Monday, November 9, 2009

Paris


The trip to Paris was by speed train, but I missed the whole thing since I was asleep - not a bad way to travel. Our hotel was a cute little French-looking building with a bathtub built for people without hips. And no shower curtain. They did place a small piece of glass near the tap as a barrier, but it was about as effective at holding back water as a toothpick would be at stopping Niagara Falls. This meant our towels had double duty of drying us and the floor, so we had them replaced daily. I felt slightly guilty for it, but David eased my concerns when he said, "I'm not going to be environmentally conscious if they're going to be stupid."

Can't argue with that.

Paris was so French and romantic and all the things you would imagine Paris to be. We walked by the Eiffel Tower every day, eschewed sit-down restaurants in favor of crepes, chicken sandwiches, and hot dogs in baguettes, and stopped in little pastry shops to try the work-of-art desserts like this one, which we devoured with the handle of a bottle opener, having no other utensils in our hotel room:


The French seem to enjoy stairs, and we climbed many of them. 200+ stairs to the top of the Pantheon, 200+ stairs to Sacre Coeur, and very nearly 200+ stairs to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Luckily, at the last minute David spotted an elevator for the use of disabled persons, so I put on my best puppy dog face and made sure to stick my stomach out as far as possible, and voila! We were in!

The French populace wins a combined Oblivious Award for the fact that they all like to stand in doorways and block aisles and seem to have deaf ears when it comes to the phrase, "Excusez moi." One woman even sat down underneath David right as he was lowering his body into a seat on the metro. You snooze, you lose, I guess.
Arc de Triomphe


Sacre Coeur

Versailles


12 days and 900 pictures after we left Virginia, we came home to find Michael hadn't been too traumatized by our absence (although he is rather clingy now and asks, "You're not leaving me?" any time we need to leave the house). That's good, because in ten years we are totally doing this again - Italy, get ready!

3 comments:

fiona said...

That dessert looks FABulous! Major chocolate craving going on right now...thanks :P Sounds like y'all had such a blast, despite the tub and the stairs, and that totally rude lady who sat down under David while he was already in the lowering process!! Amazing. Thanks for sharing, I definitely got a chuckle outta some of those experiences :D

Sara said...

This has to be the best statement ever: "I'm not going to be environmentally conscious if they're going to be stupid."


And I pulled the "puppy dog eyes" and stick your stomach out as far as possible trick while in NYC when pregnant with Woodstock. I was DYING to pee - no public restrooms. Pregnancy is useful for some things - like elevators and winning over crusty NYC business owners!

Ben said...

Looks like fun! That's great that you guys got to go on a trip! Did you take that pic of la Tour Eiffel?! That's a really cool shot!