Just walked in the door of the castle. I think that by now, this place is so associated in my mind with becoming unlost that I will probably have a monster freak out when I leave.
I was lost for most of the time I was in France. My lostness began when we (two guys from the program and I) first set out on a maze of train switches. We switched trains four or five times just to get to Paris. Train schedules are hard to read in Dutch (which, by the way, I am convinced is someone's idea of a joke: taking German and throwing in gibberish sounds). We finally get to Paris around 12pm and I reach to find my cell phone to call our other friend who came a day early and is already in the hotel when I realize I have left my cell phone on my bed in the castle. And I'm the only one who has her number. But only in my phone. We do know the name of the hotel (Hotel Garden) but have no clue where it is located because none of us foresaw that I would be a huge idiot and not bring the one tool we need to stay unlost.
First impression of Paris after leaving the train station though is stunning. The streetlights lit up this beautiful little street with restaurants and bars that were hopping even that late into the night. So, we wander around trying to find a hotel that knows of our hotel or someplace that has WiFi where we can use my laptop to find our friend's cell phone number. Oh, and between the three of us we have one cell phone that is low on minutes and close to running out of power.
We finally find a Mecca of free internet and Americanism (McDonald's) and a McFlurry and a phone call to our friend make us happy. We arrive at our hotel via taxicab and come into our room which, aside from smelling quite peculiar, consists of 4 twin beds crammed into a small room, essentially making one big row of beds. And both of the boys we were with snored. We thus make our way out of Lost #1.
We wake up early Saturday to eat a nice breakfast (yay for the first of many crepes and mimosas to come over the weekend) and plan our day of mostly sight seeing events. Take the Metro to the Louvre. That is by far the coolest museum I can ever hope to imagine. But also monstrous. Not wanting to waste our only whole day in Paris indoors, we plan to see the major attractions, plus a couple of pieces we'd discussed in our art history class. We couldn't really get close to the Mona Lisa. Obviously it's cool to see her in real life, and no reproduction does that ambiguous expression any justice, but all four of us agreed that it was odd that she is arguably the best known piece of art in the world... That one hall of huge, elaborate paintings had more pieces that moved me than DaVinci's girl. Cupid and Psyche was great. I adored that hall with Greek/Roman antiquity pieces. The Venus di Milo was breathtaking. The Nike takes the cake, though. Coming up the stairs upon that monstrous thing was unbelievable; I had no idea how big she was.
The Notre Dome is undeniably beautiful, but it is simply not the best one I've seen yet. I know, I know, I'm a huge church snob now... But it just wasn't. Not as tall as some I've seen and the side chapels are very simple. While I love the gothic architecture, some of the earlier houses of worship in Belgium were just way more stunning. Anyways, one of the guys and I sat down to people watch, sketch, and listen to the organ near the alter and fifteen minutes later, you guessed it, Lost No. 2. Alessandra and Dan are nowhere to be seen. We wait outside of the church for 45 minutes (we are the two without cellphones or room keys, as luck would have it), grab crepes, and decide to go along with day without them. We aimed for the Eiffel Tower, and ended up in the 6th. Sat in the Luxembourg Gardens for a while. Lovely beyond belief, and great weather, too. We try to find the Arc de Triumph, but being Lost for a 3rd time got in the way, so we walked all along the Seine all the way back to the Louvre until we saw the Eiffel Tower in the distance and decided to walk towards it.
Heights scare the life out of me. But since we got there just as the sun was setting, we decided to go all the way up to the top. Terrifying. But seeing the city stretch out for miles and miles like that was so perfect and necessary. It is, of course, wildly touristy, with 15 euro glasses of champagne at the top. I had to close my eyes in the elevator to keep from noting how much further and further away the ground got from under me. Way amazing.
Finally got back to the hotel around 10:30 that night after another round of crepes, and luckily the other pair were in the room. Unlost.
We checked out early this (Sunday) morning and spent the day wandering the Champs Elysees doing some window shopping. Headed over to grab a train around 3, only to find that the train wouldn't get us home until 6am the next day. We were vagabonds on trains for hours and hours, playing our iPods and playing Rummy 500 to pass the time. When I get home on Friday I am going to sleep for one dozen days. A baker's dozen, even.
It's funny, being lost in Europe seemed the absolute worst case scenario before coming here. And while my instincts definitely tell me "Be afraid! Cry!" I'm pleasantly surprised with how easy it is to take a breath, be a little annoyed things aren't working out flawlessly, and readjust accordingly. All in all, loved Paris. It is easy to see how so many people fall in love there and fall in love with that city. Like I said, I was lost and confused for most of the mere 2 days I was there, but I'm glad we went. It's nice to have a point of reference for all the Paris talk that flies around. Bummed I missed the Arch and the Latin Quarter and could have done with a Picasso Museum, but all in all it was a nice little taste of Paris. I'm going to go sleep for a year now.
