I believe I left off just before Paris: on Tuesday morning we (my program plus Earl and Anne, who is Earl's right-hand-lady) took the train from Geneva through the beautiful French countryside to Paris's Gare de Lyon. My first 20 minutes in Paris could have gone better. A little background: I am not such a huge fan of traveling in groups- particularly when the group consists of 20-something American college students (who are living up to the loud and obnoxious stereotype) being herded by a small European man with pit stains to beat the band. Often when we travel as this sort of group I play a little game with myself during which I devote all my energy to acting as if I am not a member of said group. Sometimes one of my friends notices what I'm doing and calls me out, but on occasion I am so successful that other "solo" travelers/locals will share an exasperated look with me we'll shake our heads disapprovingly at the American group. Victory! So on this particular day that we arrived in Paris my little game backfired. Here's how: the game requires that I keep at least a small distance from the group, which I was doing when we moved from the train to the Metro to go check into our hotel. We arrived at the subway (car? train? what do you call those things?) after it had already been sitting there a minute and thus had to rush to make it on. As it was, I was behind everyone else and was last to make it up to the doors. I pushed my little roll-y bag ahead of my onto the car/train thingy and attempted to follow it in but was clamped on by the doors! After two attempts of trying to pry the doors open and hop in an angry beeping commenced and the metro began to move!! Panic ensued when I realized that I wasn't getting on the metro and my bag wasn't getting off! Suddenly I was more than happy to be a part of the group of Americans who were already on the metro. And yes, I felt guilty about the game. Once several people motioned to me through the glass that they would take care of my bag my concern turned to where I was actually supposed to go. That's the other problem with traveling in groups- autonomy is zero as you are expected to simply follow the leader (Earl) like sheep. Thus, I had no clue where exactly everyone was going, much less how to get there. And there was no cell reception in the metro. GREAT. After a quick evaluation of the situation I decided that the smartest thing to do would be to get to the hotel. Magically, I produced the hotel's address out of the deep dark recesses of my purse and (again, magically) managed to figure out exactly which metro lines/stops would get me there. So, 25 minutes and 3 metro lines later I arrived at the stop I believed to be near the hotel. Just as I was about to start traversing the streets, my entire group (plus Earl) emerged from the metro stop across the street! (In case you missed the main point here, I'll tell you: I BEAT them!) So, disaster averted and confidence raised.
The hotel itself was one of the more... eclectic... places I've ever stayed. Each room/hallway had a different pastel color painted on the lower half of the walls and there were giant, hand-painted (read: sloppy) flowers on each door. The carpets were fake grass- the kind they have at putt-putt courses that is made of plastic and crunches a bit when you walk on it. Love it. Still, having a shower with a nozzle that I didn't have to hold myself was luxury. An hour or so later I was met outside the hotel by... NICOLE!! So after a reunion filled with squeezing the air out of each other coupled with loud, obnoxious American squeals, my Parisian goddess of a friend and I enjoyed a loverly lunch of Croque Monsieurs and French wine, followed by a good old fashioned tour of Paris. Unfortunately the tour came second to catching up on each other's abroad experiences, etc. so I guess I'll just have to go back to Paris. Bummer, I know. Eventually we made our way back to Nicole's apartment, stopping at a precious French boulangerie to pick up a baguette and raspberry tarts for dessert. Life is SO HARD in Paris. At the apartment (which was perfectly Parisian, I might add) we cooked dinner and I found a playlist on Nicole's iPod called "jessi would approve." YES. For those of you who don't know Nicole or Jessi or Foxcroft at all don't worry about it, but Nicole and I had a super-nostalgic 35 minutes listening to "Holy Water" by Big & Rich, "Gin and Juice," etc. etc. Thank you, Jessi. So we ate and we talked and we snuggled until I was worried that public transportation would stop for the night and headed back to my trippy hotel.
Day #2 in Paris can be characterized by two things: 1. the Louvre, and 2. the most epic dinner of my life. We had an unmemorable briefing in the morning, and then three of my good SIT friends and I set out for the Louvre. After a LOT of walking and getting lost and trying to orient ourselves using the Seine (with only partial success) we made it there and got in line for tickets. While in line, we heard someone ask "Where are you from?" in a blatantly American accent. Its funny, after weeks and weeks of hearing nothing but French spoken around you, its a bit jarring to hear English come out of someone's mouth when you're not expecting it! The culprit in this case was one of three semi-awkward guys in their mid-20s who were a bit ahead of us in line. We exchanged pleasantries: they're from Cincinnati, they work for an airline loading bags onto planes, and one of their job perks is cheap travel so they decided to come to Paris. Ok, we're done. Or so we thought. After they had purchased their tickets and we were still in the line there was a pregnant pause before the most outgoing of the three ventured back over and asked if we would like to walk around the museum with them. With absolutely no clue how to gracefully decline, we said sure and were thus trailed by these guys for our entire breeze-through of the Louvre. Still, we managed to have some fun. :) I was able to see my two favorite statues of all time: 1) Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss by Antonio Canova, and 2) Winged Victory of Samothrace (a.k.a. Nike of Samothrace). Look them up- they're incredible. The other highlight of our Louvre (which, in case you weren't aware, was once a royal palace) visit was that Kara and I decided to pretend that we were maidens of old, running down the halls to escape being beheaded by our evil husband/King, gasping for breath as our lungs were restricted by our awfully tight corsets. SO FUN, right?! It did draw some looks...
Fast forward several hours, and six of us were back at the hotel and all glammed up to find a cute French restaurant and then enjoy a night on the town. Sidenote: one of our favorite discoveries about Paris is the existence of "menus." For those of you who are unaware: in French, menu is "carte," and the French word "menu" means a fix-priced meal that includes appetizer/salad, entree, and dessert. And in general, the menu is cheaper than if you were to order the same things "à la carte." So anyway, we left the hotel and stopped at every restaurant we passed in our meanderings to evaluate their menu. Nothing was really striking our fancy- they were either too expensive, too limited, already full, or not quite adorable enough. Just as we were about to turn around and settle on one of our previous rejects, we spotted it. Seriously, the cutest place ever. It was tucked into a corner, through an ivy gate, and the building itself was an old windmill. We were sold before we even looked at the menu. In all honesty, the place was a wee bit outside of our price range. And if anyone had suggested such a place from the get-go, nobody would have agreed. It was just one of those things- we were all game, and it couldn't have happened any other way. In short, it was the most delicious food I've ever eaten, enjoyed happily with great wine (albeit the cheapest on the wine list) and good friends. The original plan was to go out after dinner, but dinner ended at 23h00 (11pm) and we opted to buy a bottle of wine, head back to the hotel, and continue to enjoy each others company in a more relaxed setting.
Paris Day Three started with yet another briefing on Alzheimers, followed by a "group surprise" arranged by Earl, which turned out to be a boat tour down the Seine. It was wonderful (if freezing) to see all of the major Paris landmarks/attractions from the river! Afterwards I told Nicole that I would meet her for dinner at Place de la Concorde. I chose to walk instead of taking the Metro there after having grossly underestimated the overall distance between Point A and Point B. Over an hour and a half later (and I'm 45 minutes late) I caught up with Nicole and we found a cute restaurant in the Latin Quarter to settle into for some fondue! We had a fabulous dinner together, but then she had to head back to finish up some homework and I met up with friends to try out the Paris nightlife. One of my good friends' boyfriend is studying abroad in Paris and there was a club (called Madeleine or something, I think) that he had been dying to go to but hadn't been able to as a guy. Thus, when his girlfriend arrived in town with 19 other girls he hatched a plan: if he were to arrive at the aforementioned club with 20 girls in tow, they'd have to let him in! Eventually the two guys on my program caught wind of the plan, so final numbers were 3 guys and 20 girls. I found it utterly ridiculous that Tim (the boyfriend) thought that it was really necessary for the males to be so outnumbered, but sure enough the club's bouncers would not let any of our three guys in! This was too much for me. I had already found the entire situation absurd, and I may or may not have already had a couple of drinks, so I marched up and told the head bouncer (in French) exactly how stupid he was for denying entry to those boys, because if they didn't go in, we (the 20 girls) weren't going in. So THERE. (Oh yeah, I told him alright). After much head shaking and counting exactly how many girls were present, he acquiesced and let us all in, although the boys had to pay 20 euro. C'est la vie, apparently. The club itself was definitely a new experience! The preference reserved for ladies upon entry continued into the club itself where champagne was free if you are Y-chromosome free. The most memorable aspect of the club, however, was the breakdancing. All over the dance floor were young-ish guys dancing like I have NEVER seen before. It was incredible! What was funny was that apart from our 3 gentlemen every male in the place was either a young ridiculous dancer or over the age of 40 and sporting copious amounts of hair gel. Sweet.
Friday morning my alarm went off at 5:30am- just the beginning of my introduction to Ryanair, the cheapest way to fly in Europe. After an hour on the Paris Metro we made it to the bus stop for an 1:15 minute bus ride to Paris Bauvais, the Ryanair airport that is in the middle of NOWHERE. We caught our 9:05 flight (which was 1.5 hours long) to Barcelona's Ryanair airport, at which point we took a 1.5 hour long bus ride to the bus stop in the city. At this point it is almost 2pm. Whew. At that point we'd had it with sitting, so we decided to walk 20 some blocks to our hostel, stopping for lunch along the way. Finally we made it to the hostel(s). 5 of us were on the trip, but when we booked everything it was difficult to find a hostel that could accommodate all 5 of us for two nights. So we split up. We arrived at the other hostel first, where 3 of my friends were staying. It was precious. Called Rambla's House, it was so charming and clean and friendly! After Paige, Annie and Liz got settled in I set out with this girl named Hiral to find our hostel, which was 2 blocks down the street. I nearly laughed out loud when we walked inside- at least our time in Barcelona would be an adventure! The "front desk" was on the ground floor and comprised of a 6 foot tall white picket fence (yes, you read correctly) enclosure in the corner of a room that looked like it could be the janitorial closet of a warehouse. Two Spanish boys- I'd guess that they were 14 or 15- were sitting smoking in the little white picket fence area and when we entered they stopped talking to each other and started hooting at us. Ignoring this, I walked over and, scrapping up what (very) little Spanish I could remember, asked where _____ Hostel is (can't remember the name- must have blocked it out). Suddenly they put their business faces on and after looking at our confirmation materials they gave us a key and sheets for the beds (that had dinosaurs on them) and pointed to a rickety metal spiral staircase. With some trepidation I made it up to the 2nd floor (3rd by American measurements) and opened the door. Again, I almost laughed. There was a younger Spanish kid (I'm guessing 10 or 11) mopping (and by mopping I mean spreading brownish black water across a yellowish brown linoleum floor)- aren't there child labor laws in Spain?! Nobody else was in our room when we arrived (it was an 8 person room) so we made our beds, shoved our bags under our bunkbed so that there was enough space to walk (due to the size of the room, not the size of our bags, I promise) and headed out to explore Barcelona! First impressions (pre-Gaudi, even): SUCH a beautiful city! Las Ramblas, the main boulevard (which is almost exclusively pedestrian), was buzzing with people and after some walking Paige and I found a massive street market! Stall upon stall of flowers, pets (including birds, bunnies, mice, and many other critters), lined the whole area, and mimes of every possible variety (we're talking Cinderella, bat/dragon hybrid, werewolf, classic mime, etc.) were sprinkled along the way. The grand finale was The Market. Hands down, my favorite place in the city. The Market is utter sensory overload: a maze of pathways guiding you between fruit, vegetable, meat, fish, chocolate, and spice vendors. The colors and smells are intoxicating and I fluctuated frequently between morbid curiosity (skinned cat carcasses, extremely large fish heads, piglet feet, etc.) to uncontrollable mouth watering (incredible fruit stands with fresh squeezed juices and exotic chocolates and other candies). I sampled about 3 different varieties of juice (kiwi-coconut, raspberry-grapefruit, and passionfruit-banana I believe) and bought 4 euro worth of the biggest, juiciest, most ridiculously delicious strawberries I've ever seen/eaten in my life. Heaven. Nearly three hours later Paige and I emerged, fingers sticky with fruit juice but blissfully happy.
That night after a yummy tapas dinner (con sangria) and some sampling of Barcelona nightlife I tumbled into bed and fell asleep immediately. Best guess is that it was around 3:30am, and I remember that most of the other beds in the room were filled with sleeping people. Some unidentifiable amount of time later I think that I tried to roll over in my sleep but my path was obstructed, causing me to enter semi-consciousness. The first thing I noticed was a hairy arm draped across my waist. Panic followed. I sprung up, hitting my head on the top bunk, and forgetting any language barrier yelled at this guy demanding to know what on earth he was doing in my bed! He reeked of alcohol but had been jarred into "alertness" by my antics. His response was to try to pull me back down into a horizontal position and kiss me, at which point I was nothing less than absolutely livid and grossed-out. I pulled my one arm free, slapped him, and pushed as hard as I could to get him off the bed. As soon as my path was clear I sprang up and flew over to the door, yanked it open, and, not caring who I woke up, informed him that he needed to leave. He did have the decency to look a little bit sheepish as he stumbled out the door.
On Saturday we squeezed as much possible Barcelona tourism into one day as is humanly possible. We visited Casa Milà, Casa Batiló, Sagrada Familia, Parc Güell, and the Barcelona FC Stadium. Casas Milà and Batiló are surrealist, once privately owned homes for which Gaudi was commissioned to design. Sagrada Familia (otherwise known as the largest drip sandcastle I have ever seen) is Gaudi's cathedral, and Parc Güell is his beyond-trippy park place that looks a bit like a cross between Disney's The Jungle Book and the board game Candyland. It even has a house that I had to be within 10 feet of to be convinced that it wasn't made of gingerbread. Its fascinating how extensively Gaudi's work is exhibited in the city! It is all very interesting, but I think that if I was around it for too long I would begin to question my mental state.
Sunday dawned bright and early. Actually it wasn't bright because there was no dawn at 2:45 am when my alarm went off. Hooray for marathon travel day! I'm sure you can guess how this started: took a cab (no public transportation available at that hour) to the bus station where we got on a bus for 1.5 hours, checked into the airport and waited for our 6:50 am, 1.5 hour flight, arrived at Paris Beauvais, and took another bus for 1 hour and 15 minutes, then took the Paris Metro to the Gare de Lyon where we proceeded to plop ourselves into a cafe and wait for our group train at 12:15 to take us back to Geneva. All said and done I got home at 8:30pm after over 18 hours of traveling by just about every mode of transportation imaginable, minus boat. Exhaustion doesn't quite cover it. LOVE Ryanair. Still, absolutely worth it as the roundtrip flight cost 25 euro and many adventures were had!!
So now you're caught up to February 23rd... next installment to come soon! :) Love to all...
