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