Paris before meeting the Vivios

For those of you who don’t know, the Vivio family treated us to a few weeks in Europe for my mom’s birthday. Basically Acacia and I were forced to take a vacation from our vacation. And that it was. The first difference we noticed about Paris was how freaking expensive it is! By the time we had gotten from the airport to the hostel that we had booked on public transit, we had each spent about $25, and then checked into a hostel that was approximately $50 a night as opposed to the $4 we were spending in Bolivia. It was a bit of a slap in the face. That aside though, Paris is definitely an easy place to vacation in.

Walk anywhere and find crepes, pan au chocolates, cafes with sidewalk seating and the best beer we’d had in months, and the most attractive people. I think the first thing we did was check out the Sacre Coeur, since it was right near our hostel and we had arrived too early to check into our room anyway. You’d think were used to being bombarded by people trying to sell us things and find some way to get money out of us after being in South America for so long, but the African men selling bracelets on the steps of Sacre Coeur were pros! They separated us, swarmed us, tied a bracelet around our wrists within 45 seconds, and then demanded money. It was ridiculous. Anyway, Sacre Cours was pretty amazing with a good view over the city and about 10,000 people. We got some lunch on the way back, which included steak frites and a beer cider, for me! Fantastically dry cider!, and then checked into our room where we both began a nap.

My naps, however, tend to be short, and, true to character, I was up and ready to explore some more Paris after about 20 minutes. While Acacia continued her nap I strolled through some streets, may have eaten a nutella crepe, walked around the Moulin Rouge district, and then came back to see what Acacia was up to. She was comatose. I took a shower and then walked around some more, then came back and chatted with a few people from our hostel, and then went to check on Acacia at 8pm, at which point she was awake. Briefly. So then I went out for some beer and dinner, and ended up coming back around 1am and playing some cards and drinking another beer with Acacia in our hostel.

I was sick, and hadn’t slept on the plane at all, in my defense. But in all I think my nap ended up being 20 hours, with those 2 brief wakeups. The last one when we played cards and drank beer wasn’t just any beer. It was the 18% Tokyo from Brew Dog, which obviously knocked me back out.

The next morning we ate loads of croissants that came with the room and good coffee, finally, and then I might have gone back to sleep. When our day finally started we took the metro to Notre Dame, where after disembarking John stopped to sign some sort of petition for deaf and dumb people. No joke. They wanted our address and stuff and it really didn’t seem to be for tourists. And then they wanted money, so flustered once again, John gave them way too much. It was like being in Paris relaxed us so much that we forgot how to travel.

We walked around the outside of Notre Dame, which was beautiful, but unfortunately couldn’t go in. Then we headed to St. Chapelle to see some incredibly elaborate stained glass. After a lunch and beer break we headed toward the Lourve, but decided it was too late in the day to attempt. Instead, we walked through the park and then ended up by the river in huge bean bag-esque chairs with wine, bread, cheese, and olive tapenade. Does it get any better?

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Sainte Chapelle

Sainte Chapelle

Sainte Chapelle

Sainte Chapelle

Sainte Chapelle

Sainte Chapelle

My First European Beer, it was a two-hander

WHAT (seeing the Eiffel Tower was the most surreal part of being in Paris)

I guess we found beer somewhere too.

After a long break we headed to the Eiffel Tower, where I stood in line while John went and bought us more wine. At this point we were a bit drunk, and had seen on facebook that Patty Dunlap, our high school biology teacher, was just in Paris so we tried to find somebody in line with internet so we could see if she was still there. No luck.

He loves lines

Finally, after like an hour, we got to the front of the line, where security didn’t have a problem with the bottle of wine, but wouldn’t let us take the Frisbee up the Eiffel tower. What to do? Ah! Drunk me decided that throwing it on the roof of the security building was a great hiding spot. After that slight delay, we crammed in the elevator to the middle level section on the tower. We were there late enough that we saw the whole city at night, and then the hourly flashing happened while we were up there, so it was pretty cool. Then we tried to take the elevator to the next level, but apparently you need a different ticket than the one we had, which we were completely oblivious to, and took the elevator back down slightly disappointed.

We walked back along the Seine, and tried to get on the metro, which was closed, so had a long walk back to the hostel.

The next morning was a similar wake up, shovel croissants down our throats and rinse with coffee, and then back to bed for a while. I think that morning Acacia did a bit of shopping for some nicer clothes to be presentable in front of my mom at a Ross-like store while I waited in line there, and then we attempted to take the metro to Musee D’Orsay, but ended up getting on the wrong direction. This proved to be a devastating mistake because the metro station machines  wouldn’t let you leave unless you had the ticket for that zone, which we didn’t have because we weren’t planning on leaving the central Paris zone, and the station didn’t have any way to change directions without leaving and buying a new ticket. We were genuinely stuck. We tried to ask some guy for help, who seemed like he was going to help us, and then decided we weren’t worth helping because we couldn’t sneak him through the gates with our invalid tickets. In the end we decided to hop the gates and then get some coffee. We bought new tickets and then headed downtown. We walked through the Royal Gardens again, grabbed some ice cream (a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of currant I believe) on the way, and then took a nap in the shaded grass for a bit, and then continued down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.

After the Arc de Triomphe, we tried to go to the Louvre once more, but again it didn’t seem worth it for only the hour or so it was still open. We walked back to our hostel, packed up, and then went out for some beer, falafels/schwarma, and a Nutella crepe for our last big shebang in Paris.

The next morning we took a couple different metros to get to our train to Brussels, where we would switch to a local train to get to Silly, where we were meeting the Vivios. To board the train we had an electronic ticket with just a barcode, so had no idea which part of the train to head to. After a lot of confusion we took  the wrong seats and were displaced by the man who actually had those seats. Turns out we were so confused because we were in the first class section. Neither of us had anticipated needing to dress up for our train ride, luckily I was wearing my new nicer clothes anyway. I read a newspaper, there was internet, and we ate one of the top 10 meals of the trip.

We knew we had a tight connection to catch the train to Silly once we arrived in Brussels, and ended up definitely missing it, but were directed to one that left 15 minutes later that we hadn’t known about. We ended up riding without tickets, which wasn’t a problem, but we still don’t know if that is what we were supposed to do or not. The entire 25 minute trip we were doubting that we had boarded the right train, but finally saw a station named ‘Silly’ and hopped off.