Day 17 - Long Day in Paris

Today started early, at 5:30, in order to catch the bullet train to Paris, France. It is a two hour train trip, versus a 4 hour drive. Charel's mom and sister came with us, so we weren't alone on this trip. We drove to the station, parked, and walked to the train. We all sat in seats facing each other, with a little foldout table in the middle. There wasn't much leg room, but the car would have been worse, so I wasn't too worried about that.

The train left at 6:40 am. It was dark outside and the lights in the train were on, so all I could really see was my reflection. As most of the conversation was happening in Luxembourgish, I didn't really talk much. I drew a little picture in Charel's book of an epic stick figure guy. I didn't really do much else on the train besides stare out the window. Every so often Charel would tell me about the area we were riding through.

We arrived in the train station around 8:50 am. After getting off the train, we walked through the station. It was filled with all kinds of shops, which I wasn't too surprised about. I went to go to the bathroom, as I walked past a counter, I heard random French being yelled in my direction. I was horribly confused, but at least someone in my party knew what was going on, as Charel's mom came and handed the lady who had shouted 50 cents. Apparently, you have to pay to use the bathrooms. Well I felt a bit like a fool but at least now I know...

After waiting in a line to buy tickets for the metro/buses for all day, we proceeded to walk towards the metro. Charel's sister was walking a bit ahead of us (a theme of the trip), Charel and I together, and his mom behind us a bit. We heard a cry, a thud, and turned back to see her face-down on the floor. A guy had walked in front of her, cut her off with his suitcase, and she had tripped over it. Her entire left eye was bruised, her glasses bent pretty horribly with a huge scrape across the lens, and a couple cuts next to her eye. We gave her as much first aid as we could. Charel and his sister took a sanitizer and treated the wounds (all with rapid-fire Luxembourgish), and I set to work bending her glasses back in some functional shape. The guy who had tripped her took off about halfway through (at least determining that she wasn't going to die), with a sarcastic and angry "merci" shot off in his direction as he walked away.

We didn't have much choice other than to get on the metro and try to find a pharmacy at our stop. Fortunately for us, there was one right as we came up onto the street. Pharmacies in Europe are a bit different than in the US. In the US, they're usually attached to larger chains like Wal-Mart or Walgreens. Here, they are stand-alone shops, usually owned by the pharmacist themselves. They also all have a green light-up medical cross displayed outside their shop, so they are pretty easy to find. The pharmacist came over and disinfected the wounds again, but there wasn't much he could do for her besides that, as the cut was in a place that wasn't able to be patched up. She said she was doing okay though, so we continued our plans, although paying a lot more attention to her the rest of the day.

Jardin de Luxembourg and the Eiffel Tower

We walked past the Théâtre de l'Odéon, and into the Jardin du Luxembourg, a garden named not for the country, but the nobleman who had his house there when the palace on the grounds was built. There were lots of statues, gardens, ponds, and seagulls. It was very pretty, but I'm sure that it is even more-so in summer.

After we left the gardens, we took the bus to the place everyone has to see: the Eiffel Tower. Before starting the trip, I had thought to myself "OK, get a few pictures of the tower, but make sure you don't get sucked into a tourist trap and spend lots of time there." Well, the thing is huge, and actually quite beautiful. Again, this is the sort of loss of scale you get from watching things on TV or seeing pictures. So, of course, not only did we take pictures of it, we went up to it. Charel and I decided to go up the tower, while his mom and sister did not want to, so they went off on their own for a bit. We stood in line for half an hour, since only one of the lifts was actually working. We had thought about going all the way to the top, but we decided on 2nd floor only, which turned out to be a good decision since the wait was so long. Especially not since, as we were about to go inside to wait for the lift, Charel's mom walked up alone. His sister, as we had guessed, had gone off to do her own plans. We were actually surprised she stayed with us as long as she did.

As we had already paid, we went up the tower anyway, and his mom went to go sit down. When we finally got to the second level, we began to walk around, and to see the buildings of Paris. Let me say this, Paris is HUGE. It was a bit cloudy and pretty hazy, so we couldn't see everything, but I doubt we would have been able to anyway. 12 million people live there, so it is now the largest city I've ever been to. I do wish the wind wouldn't have been as strong, but we took shelter on the opposite side of the tower and it wasn't too bad. I took lots of pictures of the river, the buildings, and the general area.

As almost all of you by now are aware, this is the place where Charel asked me to marry him (I said yes, of course). I don't wish to give you all the intimate details, but no, he did not get down on one knee and make a scene, and no, it wasn't a complete surprise. Actually it wasn't much of a surprise at all. But I'm still incredibly happy about it, of course.

After we descended the tower, we met up with Charel's mom again, and went to go find something to eat. She had a good idea of where she wanted to go, but Charel quipped to me quietly, "it's probably been 30 years and it's not there anymore", we weren't too sure on where we would end up eating. The direction we were going required taking the metro, so we set off to find it. We found the station, but it required a ton of stairs, something that she isn't quite good at. The first car we got into had really loud accordion music, which seemed to fit perfectly with the day as it had felt like a circus so far. Especially getting in the thing, as I had the door close on me a bit. Turns out that it was an actual guy playing the accordion. He was very good at it. Sadly after he stopped, it was quiet again aside from unintelligible comments in bored French through the intercom.


City Island and Cathedral of Notre Dame

I don't have a picture of the restaurant, so here is a random
pigeon. I only realized it was missing toes later.

We had to change lines at the Châtelet station, a huge station with, annoyingly, tons of stairs. I felt like we had walked a couple of miles before we finally got to the connecting line.

When we finally got to our destination, the place we had intended to go had, indeed, closed down. I was told that it used to be a huge mall, with a restaurant on top of it. We saw a café right next to it, though, and decided to go there. Our waiter told us that it had closed in 2005.

The menu at the café had English, so I didn't have to have it translated. The waiter and the two Luxembourgers conversed in French for awhile, about the store closing and Luxembourg (he had heard them speak English to me and assumed they were American too), and other things. We ordered our food (I got a beef patty with a fried egg on top). As we waited for our food, Charel and I told her about the engagement. She seemed quite happy about it, which I'm glad about. We got our food soon after that. My burger patty was a bit rare, but it wasn't bad. The egg on top made it quite good, actually.

After lunch, we began to walk towards the island in the middle of the Seine River. This is the island that has most of the city buildings on it, making it one of few cities with their government buildings on an island (another one is Cedar Rapids, my hometown). As we walked along the road, Charel's mom wished to look at the flowers in the shops on the street, so she sent us ahead of her to head towards the island. As this was nearly 3 pm, it was finally late enough in the day to call my parents and grandparents to tell them of the good news. I only spent about 10 minutes total on the phone, since the rate per minute is pretty high for the international phone that I have. We met back up with Charel's mom after that, and went onto the island.

We first walked past the Judicial Palace, and then to the other end of the island where the Cathedral of Notre Dame stands. This is also an impressive building. There were a ton of tourists here as well, of course, and we had to get the obligatory shot of me in front of it. After spending about 10 minutes trying to teach Charel's mom how to use my camera (I had it in point-and-shoot mode so it wasn't supposed to be hard), we got a shot of Charel and I, as well. Not quite framed as I would have liked, but that's not really a big issue. There aren't a lot of pictures of us together this trip, mostly because we were alone a lot of the time and my good camera isn't quite the kind you can hold in front of your face and click. After watching some kids chase pigeons around (and wanting to join them), we went inside the cathedral.

There were also a ton of people inside. I've mentioned churches aren't really my thing, but I do enjoy some of the art and music that came from that era of history. This is a very large cathedral, but it is not nearly as open inside as the one in Strasbourg. The large stained-glass window is impressive. However, I was way more impressed by the cathedral in Strasbourg. Plus, the presence of that many tourists tends to kill the whole vibe of silent magnificence. I think that, if there were less people, and more of the restorations done, it would be a completely different experience, but for this time, it was cool, but not awe-inspiring.

After Notre Dame, we returned to the northern tip of the island, where we proceeded to look for a boat to tour the river with (we had seen many already during the day). We found one a short distance away (down more stairs!). The price, like everything else so far in Paris (and Europe in general) was a bit expensive for my taste, but there were no complaints from my hosts, so I let most of the exasperation go. The boat itself was a two-level deal, lower level inside and top level outside. We left Charel's mom downstairs and went to the top level, where it was pretty cold. The desire for better pictures, however, trumped the need for warmth. You're welcome. Besides, at that point, I was more concerned about resting my tired legs than the wind that continued to blow in our faces.

Boat Ride on the Seine

The boat first set off towards the west, after making a U-turn. Our "narrator" for the trip spoke in both French and English, and for the first time that day, I could actually understand the English over the speaker. Actually, it was very good. She even had the "th" syllable down, which is something not even Charel has mastered (it usually gets replaced with d, f, or s). She informed us later that she is not a professional, but she sure sounded like one. There were also some rowdy high school students behind us, as well as an American couple. The guy a nice camera, but an almost irritating way of using it, just pointing it at things and clicking 4-5 times, rather than line up a good frame. Oh well, not everyone can be a photographer, despite the fancy camera.

The first thing we passed was The Louvre, which, I hope, most of you know as the very famous museum. It was stated that, if you went every day, it would still take you 3-4 months to see everything. It was incredibly big. I told Charel maybe we can spend a few days in town just to see the museum, as museums are actually his second love (his first is Rome) and he seemed to like that idea. Something for the future, I suppose.

We then passed other famous places that I didn't quite know the names of, but Charel certainly did. I did have to point out at one point that Americans just don't hear about much besides 3-4 of the major landmarks of the city, the "smaller" ones are just not discussed. The narration was good, and gave us short bits of history, but I would not be able to remember much of it without further study. And as you are probably able to tell by now, the day was a long one and filled with more information than I could realistically stuff into my poor little head. I just stared and took pictures for a lot of it. I believe the reverse would be true when Europeans come to visit America.

When we reached the Eiffel tower (again), we turned around and began heading back in the other direction. Now I got to see the other side of the river and click more pictures without random people's heads being in the way. Our narrator was pretty quiet for this part of the trip, having pointed out most things of interest on the way there. I suppose this was on purpose, as talking in two languages from a script for hours a day needs a few breaks in order to keep your voice.

We passed by the boat station and went further south, around the city island. The island is the first thing that was settled by the people of Paris, so it holds quite a bit of history in it. We viewed the Notre Dame from the back side, saw many old houses and buildings, and passed the government buildings. As we turned around to go back, we also saw many different kinds of boats using the river. Some of them were like the ones we saw on the Moselle River (remember that one), and some were fellow tour boats. It seems that the river has been used quite extensively for hundreds of years, and it is certainly the heart of Paris.

Along the entire boat trip, we passed under quite a few bridges, many quite unique. All of them have their own history, of course, but a few stood out as we crossed underneath. The most beautiful one was the bridge symbolizing the friendship between Russia and Paris, although many of them also had statues and designs on the side. The so-called "New Bridge" is actually the oldest in town, and is called that because, when it was built, there were no houses on it. There are faces along the sides representing all the people that mocked the king who built it, telling him that it would fall down quickly. Obviously, the result was in the favor of the king.

We returned to the boat port, quite windblown and cold. I was relieved to get inside, although we did have to exit the boat and go back outside. We then began another long trip on the metro, in order to reach the last stop on our list: Arc de Triomphe (Arch of Triumph).

Arc de Triomphe and Avenue des Champs-Élysées

The metro, by this point, was crammed with people. We weren't able to find a seat for Charel's mom anywhere, although she kept insisting that she was ok. I could tell that she was getting very tired (as were we) but she kept going. Through two stations, tons of stairs, and two metro lines, we finally made it to our last stop, the Arc de Triomphe. Charel's mom said that we should go up it and look out as she stayed behind, but neither of us really wanted to at that point. I took a few pictures, we stared at it for a bit, and then left.

We walked about halfway down Avenue des  Champs-Élysées, one of the most famous places in Paris. It is also one of the most expensive places to shop (and to have a shop) in the world. There were a ton of big name stores, a few car dealerships and lots of people. It was beginning to get dark at this point, so the lights were coming on and my camera, after a few shots, got put away.






Leaving Paris

We began to take the metro back to the train station, another long journey, and a lot more stairs. We finally reached the station at around 6:30 pm, and our train was scheduled to leave at 7:40. We picked the little food court they had there to eat. There was a dessert place, a salad place, and even a wok place (which smelled wonderful) but we decided on sandwiches. The ladies behind the counter really didn't impress me, even though I couldn't understand what they were saying. I was even less impressed when I ordered a coke and they gave me water, but at least that was easily fixed. That aside, we took our food to the table, and then proceeded to eat.

We went to the platform for the train, where we finally found Charel's sister, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She did blend in with the crowd, though, so I'm not surprised I didn't see her. I also am easy to find in a crowd (because of the bright green coat) so it makes sense that she saw us first. We boarded the train, settled in, and Charel's mom went to sleep almost immediately.

I only fell asleep for about 5 minutes, if that, during the whole trip back. I don't sleep well in seats. I mostly watched Charel read the Paris guide from 1978 and write notes about the trip for me. I used them for this blog, but had trouble reading them. Not because they're not in English, they are, but because Charel's handwriting is a bit...hard to read. Well, they still came in handy as I could at least ask him what he said.

We returned to Luxembourg around 9:50, and made the short drive back home, exhausted. Surprisingly, my legs and back don't hurt much. I think it's because all of the walking we did the whole trip. I'm still in pretty good shape, maybe better now.

One more day left in Luxembourg, though it will probably be a quiet one.

Photos here: Paris