Of Creme Brule and Broken Dreams

Not a good first impression, Paris. Shame on you!

So the plane ride was uneventful. I slept about 5 or 6 hours, then I watched X-Men First Class and Pirates of the Caribbean 4. After that I briefly chatted with the 3 USAC students that I shared my row of seats with. When the plane landed, they couldn’t get us to a gate so they put us on a bus. Not terrible, but a little ghetto. The baggage claim didn’t get our luggage for almost an hour. Then finally I got on the metro to head out to my hotel. It was pretty simple, except for the one stop on which I had to switch metro lines. There were about 12-15 staircases which I had to lug all of my baggage up and down. My hotel seemed nice at first impression. I’m on the 7^th floor. There’s an elevator, but when I go on it I fear for my life, and it only goes up to the sixth floor. So more stairs with baggage.

Yes, the bed takes up 87% of the room. I measured.

I got to my hotel room and took time to shower. Here’s where this story might get interesting. Everything here is SO TINY. I’m used to being in Europe and expected things to be cramped, but really, this is incredible. For example, for me to sit on the toilet, I have to open the shower door and put one of my feet in there. Then my left arm has to go over and across the sink. And the toilet paper for some reason is under the sink and completely out of reach. Oh, and don’t turn around too fast in the shower, you might bump into the little lever in there and turn off the water completely. I only did that twice.

If size really does matter, this bathroom would never find a girlfriend.

I finally got out into the city and here’s where things get a little sad. I bought a 2-day hop-on-hop-off tour bus pass. I did that in Rome and I did that in London and it seemed to me to be the best way to see all the sights and get acquainted with the city. Well, I decided to walk to the nearest bus stop. I got lost on the way there, slightly by design and slightly on accident. It allowed me to just get a feel for the city. But I couldn’t really find my way to the stop, mostly because every map I have includes the area of that bus stop as the southernmost point on the map. My hotel is about 4 blocks south of that. Finally I found the bus stop by seeing where one of the busses stopped to drop off passengers.

I waited there 45 minutes for another bus (they’re supposed to have run every 20 minutes). And really, even after 45 minutes it didn’t show up. I started walking towards the stop before it on the line. When I got to the busy intersection on which the bus stop was on, I stood trapped across the street while the bus stopped and then continued on its way. So I ran through side streets to try and catch the bus at the original stop I was at. The only reason I made it on that bus was because some old lady was arguing with the driver long enough to allow me to sprint half a block to catch the bus. Did I mention it was about 100 degrees and humid in the city? So now I’m on the orange line, but my real goal was to be on the green line, which drove along the river to see all of the important sites. But the orange bus was supposed to stop at the Hôtel Invalides where I could then conceivably catch a green bus (I viewed the Hôtel from afar, but didn’t dare go near it for fear of missing my bus) . 

Well, about 45 minutes later the first green bus pulled up. He let some people off of the bus, but refused to pick anyone up (and there was a crowd of about 30 waiting to catch a green bus). Another 30 minutes later another green bus pulled up. It was completely full. It let off about 7 people and about 20 people piled on. I wasn’t going to wait another 30 minutes, so I started walking.

You never know what familiar faces you'll run into. That's right, it's Thomas Jefferson.

Of course he's holding the Declaration of Independence, that document helped spark the French Revolution and shape the history of not only France but the world... what's that? It's a sketch of his house? Well, I guess that's important too.

By the end of the day I walked halfway across Paris and didn’t really get to see anything. I made it to the Ile de la Cité and found the plaque I had been hoping to find. I sat down in front of Notre Dame, but didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to go inside the cathedral dressed in shorts and a shirt that were soaked with sweat and smelled so bad.

Just picture poor Jacques as the creme in creme brule

 So finally, at about 6 o’clock I decided to throw in the towel on my first day. I grabbed the metro back to my hotel and got my first meal since breakfast at the little food shack around the corner. The hot and humid weather gave way to a lightning storm as the night went on, so I don’t really know what my plan is for tomorrow. Oh, and I still don’t have internet, so I don’t know when you’ll read this.