Paris (Day 1&2)

Dear Loyal Readers,

I’m sorry I haven’t posted for two days, but if you had as little sleep as I have had, you wouldn’t even consider blogging. I flew Sydney to LA, which is thirteen and a half hours. I then got a couple of hours of sleep in an LAX Holiday Inn, then woke up early in the morning and couldn’t fall asleep again. Then I flew five hours from LAX to Charlotte, met up with Kelsey, and then flew eight hours from Charlotte to Paris. Then I walked around all day. We saw the Fontaine St. Michel (St. Michael’s Fountain), the outside of Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower. Then we stopped at a Monoprix (French grocery store) and picked up some brie, a baguette, yogurt and drinks and had a delicious picnic lunch in Parc Andre Citroen. Parc Andre Citroen isn’t at all famous, but it’s near where I used to live in Paris, and I love it because there are very few tourists there. Paris is a lot more crowded in the summer (the lines for the Eiffel Tower stretch for miles) and it’s nice to find someplace that’s quiet and peaceful. It was so quiet and peaceful that Kelsey and I both fell asleep and got a little bit sunburned. After our nap, we saw the Musee d’Orsay, which is an art museum in an old train station. The building is cool, but they’re renovating some of the rooms, which made it very hard to get around. Normally, the way to do the Musee d’Orsay is to take the escalators in the back all the way up to the top and work your way back down, but those escalators don’t seem to be in service right now.
By late afternoon, Kelsey and I were so tired we refused to walk anymore so we took a Bateaux Mouche Seine River Cruise. The gentle motion of the boat lulled us both to sleep. We were seeing some of the most amazing sights of Paris, and we couldn’t keep our eyes open. By the time I crawled into my bed in the hostel Saturday night, I don’t think I would have gotten back out of bed even if the fire alarm had gone off.

At 2am, after about five hours of sleep, I was startled to hear loud voices and realized that the overhead light to our room had been turned on. At 2am! We are staying in an eight bed room, and the beds have little curtains, but still, someone had barged in at 2am and thought it would be a good idea to turn on the lights and talk loudly. I was mortified to discover by their accents that they were American. (travelers like that are the reason everyone hates Americans.) I lay in bed, trying to decide whether I should say something, while Kelsey lay above me wondering the same thing. Finally the lights went back out, and they went to the bathroom to brush their teeth. When they returned to the room they found their beds using their phone lights, but then they began to discuss whether they should turn on the overhead light. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I pulled back my curtain and told them they had better not turn on the overhead light again because it was 2am and we were trying to sleep. They said they had needed the light to find their toothbrushes. I told them to use their phone lights and told them that it was impolite to turn on the lights at 2am in a shared dorm. They started to get snippy with me so I said, “I’m sorry, but I get kind of bitchy when I’ve been rudely awakened in the middle of the night!” (I can’t believe I used bitchy and rudely awakened in the same sentence!) Then I went back to bed. Kelsey says she was trying really hard not to laugh out loud.

After twelve hours of sleep, minus rude awakenings, we woke up and started off our Sunday. Since it was Sunday, I’d decided to make it our church-touring day, so we set a goal of five churches and set off. First we visited the Basilica of St. Denis, in honor of Kelsey’s dad, Dennis, and also because in three months in Paris, I’d never seen the Basilica, despite the fact that nearly every French king is buried there. The tomb sculptures were really cool.

Then we had a picnic lunch of noodles and gelato in the Jardins de Luxembourg, where little kids were actually playing with toy boats in the fountain! I’d heard that this is common in the summer, but I’d never seen it before.

Then we saw the churches of St. Sulpice and St. Germain des Pres. St. Sulpice is huge, but it was being restored the whole time I studied abroad here, so I’d never taken a good picture of the whole church. Sadly, though the restoration mess is gone, someone decided to put a book market on the square in front of the church, blocking my good photo of the façade.

St. Sulpice

St. Germain des Pres is the oldest church in Paris, and parts of it look that way. The inside is very pretty, but there are some ancient crumbling walls on the outside of the church.

Then we saw the mother of all churches, Notre Dame de Paris. There was a line at the door, which drives me crazy as I know there is neither a ticket check nor a bag search at the door. The only reason people line up at the door is that the only entrance is a door which is just wide enough for one or two people to walk through at a time. This slows down the process of getting into the church so much that we waited in line five minutes while all the people in front of us painstakingly made their way into the church.

After Notre Dame, we took the metro to Sacre Coeur. I was worried about finding dinner, since it always seems to be much more expensive around major tourist attractions like Sacre Coeur. However, since I was last here, a Monop’ has been put in right at the base of the hill, within view of the funicular. (A Monop’ , as far as I can tell, is the prepared foods section of a Monoprix, which is a French grocery store chain. Monops are very good for cheap lunches and dinners.

We took the funicular to the top of Montmartre, where there is an amazing view of Paris! We saw Sacre Coeur, which completed our goal of seeing five Parisian churches in one day. We attended one of the latest Sunday Masses of the major churches in Paris, at 10pm in Sacre Coeur. Mass was beautiful, but it is in French. I will warn you that if you ever want to attend this Mass, you may want to bring a cushion or something. The kneelers are plain wood, and they really killed my knees.  

Since we saw both the Basilica of St. Denis and the Basilica of Sacre Coeur at Montmartre, I should give you the story of St. Denis. St. Denis was the first bishop of Paris, who was beheaded for his faith at the top of a large hill. After he was beheaded he stood up, picked up his head and started walking. He walked all the way to the site of the present day Basilica of St. Denis, which is a pretty long walk, even for someone who has a head! The hill where he was killed became known as the mountain of martyrs, or Montmartre. If you look closely at the churches around the city, when there are saints depicted above the doorways, you can often pick out the statue of St. Denis because he’s the one carrying his head in his hands. He’s the third from the left above the left door at Notre Dame, but I think I’ve seen him around other churches as well.