Chilling at the Alhambra with Meredith on Mar 27. Later, Tapas for dinner at Café Futbol, tontería all night
Tapas with Meredith and Akin at Poë, a Brazilian tapas bar. Also, flaming shots. Crazy times.
Hanging out at Paula’s (my spanish sign language / english intercambio friend) at her place, practicing la cultura de reciclaje at the green market, and dinner of the same. - sunday Mar 27
Sorry I haven’t updated in a couple weeks, but they’ve been busy (as you might know if you can see my Facebook news feed). I went to Paris with Laura, Karen, and Analecia two weekends ago, where we met up with Laura’s friend Lisa; this is the same who’ll be travelling with Laura, Karen, and me for spring vacays. We came back to take our exams for the first session classes, grammar and culture, which went decently. Then, it was time for a tour of Barcelona with the whole group, where we saw a brief survey of Iberian art through the ages, Gaudí, Miró, a little Calder (really and truly “little” - only eight feet tall), and then some more Gaudí by the moonlight. We came home by way of Sitges, a beach town, and then started up classes again for second session. My polisci prof talks a lot, my lit prof talks a lot of lit, and my art history prof sings. Also, we have off Fridays now, so our weekends are that much longer. Spring break plans are going well, as we’re going to be couchsurfing a lot, and I’ve got a couple people lined up for dinner, drinks, and beds in Brussels. Right now, I’m going out to see the mercadillo (open-air market) with a new friend I found on CouchSurfing, Pao; she’s from Galicia and speaks international sign language, so she’s teaching me some of that while I give her some English words.
This is all. I’ll actually write up the stories, now that I’ve got all my events and photos organized, and put them up over the course of this week.
ETA: If you’re looking for the new posts from the last two weeks, look below this post! It’s a quirk of sorting by date.
Tour bus to airport
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 9:00 hasta 9:30
Breakfast at hotel
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 8:30 hasta 9:00
Check in, hurry up and wait for delayed flight
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 9:45 hasta 14:15
Running across the entire Madrid airport for a plane that’s on last call
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 15:30 hasta 16:00
Missing the flight, getting assigned to the other Sunday flight to Granada
Security, hurry up and wait for our new flight
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 16:00 hasta 18:00
Flight from Barcelona to Madrid
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 14:15 hasta 15:30
Flight to Granada-Jaen
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 18:15 hasta 19:30
Shuttle bus to Granada
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 19:45 hasta 20:30
Dinner at home
planificado 24 de marzo de 2009 desde 21:15 hasta 22:15
Tour bus to Sitges
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 9:15 hasta 10:15
Breakfast at hotel
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 8:30 hasta 9:15
Beach hangouts
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 10:15 hasta 11:15
Coffee on the beach
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 11:15 hasta 12:45
Beach walkabouts, hangouts
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 12:45 hasta 13:45
Lunch at sports bar on beach
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 13:45 hasta 15:00
Bus to Freixenet Bodega
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 15:00 hasta 15:45
Freixenet tour
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 16:00 hasta 18:30
Longest bus ride back ever
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 18:45 hasta 19:30
Shopping for shoes
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 19:45 hasta 20:15
Dinner at ATTIC
planificado 23 de marzo de 2009 desde 20:30 hasta 23:15
Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! The day of rest. Jorge gave us half an hour extra before we had to be out of bed, so 9am breakfast, 9.45 walks. This morning’s tour? El Barrio Gotico, the Gothic Borough. (We’d tour the Jewish Borough too, but they did a pretty good job of kicking the Jews out of Barcelona back in the day, so there ain’t no old-school Judaism no more up there.)
I don’t really have much to say about the Barrio Gotico except that it was, well, gothicy and old. We went to see a little corner down in the sotano which held four ancient Roman columns. It also had signs describing the spectacle in four or five languages. What’s more is that the street leading to it is our guide’s favorite place, where she hopes to retire to: el Carrer del Paradís, or Paradise Run.
What’s really of note for today was the desfila y manifestación siguiendo: a parade and a protest! Here, have a video:
Coffee by cathedral
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 10:45 hasta 11:00
Walkabouts back up Ramblas
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 13:00 hasta 14:00
Lunch at Restaurante Chino - Confuscius II
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 14:00 hasta 15:30
Walk down to
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 16:00 hasta 16:30
PIcasso Museum
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 16:30 hasta 17:45
Erotic Museum
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 18:15 hasta 19:45
Netcafe / DDR
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 19:45 hasta 20:00
Walk up to Rambla de Catalunya
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 20:15 hasta 21:30
Paella dinner
planificado 22 de marzo de 2009 desde 21:45 hasta 23:15
Hangouts at hotel
planificado para 22 de marzo de 2009 en 23:45 a 23 de marzo de 2009 en 3:00
Breakfast starts at 8:30am. Now, this ain’t no hostel: it’s a three-star hotel, and that means they do things right. As you walk in for breakfast, a maitre d’ greets you to check off your name from the guest list, then seats you at a table. He asks you whether you’d prefer coffee, tea, or fruit juice. Tea would be lovely, you tell the maitre d’, and coffee for your companion. “Teabags are over against that wall, as is coffee. Here is your cup.” Ah, well, I guess they do things well enough.
9:15am was the hour for Jorge to corral the college kids and trot us over to the Metro station, which was a metro station like any other across the world. Two things of note: the signs were in Catalán, as seems to be the style in all Barcelona; and the ticket-taker doors, rather than opening like a bedroom door or sliding open like a porch door, followed a little down-up swooshy path, very fun.
Following the metro, we followed Jorge up a slight hill, between two tall pillars (which we later learned were constructed for a World Fair, way back when), to the MNAC, or Museu Nacionale d’Art de Catalunya (which is Catalán; en castellano, that’s Museo Nacional de Catalonia, and in English National Museum of Catalonia; incidentally, Catalunya is the autonomous community whose capital is Barcelona). We were introduced to our guide for the weekend, a woman (about 30 years old, I’d say) from Barcelona who had a much clearer accent than Jorge or our señoras maybe ever had. (I’m sorry to say I never caught her name; would someone please remind me?)
In the MNAC, our tour guide led us through only two of its five-some wings, the Romanesque and the Gothic sections, proceeding from antiquity to a little closer to now. Let me read you some of the English version of the map / brochure:
The collection is made up of works from the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries and comprises richly painted panels (the most numerous and oldest collction from Romanesque Europe); woodcarvings (the Descent from the Cross and Majesty pieces are especially famous); metalwork (of space note are the enamels from Limoges); and stone sculpture.
Wonderfully written, but looks like an excerpt from my more formal writings (and we know that I’d rather date an English major than write a paper for English class). Maybe I should cite their translator and technical editors for plagiarism. I won’t bore you with a technical description of the development of artistic styles, save to say that the old Romanesque murals had designs reminiscent of Muslim freizes, repeated geometric designs forming backgrounds and borders. I feel as though 8-bit game artists must have been highly influenced by these forms. The class enjoyed the progression from the more stylized depictions of humans to the more classical renditions to which we are accustomed; that is to say, we were glad to see some real-looking people in the picture frames.
As soon as we were let back out into the sunlight (after taking café in the Museum’s huge amphitheatre, practically a bullring), we were taken for a quick stroll down the lane to the Joan Miró museum, another epic building full of … erm, well, Miró. Additionally, there were a few pieces from his friend Calder, including an eight foot-tall Tree of Life thingie (so dubbed by Karen, although she still has to tell me where she saw the mountain) with a branch a dozen pieces long. It was close enough to blow on it and spin the entire arm. Yay Calder! Yay Miró! Yay … a Guernica-esque Escher-style mercury fountain? Beats me, but it was still pretty cool to see liquid mercury bubbling along.
In order to get back to the hotel for lunchtime, we took a variety of trains. The first was on a 30′ diagonal grade. I don’t really understand why, but it was still fun to go down the hill. Also, there were two little boys (who I don’t think spoke castellano; maybe catalán) perched up a machine box or summat; when I gave them a thumbs-up, they flashed me the peace sign, so I took a photo. Cute kids. Then it was back to the regular metro to Universitat Plaza.
About a block away from the hotel was a fast-food restaurant called Viena (maybe Catalán for Vienna?) where the counter staff wore funny traditionalist Austrian outfits, lots of green with yellow embroidery. They were damn efficient, too, with a dozen trays set out on the counter at a time to fill the orders. However cool the uniforms were, though, the menu was still in Catalán, so we had a little trouble picking out what we wanted. Fortunately, just about everyone in Catalonia still speaks castellano, so ordering wasn’t a problem, nor was getting our food quickly and finding a table upstairs. The hamburgers we ate (which had more than just salad, it practically had the whole garden) were pretty decent, and cheap enough for Barcelona being somewhere around #30 on the list of most expensive cities in the world.
After polishing off that hearty meal of, um, hamburger, it’s back to the hotel for a quick rest before a ride to (wait for it– it’s the theme of Barcelona — GAUDÍ’S) SAGRADA FAMILIA! (In Spanish, that translates as ¡Sagrada Familia!) Well, it’s got its own metro stop, of course, being a Big Freaking Tourist Attraction, and it was only about half-done, I think, when Gaudi died? So, it’s still under construction, which means (A) there’s lots of cranes towering over it and (B) a good three fourths of it looks like new stone, untarnished by the weathering of years. I’m a real big of Gaudí, though, what with his, em, “naturalistic” approach to architecture; that is to say, I like the weird shit he designed that looks like climbing ivy and dripping stalactites in marble. We got about an hour to generally admire it, which meant that we were present for the carillon to ring at 4pm and my, are those some of the most unearthly bells I’ve ever heard. (Appropriate, I suppose.) I’ll put up my video later if I can clean up the audio. Oh, and I bought a cheapskate tourist souvenir: a thimble with a little shield showing the Sagrada Familia, which I’ll probably end up using when I patch up my holey pants.
Back at the hotel, Jorge released us after he mentioned where we could go find the other big Gaudí works in the city, if we took the 24 bus line from Universitat. Laura, Karen, and I got together, hiked over to Universitat (after going down to Plaza Catalunya and getting befuddled by the metro map), and caught the bus all the way up to the north side of town so we could go see Parq Güell, a public park designed by (who else) Gaudí. Out the windows of the bus, we glimpsed both of the Gaudí apartment buildings – and the setting sun. By dint of following the appropriate signs at the bus stop for the Parq, we ended up in … some other public park. Well, there went twenty minutes of scoping around to try and find the place. We eventually got there as the sun had just set, so we had lots of fun seeing how well our cameras could cope with the dark and with Gaudi’s weird works. I absolutely loved the crazy fountains that looked like it came from inside a cave and the multiple caves, although Karen said she doesn’t understand Gaudí’s taste at all. Laura was all “eh it’s cool yay let’s go play in the park!” Once we made it up to the very top, where there’s a curvy bench thing surrounding a dirt plaza, we just sat around and talked about life for a while we overlooked the rest of the park and looked up to the stars. Good Times.
Eventually, it was time to catch the 24 back down town so that we could meet up for folks for dinner at d’Or, a restaurant on the corner by our hotel. The place was lovely, as was the “Delerium” I consumed, a Belgian beer with elephants on the foil label. I nicked that bottle to take back to our growing collection in the hotel, that’s for sure. What was for dinner? Meat! Who served it? … Asians. Weird. Still yummy, though, and the guy spoke both Spanish and a little English. The dinner table conversation was also quite interesting, as we discussed our interactions with everyone we’d met here.
Of course, what comes after dinner? Party at the hotel. =D
Man, was it a long walk from the piso this morning: we ended up all the way in Barcelona – but damned if it didn’t take all day!
Last week, Jorge instructed us (during a typically long-winded but surprisingly dramatic meeting) to meet at 9.45 at the bus stop by El Corte Inglés that we might catch the 3€ Gonzalez public shuttle bus to the airport. (At first, we wondered why he told us that specific stop, which isn’t really convenient except for a couple people. We later caught wind of his motives, when we pulled up to other bus stops and the bus was nearly full, too bad for the other people trying to get to the airport. There’s a few other things Jorge told us that we didn’t understand, but more on that later – and no, it wasn’t the language barrier.) That really was the longest walk of all, though: while I had bought a reasonably decent mountain backpack (40L, two side pockets, a small pocket on top, various straps and buckles, and a fancy mesh backing to keep your back well aired-out), Akin instead packed his wheely mini-suitcase. All the freaking way up Alhamar, ch’k'ta-ch’k'ta-ch’k'ta-ch’k'ta-chnnnnnnk-ch’k'ta-ch’k'ta-etc. It really depended on whether the wheels were rolling over cobblestone or concrete, and my, is there a lot of cobblestone in Granada, but either way: chk’ta or chnnnnk, take your pick.
Akin and I realized while we were en route to the bus, that having stayed out late last night to celebrate our flat-mate Youssef’s last week in Granada may not have been, it might go without saying, the wisest idea. Oof. Nevertheless, the bus ride itself was quite tranquilo. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to sit around, check in, sit around some more, move over to the waiting area by the café and sit there for a while, go through security, and sit on our patooties s’more! At least we were in time for Jorge and his daughter Stefania to catch their plane, a RyanAir flight direct to Barcelona.
Oh, didn’t I tell you about our flight plans? Thank you to the excellent planning of Iberia Airlines and their package deals for the University of Delaware / UGR groups, we were eagerly awaiting an Iberia Airlines flight from the Granada-Jaen airport to Madrid, a 50-minute layover in Madrid during which we had to run across the airport, take a 20-minute tram, get through Madrid security, and catch the next leg of our flight, a plane from Madrid to Barcelona. Jorge told us about the perils of this journey; that was the dramatic part of last week’s group meeting. He charted it all out for us on the whiteboard, how our flight from Granada gets in to the airport in terminal D and our flight to Barcelona leaves from HJK (which is one very long set of townhoused terminals and they don’t typically assign gate numbers until about half an hour before your flight) and how that’s ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE AIRPORT and oh you’ll have to run (at this point he mimicked running, muy gracioso) and while it’s not that big of a deal if you miss the flight to Barcelona because there’s flights basically every hour between Madrid and Barcelona, if you don’t catch the plane home to Granada on Tuesday, you’re probably SOL or maybe you’ll have to bribe a bus driver in Málaga to drive us all the way back to Granada like last semester, because Iberia Airlines hates Granada and usually only has one or two flights a day into the Granada-Jaen airport. Oye. So that’s what we were looking forward to, hellz yeah! Also, that’s why Jorge said to heck with that whole mess and booked a direct flight for himself, because he doesn’t particularly enjoy running in a suit.
The plane ride was … yup, it was a plane ride. Getting into Madrid airport is always fun since it’s so nicely designed, quite artsy, and it so turned out that we got all the way across the airport (in not too leisurely a manner) with twenty minutes and change to spare. Hurry up and wait, guys! The smallest comfort in all this was that Jorge didn’t have anything else to do with his time, either, since he and Fani (which is the Spanish version of “Stef”) were just sitting around the Barcelona airport waiting for us to show up so they could bring us in to our hotel.
Meeting Jorge at the airport was rather nice, though, but we had to sit around a little more while people collected their belongings from the baggage carousel and … from the plane, where they’d left them. Group backrub time, folks! Life is good. Soon enough, though, it was time to get up and go catch a bus into town, so we could sit a little more. I love my life sometimes, really and truly.
According to our itinerary (which dates back to last November, incidentally), we were promised a walk down Las Ramblas, the main pedestrian drag of town. Well, … kinda. We hopped off the bus at the Universitat stop and walked… lessee, there’s Ramblas right over there … yeah, we went around the corner to find, voilà, Hotel Gravina, a three-star hotel tucked neatly onto a side street. Rooms got divvied up pretty quickly and we went up to drop off our stuff, then reported back to the lobby to get briefed by Jorge on plans for the evening and report time for the next morning. Plans were that there were no plans, and breakfast is in tomorrow morning at 8.30 in the hotel dining room; we leave at 9.15 for touristing. Before we left, though, there were two nice things: first, our per diem, an even 100€ for food (but not drink); and last, a flute of cava for everyone (gratis with the room). That’s some mighty fine sparkling grape juice they make in Cataloña, I’ll let you know.
Our throats wetted and our appetites whetted by our hotel’s hospitality, the class split up and struck out in search of food. After wandering for a bit and turning down pinchos (Basque tapas) and a cafeteria, we decided we were tired and hungry enough to settle for some legit Spanish food at a little café called Abellana. Most of us were satisfied with personal Margherita pizzas, but Ashley and I got a little adventurous; that is to say, we got paella. (We convinced her to try seafood paella, the way it’s supposed to be done, but she refused to eat anything that could stare back at her – so Jason tore the heads off the shrimp and ate them himself.) I had a lovely meat-lover’s paella, which ahd sausage, chicken, another sausage, some other meat, and I think a third kind of sausage? I savored that paella SO HARD AND SO LONG. That’s right, Laura. I SAVORED IT.
Following our hearty meal of … pizza and paella (which has got quite a ring to it, wouldn’t you agree?) we hit up El Corte Inglés, of which there are about a dozen in Barcelona, for food and beverage to support us for the next few days. First stop: the chocolate shop. Second: the market. Third: they were turning off the lights and making noises about people listening, so, the door. We took our rations back to the hotel and enjoyed the heck out of them. I’d show you pictures except that I apparently didn’t pop off the camera lens cover at all after dinner, which is probably just as well.
Welcome to Barça, kiddies. It’s time to sleep.
Today’s Facebook album: (2009-03-20–21) Barcelona, Fri/Sat morn
Waking up was fun. We woke up the poor Utah yoga girl who was put in her room. No chats, though. Laura and Lisa, after packing up, peaced out real quick – almost as quickly as they had been in sneaking her in last night. The rest of us took a bit more leisurely attitude towards getting out. I took some photos around the neighborhood, too. Then we all met up at the metro, hopped on (as soon as we actually determined which metro stop we’re supposed to go to – it was a long few days since we came in), and made our way to the shuttle bus for the airport. Lisa parted ways with us at that point, as she was merely taking a train from Paris back to Nantes, where she was studying.
All was going well until – dun dun dunnnnnn! – we had to run across a 4-lane highway to make it from the metro stop to the bus stop. Laura made it OK. Jess made it OK. Ana made it halfway across and her clutch fell open, spilling money and credit cards everywhere. What ensued afterwards was a hilarious mad dash back and forth across the four-lane highway to grab 100€ in notes and a credit card. Oye. One hurdle down.
Next: turns out you’re supposed to catch the shuttle bus an hour and forty five minutes before your flight. We got there an hour and forty minutes early. Oye. Well, Ana sweet-talked the bus ticket seller and it turns out they already had a list of the passengers from our flight, as they were associated with the airport, and thus knew we had missed our bus. So, they just tossed us on the next bus, which was in ten minutes, so all was good. (Seriously, it’s a 4-gate airport, we didn’t really need to be there until about half an hour before.
Once we got to the airport, it was lots of hurry up and wait. We met up again with Alisha, who had actually caught the right bus (and figured we’d get there eventually), and enjoyed an awful lot of hanging out, nibbling on baguettes and pan de chocolat, and doing nothing. That was the theme of the rest of the day, really.
Things of note:
Neeeeeeeext our flight to Granada-Jaen from Barcelona-Gerona. Yup, puddle jumper. Good times. We got in to Granada and picked up the shuttle bus from there back into town, hopping off at the cathedral around 9pm – just in time to go eat some pizza on the street with the girls.
Goodbye, Paris – hello again, Granada!
Today, we visited Lots and Lots of Big Things. Breakfast was not a big thing, but we visited that nonetheless, because it was there and it was yummy. Our plan was to start at one end of Champs-Elysees, at the Arc du Triomphe, and work our way down it towards the Obelisque, which is a block over from the Louvre; then stop off at Notre Dame and spend the afternoon and early evening around the Eiffel Tower, with vague plans of dinner afterwards. (Ana decided to go off with her friends instead of partaking of our itinerary, but that worked out fine.) It turns out we actually stuck to our plan!
Thanks to the trusty French metro, we made our way to the Arc du Triomphe. Jess’s Rick Stevens travel guide has some funny things to say about the Arc du Triomphe: “Lady Liberty – looking like an ugly reincarnation of of Joan of Arc – screams ‘Freedom this way!’ … Today, the Arc du Triomphe is dedicated to the glory of all French armies.” I’ll leave you with that. Actually, I’ll tell you about what happened when we got off the metro stop. In order to get from the metro to the Arc proper (which is in the middle of a bunch of roads, if you’ve ever seen the Tour du France), we had to walk through an underpass and go up an escalator to the plaza. We get near the end of the underpass and suddenly Laura bolts off and runs up the escalator. We catch up to Laura and she’s wrapped around a tall blonde American! That’s how we met Lisa, Laura’s friend from Connecticut who’s studying in France.
After spending some time taking photos of the Arc du Triomphe, we made our way down the Champs-Elysees. It’s a big road. There’s lots of big things on it. Go check out the photo albums. We just wandered around and chatted, really, nothing overly interesting. Eventually we found the Obelisque, where we called up one of Laura’s other friends who was also touristing through the city; she was in the metro and otherwise engaged with her group, so no go. Across the street was the Jardin du Tuileries, which got me all excited since I’m a fan of Pictures at an Exhibition. At the other end of the park, we found the Louvre, which meant it was time to go.
For lunch, we followed the advice of our native French guide – or at least, the closest thing we had handy – Lisa, who suggested we find a little square with a boulanger (for bread), fromagerie (for fromage, I mean cheese), a something else (for meat), and a patisserie (for dessert); apparently they’re pretty common in her town. We couldn’t find them all together, but after wandering a bit (and getting some fruit from a market, too), we came out with a fine take: baguettes of various types, a tub of Camembert, oranges, and a bag of grapes too! We took our victuals and headed over to our next stop to eat them (and, incidentally, ran into Analecia with her friends on the corner while they were en route to the Latin Quarter. Go fig.)
It’s a little stupendous thinking about what daily life might be like in Paris. Walking around these monumental edifices which litter the city, there are simple boulangers, apartments, and their ilk. Oddly enough, though, around the corner from Notre Dame is a theatre which plays the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (Too bad we didn’t have time to come back later to watch that.)
That aside, Notre Dame is a Fancy Big Building. Also, we ate a lunch of baguettes and cheese in a little park out back, then went inside for a while to check out the Big Fancy Building. It’s very massive; also, there’s they had some theatrical lights mounted way up high to light up the pulpit and the altar. They also had a big projection screen mounted behind the altar with a projector. Outside of Notre Dame, Lisa peeled a perfect spiral peel off her orange. I peeled mine very badly, ate it, and then met a poor gypsy begging for money. I gave her some grapes instead, which she was very appreciative of. The next gypsy wasn’t impressed with the oranges, though.
Next stop: everywhere, en route to …
The Eiffel Tower! It’s big. Huge. World Fair huge. We got there around 4pm to see it during the daytime. Also, it’s big. We took the elevator up =D Lots of pictures up in the windy, windy observation decks. Suffice to say, the girl wearing the dress with tights didn’t come upstairs; Karen sat in a café on ground level instead. We walked down, though, which took an awful long while. Whee! By then, it was 7.30 and we could see the Tower all lit up at night. Additionally, every hour on the hour of the evening, they have lots of flashy bulbs for five minutes. We were up there at 7pm to see it 
Then we met up with Karen and got to see it at 8pm from afar.
Since Karen was a little chilly come evening (and a little culture shocked by her experience at the café), we sent her home on the metro while Laura, Jess, Lisa, and I went to meet up with Lisa’s friends to pick up her stuff and eat dinner. Amazingly enough, we got dinner for 15€ each (formula meals, or menú del día) plus a bottle of wine. It was in a little cave-y; also, in the middle of a gay district. The meal was delicious – and the clientele, flaming. It was a nice mellow dinner, thanks to our waiting for an hour for our food and enjoying the wine the whole time. Also, Canadian!
After dinner, which we finished off around 12 or 1am, we hopped the metro back to our hostal to meet our new, um, guest. Some other woman got put in the sixth bed in our room, one of those crazy hippy Mormons who practices yoga and spiritual stuff. We were going to put Lisa in that bed, dangit! Instead we walked very quickly in through the lobby and up to our room so that Lisa could spoon with Laura for the evening. Poor girl who was stuck in our room had to deal with us calling Laura’s boyfriend Scott, who, as it turned out had been enjoying his beach house, so we had a nice Skype video chat with the lad. Then, to bed for another eventful day!
Well, good morning, Paris! It’s a great sight in the morning to see, through the drizzle and light fog, a one-star hotel across the street from our hostel. I fear we may have the better accommodations. We also have a French-style continental breakfast downstairs in the foyer, which is to say, toast, butter, jam, coffee, hot chocolate, and various tables to eat on with stools to perch on during your breakfast. Before breakfast, though, we needed an itinerary! No, of course we didn’t have any idea what we wanted to visit, just to be a bunch of tourists in gay Paris. Good thing there’s the internet – and tourist information spots!
Speaking of tourist information centers, I might have to say that the goofiest encounter we had in Paris was Karen talking in Spanish to the French guy at the one by the metro. He actually spoke pretty fair Spanish while he pointed out sites to visit on the map, but it was rather weird to hear it with a French accent. The guy did peg us pretty easily as English speakers, but I think we might have tipped our hand when we talked amongst ourselves in English and American Spanish. At least he thought we were England English, not American.
Another person who did speak a little English was the apothecary. Analecia had a bad cold, so her brain is a little clouded. Since she was incapaz, not in condition to wander around the streets of Paris in order to get herself some Robitussin, I asked at the front counter of our hostel for where I might find a pharmacy, ever-so-prevalent across Europe. Apparently one was right around the corner, so I walked over and hailed the man working, asking if he spoke enough English to get the concept across. A little, he says. So I tell him my friend as a cough (illustrated by a little hacking) and her chest is stuffy – ah, yes, an expectorant would be great. Also, her nose is stuffy, not runny, just lots of phlegm – oh, right, a decongestant, yes, exactly. Finally, a headache, so some OTC French-style Advil. Grand total: 14€ and a smile for accommodating the poor tourists. Now, back to our initial timeline, already in progress.
After a time at the tourist info booth, we went up the hill to the closest site: the Cathedral of Sacre-Cœurs. (Really, I’m just telling you about that so I can use the “œ” character. It really was a cool place, though.) Besides being a typical fancy cathedral, though, we ran into a few shenanigans there.. more than a few, to tell you the truth. I’ll start at the bottom of the hill and work my way up.
The cathedral is placed atop a mighty hill, with stairs and greenery leading up to it. At the plaza at the base, where are various tourist shops and a carousel, stand lots of African guys (mostly from Senegal and Trinidad) ready to intercept tourists. Analecia had sat down on the bench there to rest, because she had a cold which had rendered her lungs useless; so, when I came down the hill to fetch her, one of the black guys caught my attention and I let him spout his spiel. He had a length of string, various colors, with a loop on the end which he hooked over my naïvely outstretched finger, then proceeded to make into a finely wrapped bracelet while he talked an awful lot of nonsense at me in heavily accented Spanish and English. I must admit that I heard the phrases “gulag gulag” (”good luck” in his language, so he said) and – this is no lie – “hakuna matata” while he wrapped up the bracelet and gave me a little finger massage for, as he mentioned, more gulag gulag. When he finished chatting me up, he tied the bracelet around my wrist with an ingenious knot which, as of the time I write this (a month later) still hasn’t come undone – then he asked me for a tip. I dug in my change purse and came up with a 20-cent piece. No, no, too little, he said! He wanted 5€ which I didn’t want to pay; maybe 2€, but I didn’t have that coin. After a moment of haggling over the matter, I realized what I had in my back pocket: a collection of friendship bracelets I’d made in Spain, fit to rival any five-minute creation at the foot of Sacre-Cœurs. Moreover, one was in the French colors of red, white (well, cream), and blue! That set of macramé came out of my pocket and to my aid: his friends all came over to admire them while he pondered my offer of barter. After a moment, he said to me, “Alright. I change you this one for that.” Parfait – especially since I couldn’t take off the darned bracelet without cutting it! Meanwhilst, Ana was just finishing with her attendant Senegalese, who had a slightly more sour look to him than my genial host; the man had convinced her to take one by pointing to me and saying, “Look, your husband is getting a bracelet, you should too!” Cute line. Thus adorned, we went back up the hill.
What was up the hill (but slightly earlier in today’s timeline) but more people selling tourist goodies! Laura saw a great deal at the top of the stairs: a youth with a blanket covered in Eiffel Tower sculptures of various sizes and a sign listing “3 = 1€.” Not one to pass up a bargain, she handed him a one-euro piece and took her three, one in each color of bronze, silver, and gold. Pretty typical, right? Only until a woman standing there took the euro back from the boy, put it in Laura’s hand, and closed her fingers over it. Laura looked at the woman in confusion, who started taking in French and took out her wallet to flash a badge at us. Karen’s reaction? “Time to go, Laura!” I hung back a little and spied on them from above. It unfolded that the boy didn’t have a license to be an ambulant vendor – that is to say, a street seller – and the woman was a police officer who made him pack up and ship out, much to his chagrin and Laura’s joy, for she had both three miniature Eiffel Towers and a euro still in hand!
Here’s the last story of the Sacred Heart: Karen made friends with a juggler! On the steps just below the cathedral was a guy, twenty-something, with a pair of Chinese yo-yos: two sticks with a long cord in between the tips, with which he juggled the yo-yos, two rubber figure-eight objects. When we first came up, he wasn’t doing anything particularly impressive; but then Karen did the most amazing and magical of things: she threw some change in his hat and watched appreciatively. The yo-yos started flying higher and higher, going around and about his sticks in such a manner that you couldn’t tell whether his strings would be knotted in a moment or completely free! Looks like I neglected to get a video, though – sorry!
The next hour so was not as eventful. We meandered around Montmarte and saw some sights, but didn’t visit anything in particular. The Salvador Dalí museum looked interesting, but we didn’t have enough time for it! The guy playing a string bass outside the museum was interesting, too, and we only needed a few minutes for him. Some cool graffiti adorned the area, including a doe walking out from behind a tree – the tree was real, the doe was painted on the wall – and a flying cat up high on an apartment building wall. Le Chat Noir, the same one of the famous bohemians and poster with the aforementioned cat, is indeed a real café over in Montmarte and we almost ate lunch there! The Moulin Rouge was a little shorter than I thought it would be, but it was still cool to see; however, the big air vent in front of it was more fun – we did Marilyn Munroe-style poses for schlitz and giggles (mostly giggles). Since the street down the way from the Moulin Rouge is lined with sex shops, we dropped in one for giggles as well. It turned out that the proprietor, a black guy from one of the French territories, had previously been an economist but had retired from the market to open his shop and, what’s more, had studied in the U.S. at University of Maryland, College Park, so he was familiar with Delaware. Nice guy, he gave us a little discount too.
For lunch, we ended up at a café on the corner just across the street from the Moulin Rouge. At least, half of us did, since we couldn’t find the other three people until we were sat down, when I spotted them on the street, leaped up, and tore out of the café to hail our friends for lunch. Lunch was served by a very genial old waiter who lacked a few teeth and any knowledge of English, so we weren’t exactly sure what we were getting or how much it cost. We ended up with some tostadas (toasted baguettes as open-faced sandwiches), mineral water, and of course a beer for me. Pretty tasty, although when the check came, we were a bit sticker-shocked by Parisian prices – I think my entire meal came to 18€, as opposed to 7€ or 10€ around Spain. Ah well, gotta eat to live, gotta pay to eat, gotta go to a patisserie and get bread for tomorrow.
Next stop after lunch: the National Opera House. This place – specifically, the National Academy of Music – is a fantastic opera house and also the setting for Phantom of the Opera, so of course Karen especially wanted to make the 3pm tour. We finished lunch a little late, which gave us … not enough time to find the opera house. We were further delayed by a fire in the top floor of a hotel along the way, which didn’t really get in our way, but was interesting to watch anyway. The firemen brought out their fancy fire truck, extended the ladder up to the top floor, rolled out the water house, and in short did all the typical things that firemen do in this kind of situation. They had cool helmets, though. Well, in between this fire, general cluelessness about where the Opera House was in the city or how to get there, and misinformation from the tourist booth (since the tours were at 2:30, not 3pm as he told us), we didn’t make the tour. We did eventually find the place that we might go back tomorrow and get some nice tourist photos today.
Our eventual goal for the rest of the day was to make it to the Louvre for the evening, since it was free to under-25’s every Friday evening, in an attempt to culture the youth of France. Ana’s mind was getting clouded, though, as her dose of cough medicine from the morning was wearing off. Unfortunately, Ana’s drugs hadn’t kicked in early enough in the morning to grant her the presence of mind to put the medicine in her Mary Poppins bag before we left the hostel, so I elected to take her home that she might take another dose, and to meet up at the Louvre. Several metro rides and a bit of a walk later, Ana found herself a rejuvenated woman and we found ourselves outside the Louvre, waiting for the free entrance time and to gather everyone up. Outside the Louvre proper was a skate-park of sorts: a large plaza in between two hotels served as recreation area for a bunch of teenagers on rollerblades chasing each other around and doing stunts; also, a priest. Cool guy. Anyway, we all came together after a time and two of Ana’s friends found us waiting in line, per their plan, so we all split up into mini-groups and wandered around the museum for a bit.
What’s in the Louvre? Plenty, man, plenty! Statues, paintings, the Mona Lisa, boys playing with Rubik’s Cubes, etc. and so forth! I wasn’t particularly impressed by the Mona Lisa, I will say, though I was entertained by their presentation of it. It’s mounted in a huge, empty brown wall in the middle of a room, the walls of which are covered by equally huge paintings, while the Mona Lisa itself is only about 2 feet tall. She’s certainly pretty, but I must be a Philistine, for I don’t get all the hype. The crowd was pretty cool, though, and I was amused by the singular security guard posted by the painting to make sure nobody rushed the barrier to try and break the lady out of her glass cage. As for the boys with Rubik’s Cubes, it was a pair of them sitting on a soft bench near the Gregorian art. They were something, alright, with timers and bags full of different cubes: 3-by-3-by-3, 4-by, 8-by, even a little 2-by-2 keychain one. One guy showed off for us when we started talking to them about it: he solved the cube in 21 seconds, one-handed, on his left hand. Cool hangouts, man.
Before the entire facility closed, we took a break around 8 or 9pm for dinner at a food court underground, in the complex but outside the Louvre proper. Instead of proper food stands with brand names, each one was a different regional menu: Moroccan, French, Italian, Asian, and the best of all, Spanish tapas. Not too expensive for the meal, either.
Shortly afterwards, the Louvre closed, so we went out to street level to see the pyramids all lit, spy on the Eiffel Tower from afar, and take goofy photos. Some teenagers were taking GQ-style photos, so we got a few with them and even made friends on Facebook with one. Good times at the Louvre. After a bit, we took the metro home, got some freshly made crêpes on the street (mine with Nutella and almonds!), and headed back to the hostel for the night.
Good night, Paris, we’ll be back tomorrow for more!
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