(This post is from August 31st, 2016. I accidentally deleted the post, but was able to find it again and re-publish. So now it'll just be here, I guess. :)
I’M
HERE!
I’m here
I’m here I’m here, I’m in Paris, I’m HERE!
Okay, so
a ton of stuff happened the first day I was here, which I will do my best to
describe but probably will not be able to do full justice to. The plane ride was
probably my least favorite part of the experience yesterday, for two reasons:
one, because I got a bad migraine partway through and had to spend about a half
hour huddled down with a sleep mask over my eyes and my hands over my ears so
my head didn’t feel like it was going to explode, and two, because it meant
that about nine hours of my day were stolen out from under me.
Yes, I know that that’s how time zones work, but I really
was not prepared for how weird everything would feel. I got a little sleep on
the plane, but not enough that I was able to separate “August 29th
before I got on the plane” from “August 30th when I got off.”
Basically that means that everything from when I woke up on Monday morning
until I went to bed on Tuesday night felt like one really really long day. Needless to say, I was pretty jetlagged, and (dare
I say it?) a tiny bit homesick for my family who is far away. But worry not! I
did not wallow in self pity and exhaustion in my room all afternoon after I got
to the hotel. Instead, I tagged along with a couple kids from my group to do
some exploring! Cue pictures!
(Disclaimer: because the 30th was Serious Jetlag
Day, I neglected to take any pictures of myself, except for two selfies. But
more on that later.)
First of all, the Eiffel Tower was a necessity. It didn’t
hurt that it was about a ten minute walk from our hotel. You can’t see, but
there was a really cute little carousel at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, which
I thought was excellent marketing, as there was a line of about a billion
tourists to get on it.
Speaking of tourist traps: SO MANY random booths and
places to buy things right off the street! There were like five little tents
selling the exact same six choices of scarf, which was pretty funny, and also a
stand with some of the cheapest-looking berets I have ever seen.
Anyway. Next!
Sometimes when you live in Paris, you just get to have
random boxes of absolutely gorgeous flowers
on your balcony. Because awesome.
The water in the Seine was really green, which was cool. I thought it was smaller than it is, also, so that’s a nice surprise. You
can’t see because the lighting got messed up, but the Eiffel Tower is in the
background too.
There were about five of these horsemen lined up at various
points along our walk, and they looked super regal even though I didn’t know
what they were supposed to represent. I hope to learn, though, so I won’t just
be that annoying tourist that takes pictures of places without knowing their
significance!
In the meantime, though, here are some more cute pictures I
took without knowing their significance: Awesome obelisk and super ornate lamp
post, featuring So Many Crazy Drivers:
This awesome Ferris Wheel:
Funny story with this one! As we were walking past it and
into the Tuileries(I think), some people started shouting and all of a sudden
literally hundreds of people started
running in the opposite direction of where we were heading. So we were like UMM
TERRORIST ATTACK?? But no, as it turned out they were just a bunch of teenage
boys who wanted to get on the Ferris Wheel. Go figure.
We were going to go inside Le Musée des Orangeries, but
it was closed on Tuesdays, grr. So we kept on walking (my feet were really
starting to hurt at this point, and I felt like I was floating because of jet
lag, but I was not going to be a wimp and
turn back, darnit,) and found ourselves at the Louvre!
Check out those gardens! Tres
magnifique.
What was less magnifique,
though, was the sunbathers. See them in the right corner, by the fountains?
There were some young kids, some twenty-somethings hanging out on folding
chairs—but there were also at least five Old Men without their shirts on. One
of them had his pants pulled down a little—not like all the way, but enough
that most of his underwear was visible. Ew.
Oh, gosh, but then. But then. There was an old man
sunbathing. And I didn’t look at him all the way. But then I did, and the only
reason I didn’t vomit and then die was that I was still pretty out of it
because of jet lag.
Dad. He was wearing a speedo.
Oh my gosh, it was so horrific. Just no.
Anyway, we moved beyond that area and went over by the
pyramids at the Louvre, and were heckled by not one, not two, but three different
street vendors trying to sell selfie sticks and metal figurines of the Eiffel
Tower. One of the vendors caught the hand of one of the guys in our group and
started to weave a bracelet for him, and when the guy said he didn’t want it
the vendor said, “I make it for your girlfriends! Hey sexy ladies!”
And since I had my hair in a bun and was wearing a girl’s
camp t-shirt and decidedly not looking sexy, I couldn’t help but laugh.
Anyway, here’s another view of that Ferris wheel from far
away, featuring Pigeon Man—this guy who has trained a bunch of pigeons to
follow him and sit on people’s arms and stuff. It was pretty cool, until one of
the pigeons bit this little kid’s ear hecka hard and he started screaming. So
no homicidal squirrels yet, but I guess there were homicidal pigeons?
The Louvre is way, way, way, waaaaay bigger than I thought. Embarrassing
side note: When I was really little, I thought the Louvre was just a fancy name
for the pyramid thing, because that was the only part anybody ever took pictures
of. It took me until age fifteen to realize that the fancy old buildings around
it were part of the Louvre too. But, no joke—the building just goes on and on
for probably a quarter mile on both sides, because it’s this fancy palace, and
oh my gosh I can’t wait to go inside
it.
There’s not much to tell after that; we went to a pizza
place for dinner and I had pasta with salmon, only the salmon was surprisingly super
salty. Try saying that five times
fast. Then we went back to the hotel, and later on that night I went up to the
eighth floor of the hotel and watched the Eiffel Tower’s lights sparkle and
showed my mom and dad! No pictures of that this time, because I was using my
phone to video call my parents.
Now, as I said, I only took two pictures with me in them on
my first day in Paris because I had jetlag. But another reason why is because I
don’t know how to take a selfie. Exhibit A:
I look really sad, but I’m not: I smiled at the camera but
looked down before the picture itself actually took and, well, that happened.
Here’s the other picture of me making an awkward pufferfish face to close out the
day:
Well, that’s pretty much everything that happened to me on
my first day! I was pretty exhausted, and didn’t get to write this up until the
next day, but boy howdy am I excited to be here! :D
Okay, I can’t resist. Today you guys get to hear the theme
from the 1995 movie Sabrina, composed
by John Williams. It’s an American movie, but
the heroine goes to live in Paris, so it counts, okay? Okay.
Hope your day is fabulous and sparkly! Tune in next time for
more adventures, (plenty more pictures with me in them, Mom,) and possibly even
more homicidal animals! À bientôt!
No comments:
Post a Comment