wanted to get to the Latin Quarter to watch England take on Ecuador!!

The waiters at the bar were fascinated by the English girls (I was cheering for England, so I had to be English apparently) getting all excited and yelling at the widescreen TV. Although I was not happy when one of them seated a couple in front of us, banging a chair back into me to make room for them, and forcing me to move to see the screen because the guy he'd put in front of me was too tall. We met Colombians who were there to cheer on Ecuador, French guys trying to talk us out of cheering for England, Americans and more. I met more people in Paris in general, and in the Latin Quarter that day particularly, than I have in London. We ventured outside after the game to listen to some street musicians called the Crooners, who had a Southern American jugband style take on modern songs...and hung out with them for a bit after their show, before we moved on to other bars! We stopped for dinner at one point, but just couldn't get enough of the Latin Quarter vibe!

Made it difficult to get up this morning to catch the Eurostar back, but as consolation, I got a free haircut at Toni and Guy...Jo had made the appointments for us, and it was supposed to be 5 pounds. Jo paid for hers while I was signing in, and I stood there waiting with a 10 pound note in my hands, but when the lady looked up at me, she just shooed me over the elevator, so I never actually paid. And I got a great haircut in the end. So now I'm going to sleep for an hour or two, take some meds for my chest/head cold, and drag my butt back out the door for the show later on tonight.

Let's see, Jo and my overall impression of Paris- with it's great big wide streets, most of which are tree-lined, its sidewalk cafes, and all the Parisians who were helpful to us, it just somehow came across as more open and inviting of a city than London, which is actually referred to as the "Lonely City" (London, I mean, not Paris). Jo called Paris less hostile than London in fact. I'll share some more anecdotes along with the photos, once I'm ready to post them. For now, au revoir!