Ciao amici,
Okay, first off...I haven't written in my blog for a while, I know, but here's my update (finally). It's spring break and I took a short adventure to Paris as my vacation within a vacation. The nice part about going to Paris was that my dad knows someone currently residing there. Long story short, my dad met Donna, the person who lives in Paris, on an 'Encounter' (I think that's what they were called?) retreat back when he was a priest (yes, I typed that right). At any rate, Donna willingly accepted Keihly and I and was going to be our tour guide of Paris for a few days -- we also crashed at her place for a few nights.
So! Barely making our bus which would take us to the airport, in typical fashion, the two hour plane ride from Rome to Paris was flanked by about 4 total hours of bus rides--just so we could get cheap flights. Worth it? Maybe.... We finally orchestrated the catch-up with Donna via cell phone, and we saw our first glimpse of the magical, fantastic, awe-inspiring Eiffel Tower. No joke- this thing is fantastic! I LOVE it. We didn't get inside, but more on that later.
Nah, I might as well talk about it now. At the New Years celebration for the new millennium in 2000 (duh), the French (as they are called, since they live in France) installed hundreds of strobe lights on the Eiffel Tower to give it a 'glistening' effect which would be the big orgasmic finale to the year 1999 and thus mark the beginning of the world-wide destruction and computer failure of Y2K. Well! Everyone thought it was soooo freaking cool that the Eiffel tower had a bahzillion fire alarm strobe lights all over it, they demanded that the lights be re-enabled, even if Y2K wasn't going on! And thus, every night within darkness (between, say, 8PM and midnight) the Eiffel tower will burst into twinkles (not twinkies) for about ten minutes at the top of each hour. <---- TACKY!!!
But that's "okay". The rest of Paris was quite beautiful sans the clouds and rain and cold. We did a lot of walking, although the city subway and buses are fantastic. It was nice being far, far away from all of the tiny, windy streets and ugly, plain medieval wonders we get to enjoy in Rome. Paris has fantastic straight streets, and many of the little plazas (still basically streets) formed by multiple streets coming together (think spokes on a bicycle wheel). Plus, who doesn't love Mansard roofs? Donna graciously allowed us to spend a few nights in her apartment. She wasn't joking when she said that she would walk out of her kitchen and step on her cat's tail -- her apartment is tiny and in fact I (accidentally?) did as she described! Her apartment was on the 7th floor (8th by domestic-floor-counting-standards) and we enjoyed the tiniest elevator in the world. It has space for two people, but really that means 'two insanely thin people that do not have any backpacks or groceries with them'. Very tiny elevator, fun to point and laugh at.
This tea I am drinking right now doesn't have enough milk in it.
(that's a picture of Notre Dame--flying buttresses are bad ass!)That's half of the story! Keihly and I wanted to go see these cool aperture thingies, so we figured we could do so by getting into the exhibition. Lucky for Keihly, who spoke a little bit of French, got into the exhibition for 6 euro. Me? 8 euro. Communication gaps are fun, knob? Unfortunately this exhibition on Egyptians from the area (obviously from many, many years ago) was all built up and blocked many of the cool windows we came to see. Keihly found a tiny nook that brought her back to the facade where she proceeded to take a few pictures. Next to her, and in my clear sight, I saw a many look through an office window to where we were standing (which was obviously where we SHOULDN'T have been standing) and he charged out of his office. I yelled at Keihly, "someone saw us!!! we have to go now!" ---we bolted out of the nook and successfully blended into the crowd, just as the man went back to find that we were no longer there. Whooo!! That was close. (How funny would it have been if some French dude started yelling at us and we got kicked out of a museum. Ridiculous, but it would have been funny. C'mon, that's funny. No? Okay, whatever).
The Louvre - we didn't go in, but the outside is cool...'n'stuff.Finally, may of you know that I am an insanely insane Phantom of the Opera fan. I will have you know that a-there is nothing wrong with that fact and b-if the Des Moines Playhouse ever does a production of that musical, I will be cast as Phantom. Hands down, it's happening. At any rate - while in Paris, I found none other than The Paris Opera House! If you don't get the connection here, you can no longer be my friend.
Don't forget to look at my facebook albums, again you don't have to be a member to look - they're free to view: Page 3 of this one and all of this one