Let's see.....Sunday was fairly uneventful. I tried to get some work done, but didn't do a whole lot really except for going to the gym. Then on Monday I went to school in the morning to look at some more microfiche! Woohoo! I think my life will now be spent in front of that stupid machine...if I can find all of the fiche. One of the books I was using was missing the fiche that I needed and another book had the fiche from some other book in it. I turned it in to the librarian, but she just seemed confused about it, so hopefully it makes it back into the correct book. I should have just found the book and done it myself...luckily I won't be needing it later as it was from a book about Stonehenge. I came back in the afternoon to find the plumbers in my kitchen fixing the leaking pipe in my ceiling! It only took a month from when I reported it, but the leak has finally been fixed. What amazing service... I went to exchange money and run some last minute errands and when I got back the plumbers had left. The wall and ceiling were still disgusting, but the leak had been stopped. So yay for that at least. After that I finished my packing and then around 9:30 I headed for the train station with Danielle. Our train to London was at 9:50 and then we got into Waterloo at 1am. From there we had to catch a cab to King's Cross because the tube was closed for the night. It wasn't too expensive though, so it worked out okay. It was weird to see London so deserted though. We got to King's Cross station and found some food shops still open. It turned out though that the international station (St. Pancras) was actually across the street, so we had to make a break through the drizzle over there to start our wait. Luckily there was a coffee shop open there though, so we got coffee and sat on a bench to wait for 4:55am when we could check in for our train.
St. Pancras station is really pretty. It looks really new and has a really high glass ceiling and a huge clock at one end. It is very boring in the middle of the night though. Finally 5am came and we could check in. I didn't realize that train travel was so crazy. We had to go through metal detectors and have our bags x-rayed. Then we had to go through French immigration right away at the station. I guess that was kind of nice though because then when we got there we could just go and not have to wait in line. So I got my passport stamped and then we had to wait again for about 10 minutes before we could board the train. We had assigned seats so it wasn't too big a deal. The seats were quite nice really, but I couldn't enjoy them too much as I slept for most of the journey. So when I woke up we were in Paris!!
First we had to figure out the metro, but that wasn't too bad. We bought a book of tickets which gave us 10 rides total. Then we figured out where we were headed and set off. The Paris metro isn't as nice as the London one, but it gets the job done. The funniest thing was that you had to throw a switch to open the train doors. It was very strange. We also heard a lot of musicians playing various instruments during the rides. I've never heard that in London, but it was interesting...When we got to our stop we exited the subway and since we didn't have a map yet we started walking the way we thought that we were suppose to go. Turns out we were wrong and had to backtrack. But eventually we got there. Our hostel seemed pretty nice and was in a very quiet part of town. We couldn't check in yet, but they let us leave our bags and told us to come back between 2 and 3 to check in. We grabbed a map in the reception area and then headed out to the Arc de Triomphe. It was awesome and my first Paris sight! Then we walked down the Champ Elyees and looked into all of the fancy stores whose clothes we could never afford. Then we found a pizza place so we figured we'd do that for breakfast/lunch since we hadn't really eaten anything for quite awhile. Danielle speaks a bit of French and I speak none, but the waiter was nice and spoke some english to us. We got a sausage and cheese pizza with an egg on it. We figured then it would count as breakfast ;) I had never had an egg on my pizza before, but I had heard of it awhile back and asked around and apparently it is not all that uncommon. So there you go. Apparently you can just crack one over a frozen pizza at home if you would like to try it.
After eating we walked further down the road and then saw a Canadian flag down an off-road. Because Danielle is Canadian we decided to walk toward it and see what it was. It turned out to be the Canadian embassy. But while we were walking toward it I got my first sight of the Eiffel Tower! I was so excited! I stopped and shouted to Danielle about it and she just kept walking. Embarrassed about my touristy-ness I think. So we figured that since we were heading that way we would walk over to it. We did and it was awesome. We thought maybe we could get tickets for later, but we couldn't so we decided to head back to check in to the hostel and come back in the evening to go up the tower.
When we got back to the hotel at 2:15 they told us our room wasn't ready, but that it would be in 10 minutes. After about 45 minutes we decided to head down the road to the chocolate shop that we'd seen earlier to get some chocolate cake. We brought it back to the hotel and sat outside on the steps to eat it. Finally around 3:15 they told us that our room was ready. We had been upgraded from a 6 person room to a 2 person room with our own shower and sink. We also got free breakfast. After we finally got checked in we headed out once again to go to Notre Dame. Notre Dame is a beautiful cathedral, but I think I've seen too many at this point as it wasn't as impressive as I expected it to be. We got the audio tour so that we could know a bit more about it and that was nice. Then when you finish the tour they have a gift stand set up in the church. I don't think that Jesus would approve of that at all.
From Notre Dame we decided to walk along the Seine river back to the Eiffel Tower so that we would get to see more of Paris. That was a crazy long walk. We didn't realize how long it was going to be when we started. We did end up seeing a lot of cool things though. We even walked into some sort of protest or strike. There were riot police everywhere and people dressed like doctors or nurses. They didn't have signs, just some random flags (not the French flag). We also saw two guys playing polo on bicycles. Finally after about 3 hours we made it to the Eiffel Tower. We then had to stand in line for another hour to get tickets and get on the elevator. There were some really obnoxious Texans in front of us in line so I couldn't really talk for fear of people thinking that I was with them...The tower was amazing! First we stopped at the second floor and then had to get another elevator to the very top. It is just shockingly high. And Paris is a crazily white city. Almost all of the buildings were the same color. (Side note, my flatmate was telling me that part of the reason Paris is so beautiful is that Hitler didn't bomb it during the war. He wanted to make it the center for arts and culture in his new empire so he refused to ruin it. So everything in Paris was left nice, unlike London and other cities that were bombed to pieces.) I thought that by going up the tower in the evening we'd get to see the city lit up, but it stays light here for far too long. It was still a very cool view though. After coming down from the tower we were starving so we walked back to the street we had come down earlier that had a few restaurants on it. The first one was full, but the second was an Italian place and let us right in. We got a bottle of wine and I had some really good gnocchi in a red sauce. Yum!
When we left the restaurant it was finally dark so I got a picture of the tower all lit up. Then we had to catch a cab home because it was almost 12 and we weren't sure what time the metro stopped running. I fell asleep almost immediately upon getting back to the hostel.
The next day we headed out at 8:30 to get to the Musee D'Orsay because we thought it opened at 9. It didn't open until 9:30 though, so we had to stand outside for awhile. Luckily they had an overhang so that we didn't get too wet as it was drizzling all day on Wednesday. The Musee D'Orsay is the art museum. It has all the famous paintings. Stuff by Money, Renoir, Van Gough, etc. It was very awesome to see it. We spent a few hours there and then headed to lunch. I got a country salad. It was good, but there were many kinds of meat which I didn't really care for all that much. There was a ton of pancetta, and two different kinds of sausage. There was also some bacon. Then there were a ton of vegetables as well. And of course we got bread with the meal. The craziest thing is how expensive soda is. More that water. Almost 5 euro for a bottle of coke. I'm not sure why this is. Perhaps a tax to deter people from drinking it or maybe all the importing makes it pricey. I don't know.
After lunch we headed to so some souvenir shopping before heading into the Louvre. The Louvre was open until 10 and we didn't know how long we would stay so we decided to go to the junk shops before going in. We got my friend Melissa a really cool scarf as a birthday present, and I got a really neat painting of the city scape with Notre Dame in the foreground and the Eiffel Tower in the background. It's funny to look at paintings of Paris because they just put the Eiffel Tower in the picture where ever it is convenient, whether you can actually see it from there or not.
After buying some stuff we headed into the Louvre. You have to go in through the giant glass pyramid, and unlike Dan Brown claims there is no inverted pyramid underneath it pointing to Jesus's blood. Just a reception area where you buy your tickets. So we bought tickets and headed into the museum. We had a map pointing out the major things to see so we figured we would try to hit a bunch of those as we wandered through. I had to see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. So we ended up wandering around for almost 7 hours I think. It was awesome mostly. When we finally got to the Mona Lisa there was a huge crowd around it and you can only get within about 6 feet of it because it is roped off. It is also covered in glass because despite the museum rules that there is NO flash photography anywhere, people insist on taking flash photos of the Mona Lisa. The thing is, this doesn't only ruin the Mona Lisa, but also the other paintings in the room with it. The glass helps, but not 100% and the rest of the paintings are screwed as they don't get glass. The really maddening thing is that the guards seem to have given up stopping the flash photography. I wanted to beat the people who were doing it and think the policy should be that if you take a flash photo anywhere in the museum your camera should be confiscated, all the pictures of the museum deleted and you get escorted out. If you want to try again you can pay for another ticket. There is just no need to speed the ruin of art.
The Venus de Milo wasn't as maddening. It was cool though. I don't think anyone took a flash photo of her while I was in that room. What I enjoyed most about the place though was the building itself. The ceilings and murals and carvings on the walls and over fireplaces and doors was awesome. It was especially awesome in certain parts of the building which is probably where people were living during different periods. They have a section of the museum set up as Napoleon III's apartments. It starts off just very nicely decorated and then suddenly you go into the most gold and shiny room ever. Completely filled with red furniture. It is insane!
After the Louvre we went to a cafe for dinner. Escargot was on the menu so we decided that since we were in France we had to try it. We got 6 to share and they weren't as terrible as I imagined. They were served in the shell and filled with butter and garlic. The thing was that they were pretty chewy so the flavor was good, but the chewiness was icky. I could only manage 2 before being completely grossed out. But at least I tried! After dinner we headed back to our hotel and went to bed pretty early.
The next day we had to leave at 7am to go to the train station to catch our train home. This time we had to go through French and British immigration. So I got two more stamps in my passport. We also had to go through metal detectors again. This time on the train we had backward facing seats even though we'd signed up for forward facing ones when we bought the tickets. I don't really like riding backwards, but it ended up ok. I even got my own seat for awhile as there weren't very many people on the train so I just went and sat by a window so that I could see the countryside. But really I couldn't see much because they plant trees or put up barriers to try to block the sound of the train. Then I read about the tunnel in the train magazine. It is 100m below sea level at one point. It is also actually 3 tunnels: one going to France, one coming back and a service tunnel between the two. And it only takes 20 minutes of the 2 hour trip to go through the tunnel.
After we got back to St. Pancras station we took the tube to King's Cross (which looks nothing like it does in Harry potter) to catch our train back to Poole. We got back around 1ish. Then I had to go and get a cake for my friend Melissa's birthday party that evening. My friend Sytske made an apple pie as well and we took them to the restaurant early so that they would be a surprise. Dinner was at an Italian place in Poole and it was excellent. A bit expensive though. When dinner was finished they brought the cake over and sang happy birthday. I think she was really surprised.
Friday I had wanted to get to campus but I didn't make it. I just got all my pictures up and organized my stuff a bit. Then Sytske and I made chicken and roasted vegetables for dinner. It was my flatmate, Gareth's, birthday so we hosted beerpong at night. It was actually a pretty good turnout. Then we wanted to go out after so we went with him. We sang happy birthday on the bus and the driver would flash the lights when we finished. It was very nice. The club we usually go to was dead when we got there so we had to find somewhere else to go. The next club we tried was 10 pounds entry so we said screw that and went to a club across the street. We were there a few hours when one girl noticed her purse was not where she had put it. We spent some time looking for it and reporting it to the bouncers and such, but it was gone. Her passport was in there, which really sucks. After that we went home. We had to wait forever for the bus and when we finally got on there were some guys sitting behind us giving Jarrod (an American from Boston) shit for being American and for making fun of the English football team. Finally they got off about half-way home and we thought it was over, but one of them grabbed his hat as he was getting off the bus. So then of course Jarrod and Gareth had to chase them off the bus. We thought there would be a fight but apparently they were all talk and when it came to actually taking a swing they just threw the hat instead and walked off. Luckily the bus driver waited and they were able to get back on the bus and get home. So ridiculous.
The next morning I figured the kitchen would be a wreck but they must have cleaned up when they got back. There were trash bags full of cans and bottles and all that needed to be done were some dishes and mopping the floor. So that was pretty cool and it got done in the next few hours. Then I headed to the Slug and Lettuce to study for awhile. I couldn't stay too long though because I had to call Sara to talk about our itinerary for Italy. So we have that set and I have to set up the hostel in Rome and London. She's taking care of the other cities. So that is awesome.
So that was my week. Awesomely fun, but not nearly enough work done, so I'll be trying to get some done today :( Well, here are the pictures. Have a good one.
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