The Paris Sights

In my ongoing tribute to Ricardo and wife being in London, I'm reprising the emails I sent home during my trip to both London and Paris. This is entry #6. My buddy and co-worker, Haywood, met me in Paris.


Two days ago, we went to the Eiffel Tower and were planning on getting there early to avoid the lines. The great thing about Europe though, is that 10:00 is early to them. We showed up at 10:30 and had maybe a 20 minute wait to get up to the cars that take you up. It costs 62F or about $10 to go up to the top, but you can buy tickets for going just part of the way up as well. Let me tell you though, you HAVE to do this if you're here. It's awesome. Half the fun is the ride up which is scary as hell for the spatially challenged. It's a two stop process to get to the top and I recommend just taking the lifts up there one
after the other. If you are afraid of heights or just uncomfortable, focus on someone in the elevator and don't look down or out. Hopefully that person won't mind that you're looking at them, but if they do, big deal. The views from the top are just awesome and you can have a cup of coffee at the second stop (of three) which is fun. Even if you're afraid of heights, the caged in top level gives you a sense of enclosure and makes it much more palatable. As we left the Tower, around 1:00 or so, there was a line at least two hours deep.

Right after the Eiffel, we went to the Arch and I walked up it (40F, $7 or so) 284 steps, so it's a little workout. Just not much to see though, the streets surrounding it go in all directions, but they're just streets with shops on them. Big whoop. Even the Champs de Elysses, or I should say especially the
Chumps de Elysses, isn't worth viewing from there. Disappointing at best. The Chumps de Elysses is really disappointing after the build up it received in the states. Michigan avenue is much better and more inviting. Really, there's not much going on there. The only interesting part is around the Arch where all the streets come together in a big circle of traffic. In fact, to get to the Arch, you have to go underground and come up on the island where the Arch sits.

Finally we went to the Louvre, which convinced me that Brett Favre doesn't know how to pronounce his own name. The "re" IS pronounced at the end. I know because we rented the headsets for the audio explanations of some of the paintings—you have to do this by the way, it makes the whole trip soooooooooo much better. There is maybe one audio explanation per every dozen or so paintings, maybe more, but boy is it helpful. Like I said yesterday, we spent 6 hours there and saw maybe a quarter of the exhibits, about half the paintings. Fabulous stuff though--not as good in my humble opinion as the exhibits surrounding the Sisteen Chapel in St. Peters, but good stuff none-the-less. Now for another controversial statement: the Mona Lisa isn't even the best work in its display room much less worthy of all the hype it receives. I know what most of you are saying, and none of it pleasant about my artistic critiques, but in that same room is a full wall-size rendering of the wedding at Canna that is really incredible. Save for a better face on Jesus and Mary, it's the most incredible painting I've seen. The coronation of Napolean at Notre Dame, just down the hall, is another amazing painting to which I would give accolades. Not to mention Hal's (pronounced Hall) portrait of a gypsy woman. Mind you, there's a boat-load of uninteresting stuff as well, for the layperson, but some of the works are incredible. There's definitely filler items though.

Food items
Had a great dinner last night at an English friendly place where they served us in a timely fashion, the wait-er was friendly and they didn't try to gouge us for bad food. I have to explain myself on the food experiences I guess. In my opinion, you could have the same food at two different places, receive decent service from one place with relatively friendly people and infinitely slow service from the other place where the wait-staff is clearly disgruntled that you don't speak fluent french and even if the meals take almost the same length of time to complete, the former is going to seem to be much better. Last night
the food we had was very good, as was the night before, both took 3-4 hours, both were enjoyable--the pitcher of margarita's helped too. Two nights ago we had a four-hour meal that was just unbearable because of the wait-er. This morning we had breakfast where the wait-er was very nice and brought coffee promptly. A far cry from the smile-less wait-ress yesterday that screwed up our order and could care less.

Hoteling
Our hotel is quite the scene, let me tell you. Reception is on the second floor up a narrow spiral staircase. Each room has one key and one key only with a big metal thingy on the end so you remember to drop it off when you leave. I think this allows the people running the hotel to know when it's ok to go through your luggage. Then you take the "elevator" to your floor, 1-6, we're on 5. I say "elevator", because it's really a vertically moving closet. The sign says a maximum of 400kg and 5 people. Now, I don't know how much 400kg is, but there's no way in HELL you're fitting five people into that box. Haywood and I and my suitcase barely fit.

When you leave the elevator you're thrust into total darkness. Why? The lights in the hallway are on timers so you have to hit a square button in the hallway to turn them on, then they go off automatically. What's the reasoning behind this? I really hope it's not to save electricity.

Our "room" does come equipped with a "shower" and bathtub. Again, using the word “shower” is a stretch. It's a spray head on a flexible tube, which can be fine as the Scalfs had a similar shower head. Only Tom and Sue had a shower stall, meaning four walls. We don't even have a shower curtain! So what does that mean? It means the first time I went in there after Haywood had finished, it looked like a freaking typhoon had gone through the place. Water everywhere. I'm surprised he didn't electrocute himself. The key of course, is to sit down in the tub and try to keep the shower head pointed at one of the three walls that drain into the tub. Easier said than done as Haywood demonstrated.

Well, that's enough for today. It's raining again, surprise. Torrential storms last night. It even hailed a couple of times. Yesterday afternoon was gorgeous and Haywood got burnt. Then again, a sixty watt bulb for any length of time will cause Haywood to burn. He was pretty miserable to be with because he was pretty miserable. He felt better after taking a bath though. Of course, that meant water all over the bathroom again. He's making progress though.