How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part 1: Paris

Fromage

We're back! And I apologize up front, but I'm going to have to dedicate at least two gigantic posts to the last week. I will do my very best to avoid waxing terribly obnoxious and cliché, but we had such a fantastic time in Paris and Amsterdam, it will be difficult. So, consider yourself warned.

Let's start the show.

First of all, I need to talk about sleeper trains. I've always fantasized about taking an overnight train. I envisioned it being like a Carey Grant movie — romantic and mysterious, etc., etc. And maybe in first class it is. But in second class, it's like this:

That's — go ahead and count 'em — six beds, in an area roughly the size of a broom closet. The beds are crammed in there so tightly that you can't sit up once you're in your bunk. And, in true German-efficiency form, they fill these rooms. We had five people in ours, on the way there and on the way back, despite there being multiple empty cabins.

"If we let you have your own room, we'd have to give everybody their own room," said the ticket checker.

"What would be wrong with that?" said Jake.

"You paid to sleep in a six-person room," said the ticket checker.

"So if there were six people on the whole train, you'd put them all in the same cabin," said Jake.

"Yes," said the ticket checker.

Ah, Germany. Where the customer is always wrong. Though, I should give the ticket checker a little credit. He eventually did have mercy on us and allow us to move from the room with the two 300-pound men who reeked of stale tobacco and cigarettes to the room with two less-offensive-smelling Swiss backpackers, who stripped down to their skivvies once the lights were out and climbed into the same bunk right above me. I was pretty sure I was going to be privy to a show I would've had to pay at least $10 to witness in Amsterdam, but either they behaved themselves or were extra-stealthy. Either way, I didn't have to take lit matches to my eyes and ears, which is always a win in my book.


But we made the most of it and survived, although I'm not sure sleeping on a 3-inch-thick foam mattress on a plywood bookshelf was the best thing ever for my pregnant back. Junior sure had a good time, though, and I've got the bruised ribs to prove it.

At any rate, we eventually got to Paris.

And after a shower and costume change, it was off to the Louvre.

I've heard Dresden's Baroque architecture often compared to Paris. And this is true, they do have a similar vibe, except that Paris is on steroids. And the palace-turned-Europe's-greatest-art-museum that is the Louvre is no exception. The place is immense. And gorgeous. And, at 9 Euros a head, a pretty screaming deal, too.

Inside the pyramid

With Jake's Las Vegas heritage, we had to keep reminding ourselves that we weren't looking at Caesar's Palace rip-offs. This stuff was the real deal. We saw the real Mona:

And the real Venus:

And about a kajillion other great real things. Since we get plenty of Renaissance art here in Dresden, we spent most of our time hanging out with the ancient stuff, which was awesome. I found works from my favorite ancient civilization, the Etruscans:

And Jake found stuff from his favorite ancient civilization, the Assyrians:

A good time was had by all.

We figured we'd filled our art quota by the time we got out of there, and weren't planning on visiting the nearby Orsay Museum, which focuses on the Impressionists, at all. But, lo and behold, the next day there was a torrential downpour, so we went, mostly just to dry off for a couple of hours.

And it turns out the Orsay Museum is KILLER.

Nostrils

It seemed like every room we walked into, there was at least one painting we recognized.

But the highlight of the whole day was Vinnie Van Gogh's self-portrait:

Then the sun came out just long enough for us to walk the Avenue des Champs Élysées and visit the Arc de Triomphe.

Which is really big.

While there, we shared a hearty elitist American guffaw over a bunch of France's finest.

C'mon, France. This is your MILITARY. Silk neck scarves? Are you kidding me? Why not just put them all in high heels and feather boas?

We forgave France, though, after eating this:

This is a 13 Euro banana split. In U.S. dollar terms, that's about 20 bucks. And if that price tag doesn't freak the heck out of you, try this on for size: IT WAS WORTH IT. Honest to goodness. I would pay 13 Euros to eat that thing again. I would pay 13 Euros to eat that thing every day for the rest of my life. I'd heard rumors that Paris's Berthillon ice cream was the greatest ice cream in the world. And after eating it, I cannot say it isn't.

In an effort to see a different side of Paris, we trekked out to the business district, which happens to be the largest business district in Europe. It's pretty far from the touristy part of town and since we were there on a Saturday and Europeans no likey working on weekends, the place was a ghost town, which was pretty cool in a sort of post-Apocalyptic way.

There are a lot of awesome things about Paris, but something I found especially awesome was its symmetry. If you look real close right down the middle of this next picture, you can see the Arc de Triomphe.

Directly behind the camera, perfectly lined up with the Arc de Triomphe, is this awesome building, the Grande Arche:

And if you had super-human vision and I had a camera with space-age resolution, you could look straight through the arch of the Arc de Triomphe in that previous pic and see this all the way at the other end of the Champs Élysées, right in front of the Louvre, also perfectly lined up:

Cool, huh?

Other cool things included Notre Dame:

And the Pont Neuf bridge and the Samaritaine building. If you know why these are cool, we should obviously be better friends.

And if you don't know why they're cool, here's a clue:

And if you still don't know, here's my final clue.

We were also big fans of the Cité Metro station and its weird green lighting:

And crépes. We're really big fans of crépes.

And this street named after me:

And I guess that's about it.

But it feels like I'm forgetting something ...

Ah, yes. The Eiffel Tower.

The Eiffel Tower rocks.

And it's way bigger than I thought it would be — it's actually Paris's tallest structure, even taking into consideration the skyscrapers in the business district. I loved it so much that I insisted we go back and see it at night. I was expecting pretty lights and a romantic scene, not this:

Apparently at night the Eiffel Tower turns into an alien mothership with a searching laser eye that turns people to dust. And then at the stroke of 10 p.m. this happened:

All these seizure-inducing blinking lights flashed on in a spectacle Jake aptly dubbed "Liberaci-fication".

We had to drown our disappointment in chocolate-banana-whipped-cream crépes, which worked like magic. But, in any case, I'll prefer to remember the Eiffel as she was by day.

The truth is, though, Paris was anything but disappointing. And we went in sort of expecting to be disappointed. I mean, how can any city really be the most beautiful city on Earth? It's gotta be all hype, right? No place can be that amazing.

But my last night in Paris, this is the T-shirt I slept in:


Without even the slightest hint of sarcasm.

Final thoughts on Paris:
— The people were not nearly as rude as the stereotypes would have you believe. In fact, twice in one day, French people on the Metro offered me their seats without hesitation. That's never happened to me in Dresden, and I don't expect it ever will. There was also a really sweet grocery store manager who let us use the store's bathroom, which was clearly not for customers, when we found ourselves desperately searching relief in the abandoned business district. That also would never happen in Germany.
— Madame Miles, wherever you are, you'll be delighted to know I got to brush off my 10-year-old high school French and say some stuff to real live French people who actually understood what I was saying. It was quite a thrill.

In conclusion, Paris is great and everybody should go there.



JEM

P.S. I'll be back tomorrow with all the news that's fit to print on Amsterdam. And some stuff that's not really fit to print. I mean, c'mon, it's Amsterdam.