aaaah running out of time!
uhhh
(edited 27 sept)
The next day we slept in cuz we hadn't really been able to sleep in thus far. I woke up around 10:30 but we didn't end up leaving the room till about 12 or 12:30 cuz laura and sarah slept in more than i did. We took the metro to the castle and i could see awesome views as we were walking up the hill to the back entrance of the castle. We got a ticket to see most of the castle sights (cuz it was cheap too, since we had our student cards)
We first went through Golden Lane, which was a small street within the castle walls will little shops, very cute. One place was suuuuch a guy thing, they had old knight wear and even had chain mail and weapons for sale! We then went through one of the chapels, i think, and then the royal palace. We saw castle guards walking around, they reminded me of the Scottish guards i saw at Edinburgh castle. It didn't really seem like a castle, though...more like an enclosed town.
St. Vitus' cathdral was the main attraction at the castle, that was nice too, there was a Mucha stained glass window. Sarah and i had gotten separated from Laura at the royal palace cuz we decided to explore the basement, which wasn't much. Most of the descriptions were in Czech, so we didn't really know what everything was, which kinda sucked, cuz i felt so lost without some kind of guide. Our books weren't all that helpful when it came to details and stories.
A walk up the tower was included in our package, so we started heading up. There was a warning before the stairs that it was 287 steps. Man those were a lot of steps. We had to take a break every once in a while and once we got to the top, we sat on the benches for a few minutes before going out and enjoying the view. We ran into laura there, who'd gone up the tower ahead of us when we got separated. It really is a nice city, Prague. I like it a lot.
After walking down those 287 steps, we walked around the other side of the castle, looking for a place to eat. We think we got ripped off again at this small cafe, but whatever, we were hungry. We walked around the Royal Gardens back to Mala Strana, which was nice. Very green, very quaint. The thing was, after seeing things in Italy, and Salzburg, sometimes we weren't as impressed with what we were seeing after a while. So the gardens were nice, natury, not a lot of tourists
Tried walking thru the jewish quarter but the synagogues were closed, but that's okay. Laura got her mom a garnet necklace. I was considering getting something too, but decided against it.
dinner....forgot what we had. But afterwards (and more shopping) we decided to finally do it. We went into a bar and laura asked for an absinthe shot. I asked for an absinthe + sprite. These brits/austrailans next to us saw laura's shot and gave her tips on what to do, but it didn't go like it normally should.
[absinthe! hehe, laura had a quasi shot after burning most of it off (long story), i had an absinthe+ sprite, tasted like cough syrup]
So you're supposed to dip the spoon into the absinthe and put the sugar on it (or something like that), and then light the bottom of the spoon and let the sugar caramelize from the heat. Then you drop the liquid sugar into the absinthe and down it. however, i don't know what happened, but laura didn't drop the sugar into the shot, she dropped the whole spoon, so the shot caught fire. We were staring at it, not knowing what to do, and the people next to us were pretty fascinated too. So we stared at it for a while until laura finally blew out the fire, which probably burned away all the alcohol in it. So she downed the shot and felt fine. She could've had another one but didn't ask. I finished mine eventually. It really tasted like bad cough syrup. Afterwards, we passed by the internet cafe again really quickly so i could pay my electric bill, and laura and sarah finished up my phone card by calling inah.
When we left the next morning, we were hoping the cute reception guy was working again, but it was some random lady. We were bummed. We wanted to tell him to flirt with the girls more, he had suuuuch a sexy accent.
That morning we had some time to kill before our train left, so we tried to get something to eat at the vendors outside the station. We thought we were doing okay with a hot dog or hamburger until Sarah saw that the lady was pretty much deep frying the meat in some kind of fryer.
So we took the train out of the Czech Republic and reentered Germany (dude, that country is huge) on the way to Dresden to Leipzig. At the border, our passports got checked quite a bit, but not as much as this one couple in our car. They were this goth-punky looking couple, clad in black leather. The guy had candy apple red hair, long, and kinda nappy, the girl had a nose ring among other piercings, etc etc. Sarah dubbed them "our favorite couple from Leipzig." They got checked like 5 times, and they were asked to empty their pockets and bags to the german border police. i think they even had some pot. After they left, they were talking to each other and wondering, "why did they keep checking us?!?!" and the girl was like, "they're so paranoid" etc. Dude, if we looked like them, we'd've been searched that many times too! But we just looked like dumb Americans so the border patrol looked at us and just checked our passports really quickly.
The town was pretty nice. We stayed at Hostel Sleepy Lion, which was recommended in all 3 of our tour books. The girl at the reception told us of places to go to, she was really cool, she was all "this area's more posh, this is more alternative," etc, which we really liked. We had 3 beds in a 8 bed dorm, i think one guy was sleeping when we dropped off our bags and find some dinner. Or lunch? i forget when we arrived. I think sometime in the afternoon. We walked around the "posh" area of town, filled with shops and stores. H & M! i was happy. We had dinner at McDonald's i think, around that area, and walked around a lot. We did'nt really know what there was to see in Leipzig (it was one of our random "composer cities" (Bach for this one) on the way to the bigger cities), so we took the reception girl's advice and headed towards the "sud" (south) of town for the "more alternative" crowd. We did'nt really see much, things were closed, some cafes were still open, and she had recommended this club to us. We eventually found the club, but it was still early (9:30 or so) so we went to a nearby cafe and had drinks there. Laura and i had specialty drinks. I think i had something with watermelon in it, but i think the drinks were worth the money, they were frickin huge!
So we went to the club afterwards, Ilses Erika, and just chilled there and people watched. European clubs are so much funner than US clubs because everyone's usually happy peppy all out for a good time, not freak me baby let's have dry sex dancing in the US. Sex crazed freaks i tell you! That's one thing i missed about Cambridge.
We ended up taking a cab back, i think, cuz we JUST missed the last tram heading north cuz we couldn't figure out how to get tickets at the station.
The next morning we walked around Bach's hometown some more, there was also stuff on Goethe here as well. We went to the Bach museum, that was the most touristy thing we did here. We shopped the rest of the time and guess who we saw walking down the streets of Leipzig! Our favorite couple from the train. It was funny. Before heading to the train station we got some postcars, and Laura was all, I didn't know there was all this stuff in Leipzig! Well, our tour books only dedicated like a page to the city (oddly one of our books had a map, the other 2 didn't), so we couldn't really know, but ohwell. It was nice to chill and shop. I got another jacket at H & M. I was debating so much whether or not to get it, but i just said, fuck it, i'm gonna regret it if i don't get it, no matter how much limited space i have, so i shelled out the 30 euro for it.
So we took a train to Augsburg to connect with a train heading to Paris. There were no couchettes available on the train to Paris, so we would just be in the seats overnight. It was pretty bad. The weird thing was, when we asked for a train to Paris in...Dresden? i think? the lady gave us a train that was not listed in our Eurail timetable, and it went to Augsburg, which was pretty much on the way back to Munich, whereas the trains listed in the timetable went through Frankfurt. So we were traveling for quite some time, like 14 hours or so, maybe more, cuz of that. When we arrived in Augsburg around midnight, we had a 2 hour layover to wait for the train to Paris. We chilled on the floor in the station (cuz it was, again, cold outside), had some Burger King (amazingly it was still open, and the bathrooms there were free)
When it came time to board the train, we found that we were going to be on the Orient Express! We were a little excited cuz Sarah was reading that book (along with another Agatha Christie novel) during our travels. However, as glamourous as it may have sounded back then, the train could've pretty much been from that time period. It was very...dinky. And the train was coming from elsewhere, so people had already claimed 2 seats for themselves to lie down. Even though we had made a reservation, people were sleeping in our seats and we didn't want to bother them. So we were stuck in the smoking section. It was very uncomfortable. I made use of my eyemask and my new jacket to sleep, i used my jacket as my pillow. Sometime in the middle of the night a group came into the car, waking us up, and we had to move because we were in their seats. They were a big enough group to do that, unlike us 3.
They were also speaking a non-European language. It sounded like Tagalog but it wasn't it. So during the rest of the night i sat in 2 seats across from Sarah, and i remember her complaining that it was noisy cuz two of the men in the group were snoring in sequence. After one made some noise some other one would pipe in, and they were loud. She moved to the non-smoking section later in the night, but i'm used to it, thanks to my parents. I woke up later and we were in France. It turns out the group was from Indonesia, and they were speaking Indonesian, but there were some Filipinos in the group. It was funny, the group seemed to be headed by this one Indonesian woman, and she was telling all the men what to do. Good for her.
paris is nice. We arrived around 10 in the morning and got to our hostel, the BVJ Louvre. We couldn't check in yet, so we left our bags and went around the city. We had lunch in an area that reminded me of downtown LA, with the vendors along the street in the garment district. We had sandwiches and ate in front of a random fountain. That's one thing i love about European cities, they have all this cool art all around the city. We decided to get one museum out of the way that day, so we decided to do the Musee d'Orsay. But on the way there we stopped by Saint-Chapelle cuz we stumbled upon it in our wanderings.
Saint Chapelle is pretty impressive. Sarah told us the blue that was used in making the stained glass is very unique. So unique that people do not know how to recreate it, no matter how it has been studied (chemically, etc). It's a very pretty blue, very cobalt blue, very bright. We stayed and appreciated it longer than expected cuz a freak storm blew through. I never really noticed how the stained glass windows tell stories. But it also has a pretty rose window. I have a thing for rose windows. They're so cool.
Afterwards we walked along the river towards the Musee d'Orsay, which was made from a disused train station. It's an interesting layout. I liked it. You could take pictures there! They had Monets, Manets (Olympia), Rodins, Van Goghs, and a painting, which at the time i was agonizing "where have i seen this?!" turns out to be the painting on the cover of my copy of "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde, among others. Laura, still really tired from the night's journey, fell asleep on one of the chairs. I passed by her a number of times. She looked so peaceful. i should've taken a picture! (especially because of what she did to me and sarah later!!!!)
We went back to the hostel to put our stuff in our room, a 4 bed dorm with individual closet space and little cubbyholes. It was nice, except for the fact we were on the freakin 4th floor. (which is really the 5th because the 1st floor in europe is the 2nd floor to us (because the 1st floor to us is the ground floor to them). and no elevator. it sucked.
We had dinner nearby at a restaurant recommended in one of our books, La Fresque. It was relatively inexpensive, being in Paris. Sarah and i enjoyed our meals (i had pork with some red berry sauce that reminded me of one Cambridge formal dinner where we had something with masticated berries? emaciated? i forget the adjective, but it was some berry sauce) and i remember from Iron Chef that the french really use their sauces to accentuate the food, and i must say i liked it. It was the tender part of the pork too, which i particularly liked cuz it wasn't dry at all. Laura didn't like her seafood salad very much. But we had Creme Brulee for dessert, which was damn good. Laura said it made up for her crappy dinner. AND the bread was free. AND it was good.
We didn't know we spent so much time at dinner because we were having such a good time, talking and stuff. We even finished our table wine. So we left when we found out it was getting late to go up the Eiffel Tower, and ended up arriving there around 10:30. We weren't able to go up to the top that night cuz the top floor was closed (or full, i odn't know, but the elevators weren't going up there) so we took pictures and went farther down to get a wider shot. We didn' tknow, but when the hour struck 11, the tower started glittering, all lit up. It was rather pretty, until it kept going. Apparently it does this at night every hour on the hour for 10 minutes. i think 5 minutes would be better. i took a short video clip of it glittering.
So we took the metro back to our place and tried to rest up for our overwhelming day at the Louvre. Laura was really really tired, she kept whining all throughout our time in paris, and we were like, "princess laura," etc etc, hehe. i guess you'd have to be there.
We got to the Louvre pretty early. It's free admission every first sunday of the month. Lucky us! Laura separated from us to see her things, and i hung around with sarah cuz she explains things really well. it's great traveling to art museums with art history majors. I can now see the many differences with all the different Annunciation paintings i've seen, from Italy to London. hehe.
Sarah and i saw the major stuff, i really really loved the Cupid and Psyche statue, it's sooooo romantic. I want someone to love me like that...
the Nike statue was pretty impressive too (but in an odd location, in between stairways, now it's a grand location but sarah and i worried that someone in awe of it may fall down the stairs), lots of paintings, so many, on the way to the Mona Lisa. You could take pictures here too, i was very impressed. We couldn't take pictures in the Uffizi. I did feel bad, however, when i took a picture of leonardo's Virgin on the Rocks and had forgotten to turn off my flash. Laura and Sarah screamed. Laura described a flash as "a stab to the heart" of a painting, and i totally agree with them. I felt so bad.
Overall i was very overwhelemed at the Louvre. So much stuff to see, so little time to appreciate everything in its fullness. After a lunch break we separated again because Sarah and I hadn't seen the Venus de Milo yet, so we went and saw her and the Hammurabi code, and the crown jewels, among other things. While we were waiting to meet up with Laura, some random Egyptian guy came up to Sarah and me in the main pyramid lobby area. We thought he was some museum worker going to scold us for taking a picture, but he started like, fondling Sarah, talking to her in a language we didn't understand, and asked his friend to take a picture of him with me and her. Weird. We were very weirded out and ran to the gift shop, trying to hide. We finally met up with laura and wrote postcards and sent them out at the post office located in the museum, and called home with our phone cards.
Afterwards we went back to the hostel to recover, and eat a little before heading out to Mike's Bike Tour. We were pretty drained, and Laura started whining again about how tired she was and didn't want to do anything but sleep, but we were like, hey, it's paris, we should be living it up and doing things and not letting the time pass, so we headed back to the Eiffel Tower to meet up with the tour group.
I consider the bike tour one of the main highlights of our travels, one of my favorites. It was so awesome. Our tour guide, Charles, was really cool, and we met some cool people in the group as well. It was all in English, so there were Americans, Brits, and Aussies in the group. This one guy talked to us quite a bit, his name is Nate, he was in Europe after getting back from Iraq. He said his parents met at UCI. He talked with me, sarah, and laura pretty equally during the entire tour. He was designated "ass-man" to be in the back of the group to make sure no one was left behind. I was usually the last one in the group (cuz dude, i hadn't ridden a bike in YEARS and my legs would start burning after pedaling constantly for a few minutes) and he'd joke, "come on, naomi, suck it up, you're holding the group back!" or something to that effect.
So the tour consisted of us biking around Paris through the streets. Before we headed out Charles told us that if we stuck together through intersections, we'd be able to go through the intersections even if it said don't walk or whatever, and if not, just have the mentality, "Own the Road!" (come to think of it, it is the mentality one must have in Italy too, cuz cars there are crazy. Hehe, in Rome, we'd sandwich ourselves so that other people were between us and the oncoming cars, and i was like, hehe, When in Rome!)
We went through Saint Germaine and the Latin Quarter over to Notre Dame. We were biking for so long i was wondering, where's the tour part of the tour? I wanted to take all these pictures as we passed by picturesque places, but we were moving, so i missed a LOT of opportunities throughout the night. (Oh yeah, it was an evening/night tour so it started as the sun was setting and ended later that night). So the first stop was Notre Dame and Charles finally stopped and gave some info. Hehe, but Sarah was in our group, so she was piping in with random art history stuff every once in a while, and she'd answer some of his questions.
One particularly funny moment was when he was telling us about cleaning up the outside of the cathedral, and he asked us what they used to clean it up, and he said, "think Austin Powers." and Laura suggests, "Did they use coffee??" The answer was Lasers.
We biked some more, i was really enjoying it, and we had overpriced ice cream somehwere else in the city. It was damn good ice cream, my melon scoop reminded me of my papaya gelaton in Florence, but i wouldn't have paid for it if we passed by it by ourselve on the street. We biked some more and went to the outside of Saint Chappelle, and Sarah did more talking, hehe. Charles told pretty good stories. One that i remember was that when he was telling the info that the crown of thorns was at Saint Chappelle for a time, he asked if anyone didn't know what the crown of thorns was to the crowd. now, the crown was from Utah, so presumably they were mormon and knew it. However, this little boy in the group raised his hand cuz he didn't know what it was, and his mother slapped him upside the head. Charles didn't know what to do, he was a little dumbfounded. The boy was like, "but mom i don't know--" and she replied, "We'll talk about it later!"
Oh yeah, we also went to the Louvre, where a flutist gave us a small concert. It was really cool as we were heading there, we went into one of the courtyards and circled the fountain there for a number of laps...that was way fun. I didn't even know we were at the Louvre until i saw the pyramids in the other courtyard. It was very very pretty
More biking, i was really lagging behind at this point, i wanted to take night pictures, but my camera takes blurry pictures at night unless i'm really really still...we crossed the Champs-Elysses and i could've gotten this awesome shot of the Arc de Triomphe, but nooo...had to keep going. We biked to a dock and took a boat cruise down the Seine, and had wine to boot. That was really nice, it was cool just chillin on the top of the boat, talking to people. I sat next to this one lady who was a hairdresser for Hollywood, and she worked on some shows that i'd heard of, which was cool. Charles mingled around the group pretty well. He came up to me and said i had a beautiful smile =) and i told him Sean Astin told me the same thing at Comic Con, and then he thought i was super cool cuz i went to Comic Con. It was cool talking to everyone about Europe, about places they've been and the places we'd visited. And i finished my two glasses of wine. So i was happy talkative throughout most of the boat ride. We couldn't believe he was younger than us (he was 21!) Well he could've been our age, hehe. But it was weird. I felt so old. He majored in something random, i think it was Forestry, but he had a history background too, so the tour guide thing kinda made sense. He reminded me a little of Ryan from Hoag Hospital.
After the boat ride we still had to bike back to the tour office. I was still a little tipsy! So i was a little wobbly at first. Hehe, when we got back on our bikes we had to bike up a hill back to the main street, and Charles said it would be a more slow paced, leisurely bike ride back because of the wine, but that stupid hill. So when we first started biking back we yelled "charge!" to go up the hill and i yelled back, "i thought this was supposed to be easy!" (yeah, i was still under the influence)
So we returned our bikes and then proceeded to hang out with Charles, Nate, and some others to get crepes and something to eat. I thought crepes were more of a dessert thing, but Charles had one that tuna and cheese or something like that in his. Interesting. We all hung out there pretty late, we also met this one lady who worked as a computer animator and worked on Reboot (which was way cool), so we left to catch the metro back, but when we transferred trains at the Arc de Triomphe to get back to the Louvre, the metro had stopped running. So we went outside, took a couple of pictures, and then took a cab back to the hostel.
The cab took us down the Champs-Elyssees so we got to pass by the posh restaurants and shops. I wonder what it's like when the Tour de France is going on? That'd be way cool to see. The driver was speaking french throughout the ride back, and we were staring at each other, thinking, is he talking to us? Turns out he was talking to someone through a headpiece for a while. After he hung up, he tried to start conversation with us, and he said i spoke french very well for not really knowing it. I consider it that i can do the accent pretty well if i hear it and practice it enough (like i can do a british accent fairly well depending on the words i use, and i can do it when i speak spanish, and some french).
So that was was of our better days...no rain, our clothes were dry when we got back to the hostel, and we had a fun filled, eventful day.
[mike's bike tour = awesome, thanks so much john for recommending it
gonna do notre dame and ride the eiffel tower tomorrow and get escargot]
uhhh
(edited 27 sept)
The next day we slept in cuz we hadn't really been able to sleep in thus far. I woke up around 10:30 but we didn't end up leaving the room till about 12 or 12:30 cuz laura and sarah slept in more than i did. We took the metro to the castle and i could see awesome views as we were walking up the hill to the back entrance of the castle. We got a ticket to see most of the castle sights (cuz it was cheap too, since we had our student cards)
We first went through Golden Lane, which was a small street within the castle walls will little shops, very cute. One place was suuuuch a guy thing, they had old knight wear and even had chain mail and weapons for sale! We then went through one of the chapels, i think, and then the royal palace. We saw castle guards walking around, they reminded me of the Scottish guards i saw at Edinburgh castle. It didn't really seem like a castle, though...more like an enclosed town.
St. Vitus' cathdral was the main attraction at the castle, that was nice too, there was a Mucha stained glass window. Sarah and i had gotten separated from Laura at the royal palace cuz we decided to explore the basement, which wasn't much. Most of the descriptions were in Czech, so we didn't really know what everything was, which kinda sucked, cuz i felt so lost without some kind of guide. Our books weren't all that helpful when it came to details and stories.
A walk up the tower was included in our package, so we started heading up. There was a warning before the stairs that it was 287 steps. Man those were a lot of steps. We had to take a break every once in a while and once we got to the top, we sat on the benches for a few minutes before going out and enjoying the view. We ran into laura there, who'd gone up the tower ahead of us when we got separated. It really is a nice city, Prague. I like it a lot.
After walking down those 287 steps, we walked around the other side of the castle, looking for a place to eat. We think we got ripped off again at this small cafe, but whatever, we were hungry. We walked around the Royal Gardens back to Mala Strana, which was nice. Very green, very quaint. The thing was, after seeing things in Italy, and Salzburg, sometimes we weren't as impressed with what we were seeing after a while. So the gardens were nice, natury, not a lot of tourists
Tried walking thru the jewish quarter but the synagogues were closed, but that's okay. Laura got her mom a garnet necklace. I was considering getting something too, but decided against it.
dinner....forgot what we had. But afterwards (and more shopping) we decided to finally do it. We went into a bar and laura asked for an absinthe shot. I asked for an absinthe + sprite. These brits/austrailans next to us saw laura's shot and gave her tips on what to do, but it didn't go like it normally should.
[absinthe! hehe, laura had a quasi shot after burning most of it off (long story), i had an absinthe+ sprite, tasted like cough syrup]
So you're supposed to dip the spoon into the absinthe and put the sugar on it (or something like that), and then light the bottom of the spoon and let the sugar caramelize from the heat. Then you drop the liquid sugar into the absinthe and down it. however, i don't know what happened, but laura didn't drop the sugar into the shot, she dropped the whole spoon, so the shot caught fire. We were staring at it, not knowing what to do, and the people next to us were pretty fascinated too. So we stared at it for a while until laura finally blew out the fire, which probably burned away all the alcohol in it. So she downed the shot and felt fine. She could've had another one but didn't ask. I finished mine eventually. It really tasted like bad cough syrup. Afterwards, we passed by the internet cafe again really quickly so i could pay my electric bill, and laura and sarah finished up my phone card by calling inah.
When we left the next morning, we were hoping the cute reception guy was working again, but it was some random lady. We were bummed. We wanted to tell him to flirt with the girls more, he had suuuuch a sexy accent.
That morning we had some time to kill before our train left, so we tried to get something to eat at the vendors outside the station. We thought we were doing okay with a hot dog or hamburger until Sarah saw that the lady was pretty much deep frying the meat in some kind of fryer.
So we took the train out of the Czech Republic and reentered Germany (dude, that country is huge) on the way to Dresden to Leipzig. At the border, our passports got checked quite a bit, but not as much as this one couple in our car. They were this goth-punky looking couple, clad in black leather. The guy had candy apple red hair, long, and kinda nappy, the girl had a nose ring among other piercings, etc etc. Sarah dubbed them "our favorite couple from Leipzig." They got checked like 5 times, and they were asked to empty their pockets and bags to the german border police. i think they even had some pot. After they left, they were talking to each other and wondering, "why did they keep checking us?!?!" and the girl was like, "they're so paranoid" etc. Dude, if we looked like them, we'd've been searched that many times too! But we just looked like dumb Americans so the border patrol looked at us and just checked our passports really quickly.
The town was pretty nice. We stayed at Hostel Sleepy Lion, which was recommended in all 3 of our tour books. The girl at the reception told us of places to go to, she was really cool, she was all "this area's more posh, this is more alternative," etc, which we really liked. We had 3 beds in a 8 bed dorm, i think one guy was sleeping when we dropped off our bags and find some dinner. Or lunch? i forget when we arrived. I think sometime in the afternoon. We walked around the "posh" area of town, filled with shops and stores. H & M! i was happy. We had dinner at McDonald's i think, around that area, and walked around a lot. We did'nt really know what there was to see in Leipzig (it was one of our random "composer cities" (Bach for this one) on the way to the bigger cities), so we took the reception girl's advice and headed towards the "sud" (south) of town for the "more alternative" crowd. We did'nt really see much, things were closed, some cafes were still open, and she had recommended this club to us. We eventually found the club, but it was still early (9:30 or so) so we went to a nearby cafe and had drinks there. Laura and i had specialty drinks. I think i had something with watermelon in it, but i think the drinks were worth the money, they were frickin huge!
So we went to the club afterwards, Ilses Erika, and just chilled there and people watched. European clubs are so much funner than US clubs because everyone's usually happy peppy all out for a good time, not freak me baby let's have dry sex dancing in the US. Sex crazed freaks i tell you! That's one thing i missed about Cambridge.
We ended up taking a cab back, i think, cuz we JUST missed the last tram heading north cuz we couldn't figure out how to get tickets at the station.
The next morning we walked around Bach's hometown some more, there was also stuff on Goethe here as well. We went to the Bach museum, that was the most touristy thing we did here. We shopped the rest of the time and guess who we saw walking down the streets of Leipzig! Our favorite couple from the train. It was funny. Before heading to the train station we got some postcars, and Laura was all, I didn't know there was all this stuff in Leipzig! Well, our tour books only dedicated like a page to the city (oddly one of our books had a map, the other 2 didn't), so we couldn't really know, but ohwell. It was nice to chill and shop. I got another jacket at H & M. I was debating so much whether or not to get it, but i just said, fuck it, i'm gonna regret it if i don't get it, no matter how much limited space i have, so i shelled out the 30 euro for it.
So we took a train to Augsburg to connect with a train heading to Paris. There were no couchettes available on the train to Paris, so we would just be in the seats overnight. It was pretty bad. The weird thing was, when we asked for a train to Paris in...Dresden? i think? the lady gave us a train that was not listed in our Eurail timetable, and it went to Augsburg, which was pretty much on the way back to Munich, whereas the trains listed in the timetable went through Frankfurt. So we were traveling for quite some time, like 14 hours or so, maybe more, cuz of that. When we arrived in Augsburg around midnight, we had a 2 hour layover to wait for the train to Paris. We chilled on the floor in the station (cuz it was, again, cold outside), had some Burger King (amazingly it was still open, and the bathrooms there were free)
When it came time to board the train, we found that we were going to be on the Orient Express! We were a little excited cuz Sarah was reading that book (along with another Agatha Christie novel) during our travels. However, as glamourous as it may have sounded back then, the train could've pretty much been from that time period. It was very...dinky. And the train was coming from elsewhere, so people had already claimed 2 seats for themselves to lie down. Even though we had made a reservation, people were sleeping in our seats and we didn't want to bother them. So we were stuck in the smoking section. It was very uncomfortable. I made use of my eyemask and my new jacket to sleep, i used my jacket as my pillow. Sometime in the middle of the night a group came into the car, waking us up, and we had to move because we were in their seats. They were a big enough group to do that, unlike us 3.
They were also speaking a non-European language. It sounded like Tagalog but it wasn't it. So during the rest of the night i sat in 2 seats across from Sarah, and i remember her complaining that it was noisy cuz two of the men in the group were snoring in sequence. After one made some noise some other one would pipe in, and they were loud. She moved to the non-smoking section later in the night, but i'm used to it, thanks to my parents. I woke up later and we were in France. It turns out the group was from Indonesia, and they were speaking Indonesian, but there were some Filipinos in the group. It was funny, the group seemed to be headed by this one Indonesian woman, and she was telling all the men what to do. Good for her.
paris is nice. We arrived around 10 in the morning and got to our hostel, the BVJ Louvre. We couldn't check in yet, so we left our bags and went around the city. We had lunch in an area that reminded me of downtown LA, with the vendors along the street in the garment district. We had sandwiches and ate in front of a random fountain. That's one thing i love about European cities, they have all this cool art all around the city. We decided to get one museum out of the way that day, so we decided to do the Musee d'Orsay. But on the way there we stopped by Saint-Chapelle cuz we stumbled upon it in our wanderings.
Saint Chapelle is pretty impressive. Sarah told us the blue that was used in making the stained glass is very unique. So unique that people do not know how to recreate it, no matter how it has been studied (chemically, etc). It's a very pretty blue, very cobalt blue, very bright. We stayed and appreciated it longer than expected cuz a freak storm blew through. I never really noticed how the stained glass windows tell stories. But it also has a pretty rose window. I have a thing for rose windows. They're so cool.
Afterwards we walked along the river towards the Musee d'Orsay, which was made from a disused train station. It's an interesting layout. I liked it. You could take pictures there! They had Monets, Manets (Olympia), Rodins, Van Goghs, and a painting, which at the time i was agonizing "where have i seen this?!" turns out to be the painting on the cover of my copy of "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde, among others. Laura, still really tired from the night's journey, fell asleep on one of the chairs. I passed by her a number of times. She looked so peaceful. i should've taken a picture! (especially because of what she did to me and sarah later!!!!)
We went back to the hostel to put our stuff in our room, a 4 bed dorm with individual closet space and little cubbyholes. It was nice, except for the fact we were on the freakin 4th floor. (which is really the 5th because the 1st floor in europe is the 2nd floor to us (because the 1st floor to us is the ground floor to them). and no elevator. it sucked.
We had dinner nearby at a restaurant recommended in one of our books, La Fresque. It was relatively inexpensive, being in Paris. Sarah and i enjoyed our meals (i had pork with some red berry sauce that reminded me of one Cambridge formal dinner where we had something with masticated berries? emaciated? i forget the adjective, but it was some berry sauce) and i remember from Iron Chef that the french really use their sauces to accentuate the food, and i must say i liked it. It was the tender part of the pork too, which i particularly liked cuz it wasn't dry at all. Laura didn't like her seafood salad very much. But we had Creme Brulee for dessert, which was damn good. Laura said it made up for her crappy dinner. AND the bread was free. AND it was good.
We didn't know we spent so much time at dinner because we were having such a good time, talking and stuff. We even finished our table wine. So we left when we found out it was getting late to go up the Eiffel Tower, and ended up arriving there around 10:30. We weren't able to go up to the top that night cuz the top floor was closed (or full, i odn't know, but the elevators weren't going up there) so we took pictures and went farther down to get a wider shot. We didn' tknow, but when the hour struck 11, the tower started glittering, all lit up. It was rather pretty, until it kept going. Apparently it does this at night every hour on the hour for 10 minutes. i think 5 minutes would be better. i took a short video clip of it glittering.
So we took the metro back to our place and tried to rest up for our overwhelming day at the Louvre. Laura was really really tired, she kept whining all throughout our time in paris, and we were like, "princess laura," etc etc, hehe. i guess you'd have to be there.
We got to the Louvre pretty early. It's free admission every first sunday of the month. Lucky us! Laura separated from us to see her things, and i hung around with sarah cuz she explains things really well. it's great traveling to art museums with art history majors. I can now see the many differences with all the different Annunciation paintings i've seen, from Italy to London. hehe.
Sarah and i saw the major stuff, i really really loved the Cupid and Psyche statue, it's sooooo romantic. I want someone to love me like that...
the Nike statue was pretty impressive too (but in an odd location, in between stairways, now it's a grand location but sarah and i worried that someone in awe of it may fall down the stairs), lots of paintings, so many, on the way to the Mona Lisa. You could take pictures here too, i was very impressed. We couldn't take pictures in the Uffizi. I did feel bad, however, when i took a picture of leonardo's Virgin on the Rocks and had forgotten to turn off my flash. Laura and Sarah screamed. Laura described a flash as "a stab to the heart" of a painting, and i totally agree with them. I felt so bad.
Overall i was very overwhelemed at the Louvre. So much stuff to see, so little time to appreciate everything in its fullness. After a lunch break we separated again because Sarah and I hadn't seen the Venus de Milo yet, so we went and saw her and the Hammurabi code, and the crown jewels, among other things. While we were waiting to meet up with Laura, some random Egyptian guy came up to Sarah and me in the main pyramid lobby area. We thought he was some museum worker going to scold us for taking a picture, but he started like, fondling Sarah, talking to her in a language we didn't understand, and asked his friend to take a picture of him with me and her. Weird. We were very weirded out and ran to the gift shop, trying to hide. We finally met up with laura and wrote postcards and sent them out at the post office located in the museum, and called home with our phone cards.
Afterwards we went back to the hostel to recover, and eat a little before heading out to Mike's Bike Tour. We were pretty drained, and Laura started whining again about how tired she was and didn't want to do anything but sleep, but we were like, hey, it's paris, we should be living it up and doing things and not letting the time pass, so we headed back to the Eiffel Tower to meet up with the tour group.
I consider the bike tour one of the main highlights of our travels, one of my favorites. It was so awesome. Our tour guide, Charles, was really cool, and we met some cool people in the group as well. It was all in English, so there were Americans, Brits, and Aussies in the group. This one guy talked to us quite a bit, his name is Nate, he was in Europe after getting back from Iraq. He said his parents met at UCI. He talked with me, sarah, and laura pretty equally during the entire tour. He was designated "ass-man" to be in the back of the group to make sure no one was left behind. I was usually the last one in the group (cuz dude, i hadn't ridden a bike in YEARS and my legs would start burning after pedaling constantly for a few minutes) and he'd joke, "come on, naomi, suck it up, you're holding the group back!" or something to that effect.
So the tour consisted of us biking around Paris through the streets. Before we headed out Charles told us that if we stuck together through intersections, we'd be able to go through the intersections even if it said don't walk or whatever, and if not, just have the mentality, "Own the Road!" (come to think of it, it is the mentality one must have in Italy too, cuz cars there are crazy. Hehe, in Rome, we'd sandwich ourselves so that other people were between us and the oncoming cars, and i was like, hehe, When in Rome!)
We went through Saint Germaine and the Latin Quarter over to Notre Dame. We were biking for so long i was wondering, where's the tour part of the tour? I wanted to take all these pictures as we passed by picturesque places, but we were moving, so i missed a LOT of opportunities throughout the night. (Oh yeah, it was an evening/night tour so it started as the sun was setting and ended later that night). So the first stop was Notre Dame and Charles finally stopped and gave some info. Hehe, but Sarah was in our group, so she was piping in with random art history stuff every once in a while, and she'd answer some of his questions.
One particularly funny moment was when he was telling us about cleaning up the outside of the cathedral, and he asked us what they used to clean it up, and he said, "think Austin Powers." and Laura suggests, "Did they use coffee??" The answer was Lasers.
We biked some more, i was really enjoying it, and we had overpriced ice cream somehwere else in the city. It was damn good ice cream, my melon scoop reminded me of my papaya gelaton in Florence, but i wouldn't have paid for it if we passed by it by ourselve on the street. We biked some more and went to the outside of Saint Chappelle, and Sarah did more talking, hehe. Charles told pretty good stories. One that i remember was that when he was telling the info that the crown of thorns was at Saint Chappelle for a time, he asked if anyone didn't know what the crown of thorns was to the crowd. now, the crown was from Utah, so presumably they were mormon and knew it. However, this little boy in the group raised his hand cuz he didn't know what it was, and his mother slapped him upside the head. Charles didn't know what to do, he was a little dumbfounded. The boy was like, "but mom i don't know--" and she replied, "We'll talk about it later!"
Oh yeah, we also went to the Louvre, where a flutist gave us a small concert. It was really cool as we were heading there, we went into one of the courtyards and circled the fountain there for a number of laps...that was way fun. I didn't even know we were at the Louvre until i saw the pyramids in the other courtyard. It was very very pretty
More biking, i was really lagging behind at this point, i wanted to take night pictures, but my camera takes blurry pictures at night unless i'm really really still...we crossed the Champs-Elysses and i could've gotten this awesome shot of the Arc de Triomphe, but nooo...had to keep going. We biked to a dock and took a boat cruise down the Seine, and had wine to boot. That was really nice, it was cool just chillin on the top of the boat, talking to people. I sat next to this one lady who was a hairdresser for Hollywood, and she worked on some shows that i'd heard of, which was cool. Charles mingled around the group pretty well. He came up to me and said i had a beautiful smile =) and i told him Sean Astin told me the same thing at Comic Con, and then he thought i was super cool cuz i went to Comic Con. It was cool talking to everyone about Europe, about places they've been and the places we'd visited. And i finished my two glasses of wine. So i was happy talkative throughout most of the boat ride. We couldn't believe he was younger than us (he was 21!) Well he could've been our age, hehe. But it was weird. I felt so old. He majored in something random, i think it was Forestry, but he had a history background too, so the tour guide thing kinda made sense. He reminded me a little of Ryan from Hoag Hospital.
After the boat ride we still had to bike back to the tour office. I was still a little tipsy! So i was a little wobbly at first. Hehe, when we got back on our bikes we had to bike up a hill back to the main street, and Charles said it would be a more slow paced, leisurely bike ride back because of the wine, but that stupid hill. So when we first started biking back we yelled "charge!" to go up the hill and i yelled back, "i thought this was supposed to be easy!" (yeah, i was still under the influence)
So we returned our bikes and then proceeded to hang out with Charles, Nate, and some others to get crepes and something to eat. I thought crepes were more of a dessert thing, but Charles had one that tuna and cheese or something like that in his. Interesting. We all hung out there pretty late, we also met this one lady who worked as a computer animator and worked on Reboot (which was way cool), so we left to catch the metro back, but when we transferred trains at the Arc de Triomphe to get back to the Louvre, the metro had stopped running. So we went outside, took a couple of pictures, and then took a cab back to the hostel.
The cab took us down the Champs-Elyssees so we got to pass by the posh restaurants and shops. I wonder what it's like when the Tour de France is going on? That'd be way cool to see. The driver was speaking french throughout the ride back, and we were staring at each other, thinking, is he talking to us? Turns out he was talking to someone through a headpiece for a while. After he hung up, he tried to start conversation with us, and he said i spoke french very well for not really knowing it. I consider it that i can do the accent pretty well if i hear it and practice it enough (like i can do a british accent fairly well depending on the words i use, and i can do it when i speak spanish, and some french).
So that was was of our better days...no rain, our clothes were dry when we got back to the hostel, and we had a fun filled, eventful day.
[mike's bike tour = awesome, thanks so much john for recommending it
gonna do notre dame and ride the eiffel tower tomorrow and get escargot]
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