this is a strange place

Is a fairly useful phrase, as is ou est la toilette, neither of which I used in Paris today.

The Paris trip went well. I was a bit nervous about the tubes after yesterday, but they were operating fine, just like they usually are. Reliable (at least mostly) public transportation is very handy.

You actually had to go through a security checkpoint on the Chunnel train, and I got patted down (“random check”) on the way to Paris. Fortunately, my pocketknife did not cause problems there, but more on that later.

We got to Gare du Nord (train station) at 9:30 or so, and walked to Notre Dame. The first sight we saw was the Eiffel Tower, though that was last on our list. Even though it was 2 miles away, it looked huge. We went to Notre Dame first, but didn’t go in. We spent an hour and a half taking pictures. It is a gorgeous building. Absolutely breathtaking. We walked around it one and a half times taking pictures. Just beautiful.

We packed a lunch, which we ate at a park next to Notre Dame. We continued to the Louvre, all the while seeing glimpses of the Eiffel Tower. The Louvre was quite awesome. I did not realize how huge or beautiful the outside was. Another half hour of taking pictures later, we actually went in. It would take weeks to see everything in that place. We were mostly interested in the Venus de Milo, and the Mona Lisa. It took a while to find them, since everything is in French and the layout was confusing. I wasn’t expecting everything to be in French with little or no English. So, we have a lot of pictures of neat things, but have little to no idea what they are. The only glitch was that they had a security checkpoint in the Louvre, and they took my pocketknife, which makes sense because a lot of the artwork is out in the open where someone with a knife could easily slash it. I got a check card for it, and retrieved it on the way out, but just an FYI for anyone going there, leave the pocketknife at home.

Our third and final (or so we thought) stop of the day was at the Eiffel Tower. Again, I was totally amazed. I had no idea how huge this structure is. We didn’t have time to go to the top (next time, and oh yes, there will definitely be a next time) but took a lot of pictures. We got some crepes by the Tower, but we had been looking for the Statue de Liberte, which is the same as the Statue of Liberty, only smaller (made by the same guy, looks the same. It played a large role in the second National Treasure movie). Grace and I thought it was right next to the Eiffel Tower, but it was about a mile away, so we decided to make a fourth stop to see that. It was probably the least impressive thing we saw today, but still kind of neat. That, sadly, brought us to the end of our time in beautiful Paris, we caught a Metro back to Gare du Nord, and I am actually typing this on the train to post when I get home.

Paris is a beautiful city. I thought London was neat, but Paris is just gorgeous. Every time you turn around, or walk a few blocks, there’s another beautiful building to be photographed. A day was not enough time to do it justice. Grace and I are planning on brushing up on our French (well, learning French for me, since I never had it) and coming back someday. That’s the only downside of Paris, is not speaking or reading the language. Grace was a big help since she knew some, but if we were going to spend any amount of time there we need to be much more fluent in the language.

Well, that’s it for today. We’re thinking of going to Birmingham to the Cadbury Chocolate factory tomorrow, then heading over to Wales, mainly just to say that we’ve been to Wales. Maybe see a castle or something. I’ll post again tomorrow. Au revoir.