We1 embarked upon our tour de France on a
Thursday that blended into a Friday at some point over the Atlantic Ocean some
thousands of miles above the water.
Grandma was nice enough to drive our car home from the Cleveland airport
with the gas tank on empty at 4pm. We
felt a bit rushed before we knew that no one was in line for anything at the
airport; we arrived only 1 hour prior to our international flight. We had a layover in Chicago for about an hour
where we had our *last* American meal, Subway.
Then, the fun began.
The interesting thing about our flight is that we would be
flying across 7 time zones in approximately 8 hours. Knowing how comfortable
sleeping on the plane would be, I prepared for the worst: the continuous
day. Airplane food was alright, but the
real highlight was that beer and wine were free. The in-flight movie (“The Vow”) was nothing
spectacular either. We took off during
the evening and arrived in Paris in the morning, hence beginning day 2 of the transit
without really sleeping.
I was upset that when we went through customs they didn’t
even stamp my passport (so I guess I never really went to France then…). We walked around the airport for too long
trying to figure out how to get to the Metro. Once we found it, we ended up
deciding to take a taxi instead.
Watching taxi cabs drive inches from cars on 3 out of 4 sides of the car
is a thrill ride, always guessing which car you may bump into next. Of course, most red lights are optional
apparently, seeing as our driver managed to make it through intersections when
I swear he was clearly in the wrong. Nevertheless,
we made it to Hotel Innova in once piece, receiving our first friendly,
“Bonjour!”
Hotel Innova was located in the middle of Paris, south east of
the Eiffel Tower. We had to take the
“lift” to get to our 7th floor rooms. The first big adventure was attempting to
figure out what to do with the wall sockets to plug in stuff. Naturally, I made the mistake of trying to
use one of the converter attachments to a splitter without any sort of adapter
in between. Upon plugging it in, the
220V blew out a shot of electricity or something and all the lights went
out. I had blown a fuse in the room.
Shamefully, I walked down the 7 flights of stairs to alert the front desk that
I had been a hasty tourist that didn’t read the bullet points about “how to use
the wall socket adapter”.
After the fuse was repaired, we headed out to our first
lunch in France. It was some Café on a
street corner called Café Pasteur. The
main problem that my family realized is that when you respond to people in
French after they greet you, most of the time they will continue to ask you
something else that you weren’t prepared for, leaving most of my family
confused. We attempted to leave because
it looked as though there was nowhere to sit but one English speaking man
walked out and promptly stole tables and chairs from other groups an formed us
a seating right in the sidewalk. We felt
a little out of place. After we were
seated, he pointed out that the main courses all had English translations below
it, but the rest we could just figure out.
Good to know for someone like me who only knew how to say please and
thank you. I decided to be adventurous
and try the raw hamburger meat, Steak Tartare.
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| Steak Tartare - the only hamburger meat eaten raw |
Yes, I am in the future also, but it seemed like a good idea at the
time. If you have never tried it before,
I recommend getting a small taste before committing to the entire meal of
it. My family had a good laugh after
seeing what it actually was. I ate every
last bite but I would never order the dish again. A few other notes that I am convinced about
eating out for my first time in France are below:
- Everyone else seems to order wine with all their meals. Sounds like my kind of country
- In addition, everyone orders “Café Express” or espresso shots after their meal. No matter what. I didn’t see a regular glass of coffee anywhere
- All café tables are meant for two people and no more, so don’t bother trying to squeeze a third person in. It only makes you drop more stuff and look more awkward than you already were.
- Going along with that, people don’t seem to mind sitting veryclose to one another. The close proximity thing is new to me I guess.
- People eat French fries with forks. The only food I thought was really the
definition of a finger food was no longer. Hence, I didn’t dare look like a pig and used my silverware for any food that was presented to me.
- Everyone dresses really nice. I felt like no one
had a hoodie, or any semblance of what I consider comfortable clothing
there. Dress to impress I assume.
… more to come
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| The Louvre Museum |
After lunch, we spent a little bit of time being confused on
how to purchase a Metro pass. We thought
it would be a good day to go to the Musѐe du Louvre since it was raining
pretty hard. We spent about 15 minutes trying to get information since the automatic
kiosk wouldn’t work. At this point I walked outside to find that it had stopped
raining and that we should just walk outside and explore instead. We continued south into Paris until we found L'Hôtel National des Invalides
where the double-decker bus tours that ran though Paris along the major
monuments/statues/buildings that we wanted to see anyways. We got on that bus which was pretty unique
experience to me, even as a “veteran” tourist. Before, I was convinced that
taxi drivers were insane but after riding on some of those buses, I am
convinced that some bus drivers are above all logical traffic laws.
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| Bus ride with the family |
We saw a bunch of different tourist places on our trip. We
drove by the École
Militaire and the Luxor Obelisk.
We decided to get off the bus at the Tuileries Garden where Mom was able
to find the first place that charge you €0,50 to use the bathroom. However, the bathrooms were spotless. We took the tourist around the Grand Bassin
Octagonal, a fountain in the middle of the garden. I was not sure what was so great about it;
there were about 50 people sitting around it in lawn chairs as if something was
going to happen.
Getting back on the bus wasn’t as easy the second time,
mostly because it started raining and no one would get off the bus. Instead of getting back on the bus, we
decided to traverse over to L'église de la Madeleine, a massive Roman Catholic church close by. We went inside and took a few pictures to
wait out the rain so that we would have a better shot at getting on the next
bus when it wasn’t raining.
Once we got back on the bus, everything became a blur because I started passing out
sitting up (running on no hours of sleep was finally catching up to us). Somehow I woke up to us passing through an
archway into the Musѐe du Louvre where we got off to see if
we could get in for free since we didn’t think it would be worth it to drag 5
sleepless beings into a quiet museum where they may just pass out at any
moment. Unfortunately, no free museum
since it was open until 9:30pm, not the original 6:00pm we had thought2.
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| Notre Dame |
Next stop on the bus tour was Notre Dame, the famous church
from that Disney cartoon we used to watch.
Inside we found a bunch of people lighting candles and taking pictures
(without flash of course). Dad decided
to light a candle for Grandpa. The place
was massive and just as we were walking in, they started a procession to begin
their Friday evening Mass. After not
understanding anything they were saying, we left to get back on the tour bus to
see the symbol of Paris, the Eiffel Tower.
We were too tired at this point to actually go and see the
tower, but we rode on the bus around it a few times it seemed. We figured we would check it out another time
when we had more energy. On our way back
to the room, we spotted a café that looked similar to the one in “Inception”
the movie so we decided to take a picture and compare later. Once back at the hotel, everyone who hit the
pillow passed out immediately. Two
continuous days sounds not so bad at first, but at the end of it, you can
barely stay awake. Needless to say, we
all slept soundly on our messed up sleep schedule, hoping that tomorrow will
give us some energy to make it through the day.
1For the
duration of this blog, everytime I say “we” I mean my parents, my brothers Nick
and Lucas, and me. I refuse to spell that out throughout the post.
2We would find out later
that the only time the museum was free was the first Sunday of the month as
well as anyone under 18 – so remember that if you plan on going.
