So due to requests I will try to blog my travels. I've never really done this blogging thing (minus a 3 day affair in the livejournal days, until I realized no one cared about what I ate that day. You can only describe pizza in so many ways) so bear with me. I really don't know exactly how I will use this blog, but I'm thinking for telling the stories of these travels and maybe sharing some travel tips. If you notice any grammar errors, I don't care (read: go f*** yourself, I mean that in the most polite way possible too ). Spelling errors on the other hand, well that means I wasn't paying attention to that little red squiggly line, therefore, if you notice any, you can bite my head off. Go for it, seriously.
This post is to quickly recap the past couple days.
The European portion of this adventure began on Wednesday when I left the home town of Detroit to head to Paris, via Chicago. While in Chicago I ate chips and salsa at a Chili's in the airp.... wait... I said I wasn't going to talk about what I had been eating... damn, two sentences in and I am already screwing this up.
Anyway, the flight to Paris was rather lacking in amenities. I guess I had been spoiled by my previous flights to the old world where we each had personal TV's in front of us. Not so on this flight, it was 'old school' style, with TV's every few rows. What is this, the stone age? Good god, I'm an American, I DEMAND to be entertained at all times!
Luckily, with the flight from Chicago being about eight hours I didn't get the fat man taking up his seat and half of mine, nor the screaming child (as experienced on my recent flight to Detroit from Denver, absolutely amazing), instead I had a (rather attractive) study abroad student from Wisconsin. She was very nice and smart (triple majoring, holy crap), but unfortunately she had a boyfriend which put slight damper on any Mile High club hopes. Who the hell goes to study Europe while in a relationship? What a travesty.
We flew overnight, landed in the morning, cloudy the whole way so no spectacular views of Paris, just clouds. Oh well from the airport I exchange the little money I have, hit up the ATM and decide that it would probably be a good time to notify my bank that I am out of the country. I'm sure they will get the point, I tried calling them but couldn't get past their automated system, so I sent I 'nice' email.
After landing I hopped on the train to a station a few stops away to be picked up by my couchsurfing host (I'll explain couch surfing in a later post, for those who want to know now: www.couchsurfing.org). It is interesting waiting for someone when you don't have a cell phone, you just say be at this place at this time, and you have to wait there without knowing for sure if they are coming. It takes a certain trust I guess. He finally showed up and brought me to his place, where I am writing this now, and will be here till Monday morning.
Marco (my host) and I hung out at his place for where we chatted and I took a nap. He found me a play to attend for very cheap (a french groupon type thing I guess). He had to go to dinner with his mother, so he drove me to Paris (I'm staying in a suburb) on the way we got stuck in traffic, unfortunately 300m in front of us there was a bad accident that made him late for his dinner :(.
The play was entirely in French so I only understood about half of it (optimistically). It was in a small (40 people) theater and unfortunately I was still tired from the flight and ended up catching myself dozing off a few times, I feel bad because I think the actors could see me falling asleep. Ooops. It was some sort of comedy, taking place in an office of a fashion business. I think. I could be way off though, like I said, my french is a tad rusty.
Today I went to Paris and just walked around, started around Notre Dame and ended up next to the Moulin Rouge, walking wherever, getting lost and trying my hardest to avoid tourists, because tourists kinda piss me off even though technically I am one. Loud and obnoxious they are, never looking where they are going. Also, my god, it is way too easy to spot Americans. Seriously, they are usually *ahem* bigger, and wearing bright yellow Pittsburgh Steelers Superbowl championship T-shirts and tennis shoes. Grrrr, I see why the French might have a problem with us sometimes.
When I got back to the apartment where I am staying Marco was making dinner for us, and the appetizer happened to be escargot. I've spent 5 months of my life in France and I have never had snails here (or anywhere for that matter). This was an opportunity I could not pass up because I have severe doubts about my ability willingness to order them in a restaurant. They were surprisingly lacking in the disgusting department as would be expected. In fact, dare I say, they were damn good. Damn, again with the food, but I think this could be an exception, don't hate.
Now I have two days left in Paris before I head out to the country side to start working on that castle. I really have no idea what to do, as I have seen everything I've wanted to see on previous trips, and doing stuff on a budget in Paris is really not an option (everything is damn expensive here) so maybe I'll just go get lost in different areas of the city. Why not? I really have nothing else to do except write mundane blog posts about my mundane days.
Anywhoo, hopefully I will keep up this blog, even if no one reads it, at least it is documentation of my travels, because I am damn horrible at taking pictures. I didn't even take one today. Maybe I'll take some if I decide to go down in the catacombs. Now it's time for some after dinner bread and cheese. Nom nom nom nom.
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