Sex District Theology at the Moulin Rouge: Paris Pt. 2

And we'll get to that in a minute, promise....

I spaced out the posts for a day to give the optimal amount of time for all my readers back home to......sorry, I just got out of a test and I think my creative answer side is flairing up....I got lazy and busy, so I decided to just not do it.

But, I'm here today to give you the rest of the riveting information.

PARIS, DAY 2

We woke up around 9:30, and realized in our fatigue the night before that we weren't actually sleeping on pillows. Still not the worst place I've stayed in my life (see anywhere on the Appalachian Trail). After figuring out the metro station, we ended up wandering to the left bank near a university to catch the famous Breakfast in America, where we were enticed with "American Pancakes" (versus the normal crepe sized pancakes in the rest of France), "Bottomless Cups of Joe" (not actually bottomless if served to you after you're halfway through your food, damn you successful budget saving techniques!), and American music (Half of what came on the radio was the Beatles).

You'll never guess what was on the diner TV

I think it was a bigger thing for Dan and Jason than me, as Ireland strives at points to be American and to live up to that standard (as well as my eating American based meals when I'm cooking your own food here). But it was a nice change.

There were a couple of things we had missed the day before in the Louvre, so we decided to dash back and check those for a couple hours.

Like this bust. I really wanted to see this bust

Dan Brown told me this is where Jesus is buried

We almost got away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids...

The Code of Hammurabi: Basically, you're going to lose a hand

So, that about wrapped up our time at the Louvre. We were trying to go to the Musée d'Orseé (Spelling is definitely wrong) afterwards, so we headed down to that section across the Seine to try to find lunch.

After about a 30 minute walk looking for food less than 10€, we grumpily gave up and sat down to eat at a bistro across the street. By the time we got out of lunch, it was about 4 and the museum was closing at 5:30. We turned the corner and were greeted...

By the longest line to get into the tar...uhh, museum.

After deliberating on staying and waiting and only getting about an hour or so to see the museum or just finding something else, we decided to wait it out. As soon as we joined the que, they opened up another entry and made it super quick to get into the museum.

Because we're students studying at EU universities with visas, we don't have to stand in line in Paris to pay for tickets. We just show our visas and student IDs and get in. This was a slight problem, as Dan didn't actually have his Visa. And Jason was carrying around his Passport, so we luckily managed to convince the door guard to let those two in. I used my Garda card, and breezed right through without a problem.

We weren't actually supposed to take photos inside the museum, but didn't see that until the end of the tour, so I'll just post what I had:

Cue impressionist painting

Hi, dad.

This is ART people.

For a heads up, I'm normally not an art person. I will appreciate it, I will gander at great creations and wonder how they thought it up. But normally, I'm not one to sit and discuss it at length. But something about the impressionist art made me angry at aesthetics. When looking at it from across the room, it was fantastic and showed wonderful perspective. When looking at it from 2 feet away, it looked like something I could've done. Jason and I both agreed that we were going to buy a 20 foot long dining room table and put impressionist pieces on both ends. And alternative nights we're going to sit on opposite sides of the 20 footer.

LIFE PLANS FOLKS

After leaving, we wanted to head up to Sacre-Couer, which is the basilica on top of the hill in Paris. We caught the train up, walked around inside for a bit, then ended up getting dinner in the area. We were getting kinda sleepy based on all of our travels, but the food cheered us up quite a bit. After eating, we ended up right below the basilica when it was lit up, and it looked almost something like this...

Paris by Twilight

We wandered down the hill into the city, to find ourselves surrounded by the sex district...right underneath the basilica. After purchasing some cider, we ended up sitting on a bench next to La Moulin Rouge. And of course the concept of God came up.

So we ended up debating the merits of comparative religion and our surroundings for the next few hours until we got tired. There were no significant conclusions reached, I just thought it was notable that's what we ended up talking about.

And then I made it back to Dublin.

Until my next crazy adventure, keep on rocking world.

John Henson is Huge!! (in France): A Weekend in Paris pt. 1

My faithful followers! How are we doing?

A bit a business to get out of the way: Since I did not finish the Spain adventures, I'll just recap the last three days in a minimalist amount. If you really do wish to hear more about Valencia/Madrid, I will be happy to relay the information to you in a heartfelt personal message. Otherwise, we'll have the following conversation.

"How was Valencia/Madrid"
"It was good!"

Statements: There were a lot of unexpected explosions in Valencia. Irish pubs are everywhere. Paella. Mwiti had his last glass of Guinness. Bus/Bus/Flight. Mwiti gets us free lodging. Nightmares for the entire night before I left about missing my flight. Made my flight.

NOW, onto the business of PARIS

Or the one with the big tower.

DAY 1:
 
After waking up at 2:30 AM (3 hours of sleep) to ensure I didn't miss my 4 AM bus to the airport, I hastily packed, ate the rest of my perishable food, and took a long shower knowing I wouldn't get a chance to do this with the rest of my weekend. I not only MADE MY INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT, but also made it early to Dublin Airport for my 6:30 flight. (Currently we're 3-4, 75% is still a solid C).

The flight wasn't bad, there's apparently a family of rabbits that live on the tarmac at Dublin airport T1, and I snapped up a lucky #23 seat knowing that we were playing UOhio later that day. Coming out of Ireland was pretty neat, because I actually saw the sun about Dublin. I just had to get to cruising altitude to do it.

After arriving in Beauvais-Tallé around 9:00 French time, I had to take what turned out to be a 1.5 hour bus into the northwest corner of the city amid my fellow passengers habloing speaking parle-ing the Francaise.

About my history with French: If I thought my Spanish was rusty, I promise my 3 years of French in high school were that much worse. Luckily, I had planned out my attack to get to the hotel by Gare de L'Est and meet Jason. So, after about another hour on the Paris metro, we finally reunited for a second time this semester in a dingy little hotel 2 minutes from the metro.

After grabbing a quick lunch of Baguette Jambon et Fromage and a FANTASTIC croissant, we met up with his friend for about an hour and walked through a French market. Not nearly as impressive as the markets we walked through in Spain. Then we took a walk down to the Cathedral de Notre-Dame after passing by the monument to Bastille along the Seine while jabbering on about the fantastic basketball team we have back home. Photos as follows:

If you look SUPER close, you can see a hunchback singing to a beautiful Gypsy

After walking through the revered halls, and lighting a candle in what can only be described as an enticing spiritual experience, Jason and I took in my first French café. It was an espresso. For 1€. Standing at a counter. But it was still the best coffee I've had in a long time. Why don't we do that in Dublin? Let's get better at that, team.

After imbibing the coffee, we jetted over to the Eiffle Tower and make the 706 foot climb up the stairs to see the wonderfully spread out city of Paris. Pictures, you ask?

Note the blue sky

 

After being on top of the Eiffel Tower, I have absolutely no more fear of heights. Not that I did in the first place, but being able to be at 300m up and look out without any tingle of suspense is an AWESOME feeling. One of the best moments I've had this entire trip without doubt.

After making the way back down, we ended up tripping up the Champs de Lysees (sp?), and looked at all the fancy shops. Abercrombie and Fitch has a golden gated community. No joke. We also found a special friend in the Nike store about halfway up.

Oh HAY John Henson

Afterwards, we ended up at the Arc du Triumph, where they were having a ceremony honoring the 7 victims who had fallen in Toulouse just the day before. Perhaps because I was completely exhausted from traveling and the week before, it turned out to be a very eerie unsettling experience. It should've been a reverent one, but just the concept of being that close to the result of terrorism really brought me out of my comfort zone in a big way. Jason is from NYC, and yet I had a more adverse reaction to it. It really gives you a instant sense of frailty and fear of random violence.

But how about we just go on living and being goofballs for the sake of this blog?

After retrieving our good friend Dan from the train station and checking into the hotel, we ended up going back to the Louvre to see how things looked for the last hour before they closed. It was totally free for students (awesome) and we were able to see the Mona Lisa and most of the Renaissance art. We didn't have nearly enough time to go through and appreciate it like we did with the Impressionist art at Musée d'Orsay (sp? also, preview for tomorrow), but it was still quite neat. I'll post my favorites:

 

 

Dan has a sexy cat pose

Venus of Milo

SMILE, MONA LISA!

So, after being removed from the museum via some nice herding work by the employees of the Louvre, we walked up the Seine by the moonlight, stopped in a store, picked up some wine, and headed to the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower. We were greeted at about 11 by some fantastic light show that happens about every hour.

We ran into another girl in their program, Beth, at the base, and deliberated about heading to the Latin Quarter to see the French nightclubs before eventually agreeing that 23 hours was too long to be awake, and went back to the hotel to go to sleep. Full day in Paris.

Preview for next post:

ALSO: Please consider looking at my sister's site for raising money to fight Crohn's and Colitis. She's raising money by biking. How cool is that? You don't even have to do any exercise. You just have to look and read about why she wants to. Check it out

"Paddy's in Ireland Isn't Going to be that big a deal..."

EXCEPT IT IS.

Everywhere I went and everyone I talked to before I came to Ireland claimed that the infamous St. Paddy's Day (That spelling is correct, mind you) was just a completely Americanized event made out just to push people into bars and sell products with an Irish theme. Like Valentine's day (thanks hallmark!) Now, I don't mean to be condescending, but that's absolutely the furthest thing from the truth possible.

And it's only 70% tourists

I'll start with Friday: The big event was the craft beer festival that took place on the docks. A bunch of microbreweries came into town and set up to sell. Apparently, Guinness basically had a monopoly on selling beer in Ireland until about 1996. Kind of like the walmart of Dublin (except they sell a mighty fine product). They would buy up the smaller breweries, then instead of using the land they bought, simply turn the land into a park or some other contribution to the city of Dublin. Then the government started subsidizing microbreweries to promote Irish companies. All things we got to hear from a free talk on the history of brewing in Ireland. Also, I now can tell you the difference between a beer and an ale (historically)

My friend Lucas from Oak Ridge came into town to celebrate the festivities, and the first thing I did was drag him into Carroll's across the street from the spire to buy him as much obnoxious green as we could. Because I didn't want him to be out of place for the following day. I know this seems super tourist-y, but they actually have the cheapest green material in the city.

Here's some advice for Paddy's. If you want to buy IRISH food either the day of or the day before big festivals, get ready to wait about an hour. And they don't really have reservations here either. After wandering around north Dublin for a while, we finally settled on a noodles bar on the street.

Saturday:

Only very rarely have I woken up feeling like it was Christmas on days other than Christmas (usually on days where I drive back to UNC, Basketball games at UNC, etc...), but I popped out of bed at 7 45 AM with a smile on my face. After rousing Lucas awake, we decked out in our green.

I went business casual, Lucas found a green shirt later on

We met up with a couple friends, and got into the city super early to get good spots for the parade. This was unbelievably packed. I'll just post a few photos and then explain why the floats all look like someone designed them in a drug-induced haze.

Roommates! The only time I've run into people I know on the streets of Dublin thus far.

We were on Dame Street across from the central bank

Not technically Irish

OK, that's a good taste of what we were experiencing. Now, let me tell you why there were dragons and wooden horses on the streets of Dublin.

From what I understand, the parade seems to be an artist's dream. There were tons of different groups from every corner of Ireland, and they were introduced by signs that announced what county they belonged to. As far as I can tell, each county submits a group to perform. It's like a friendly competition. There were some interesting floats, and I kept finding a child-like enthusiasm every time something new would pass.

"LUCAS LOOK AT THAT ONE" "OH MY GOSH, LOOK AT THIS ONE" came out of my mouth more than once.

The parade was pretty fun, however, in my infinite wisdom, I thought a coat would be unnecessary because the sun was shining in my window when I woke up. Thus, in the hour we were waiting for the parade to start, the rain was piercingly cold.

After the parade, we got lunch at a place off grafton street, where I was just excited to be inside. Lucas was only in for the day, so we decided to wander around the city and see the big spots. After walking to the Jameson Distillery and looking at the 50 minute wait, we then walked down to the Guinness factory to see how massive it was, St. Patrick's Cathedral...

In Paddy's (Garden), at Paddy's (Cathedral) on Paddy's (day)

...Trinity College, and finally an attempt to see St. Stephen's Green (which was closed because by then all the 15 year olds who were out drinking had been properly drunk to the point where it was not hygienic to walk through the green anymore).

It was interesting to watch the cops (gardá), as they wouldn't even fine people who were carrying around open containers, they would just point in the general direction of a trashcan and hope the people would go that way. It was almost to the point of futility, however.

After running back to get a coat, I met up with the team at a restaurant on Baggot street where they finished up eating and we headed out for our Irish pub experience. We ended up well away from the commercial district at this place called Scruffy Murphy's to meet up with our friends.We drank a couple pints, sang some karaoke, danced a lot, and called it a night.

Best weekend in Dublin thus far.

Spain pt. 3 FCB, Olympic Stadium, and la Castille

Sorry about the last few days of break, I needed some time to reflect on how wonderful a trip it was so I decided to take a small respite....

WHICH BRINGS US TO

Day 3: Sunday in Barcelona
After convincing the jetlagged ones to rise out of bed, and celebrating our UNC victory with them, we decided to take a trip uptown to see the home of Messi, Piqué, Xavi,and a few other somewhat famous people at Jason's request

And that's how we ended up touring the Barça stadium

It was pretty wicked. I've never been in a soccer stadium before, so It was pretty exciting for a first timer. For about 13 €, we got to go to the clubhouse, onto the field, into the press boxes, into the trophy room, etc... So I'll just post a couple photos because they'll say a lot more than I can

El Mejor Jugador de Todos!

We probably spent about 2-3 hours there, and had to leave because they were closing super early for some reason. But it was pretty cool because there were touch screen exhibits that just showed replays of the greatest moment in their history. So we could've spent all day there. This was an English friendly area, because apparently it draws a ton of tourists.

So we wandered off to a starbucks after that, being exhausted from walking around Barcelona for two days. Starbucks is as expensive in Europe as it is in America, fyi.

Afterwards, we wandered towards the ocean trying to head up to the Olympic stadium (I think that was our intention? Or maybe we just ended up there.) We got to walk up a ton of stairs to an art museum (whose name escapes me) and ended up with a great overview of the city.

Forgot the name of the museum

Afterwards, it started raining (being a citizen of Ireland, I was so ready for this). So we ran in the general direction of some trees, where we found the Olympic plaza.

Jason and Mwiti tried to sneak around to a roped off section, but somehow the security guard saw them from ACROSS THE STADIUM and whistled at them to get back. And that's how we got thrown out of a free location (it was more of a general ostracism, we were getting some rude glares).

Afterwards, we took a tram up the mountain to La Castille, which had a great location and view over the entire city and ocean.

We finished up there, and took an almost vertical tram back down the mountain. And after exploring for the weekend, succumbed to our first nap of the trip before heading out for the night.

Our hostel gave us a deal where they took us out for karaoke and to a Spanish club. So we scrounged up dinner somewhere, then headed out with Beth and Zane (who were staying across town). They took us (of course) to an Irish Pub where we belted out southern tunes and most importantly, sweet Caroline

Just an overall attractive photo all-around

After the tour guide left us in the pub (and apparently proceeded to the club), we decided to just walk to the club ourselves. When we arrived at the club in question, it was closed, along with all the other clubs on the beach (it was a sunday, so we assumed as much). And we just spent some time wandering the beach.

We jumped into a taxi to get back, and pulled about 20 metres before the taxi driver informed us he only was going to take four of us. He wouldn't let us leave without paying the 2 € we owed him for the trip (despite how much we argued with him), so we paid him, and angrily jumped in other taxis. That was probably the most antagonistic person we encountered on the entire trip.

Quite a full day.

Preview for tomorrow: