Paris

Went to Paris yesterday! It's weird because it's only a 2 and a half hour train ride there. You really realize how the whole of Europe is smaller than the whole of the United States. I couldn't really tell you what it's like to pass through the channel tunnel though, because I fell asleep thru it both times.


I'm going to make a comparison here though... the Eurostar is crap compared to Japan's Shinkansen trains. It goes slower, isn't as clean, and the seats are arranged kinda funny. But then again.. can you really compare a lot of what we do to what the Japanese have created? My trip was so awkward - they arrange the back half the seats in one car facing forward, and the front half of the seats face the back. So you have two rows of seats in the middle of the car that face each other. Guess who got stuck there? ME. With a family of 7. It was so awkward, especially when I found my seat. It's like... it was bad enough that one of the girls kept staring at me, but it felt too weird to fall asleep. The middle seats also get jacked on legroom, and I couldn't see out the window or stare off into space (or if I did, I had to try to find a place to stare at that wouldn't involve me staring at one of them... AWKWARDDDDDDDDD). Stupid Eurostar. I ended up listening to my music and falling asleep the whole time anyway since I'm so freaking tired from working 12 hour days this past stupid week.


Yep... how come we don't have benz's as taxi's over in the US? haha


First stop... Eiffel Tower. My illusions of the Eiffel Tower have been shattered... I now think this thing is just a big pile of junk. It's just this really old huge antenna that sticks out in the middle of the city.


View from the first floor. France is a really level city, so going up higher doesn't really do much.


View from the first floor of the line of suckas that have to wait to get in. Since I went w/ a tour group, we had quick and easy group access without waiting.


My gourmet French Lunch... aka cold chicken + salad in a baguette. Picture me trying to order food in France... "eh... sandwich?? chicken??" The lady stared at me, then took a cold sandwich out.. and I was like.. ok I'll take it!


The prettiest part of the tower... the flowers.


Went on a cruise on the River Seine...


Notre Dame


Entrance to Notre Dame... so many ppl around!


Front


Me inside the Notre Dame. The architechture of this cathedral is amazing. For some reason, one of the few religious places I don't feel completely out of place in. But that might have been because there were a billion other tourists milling around...


After Notre Dame, we headed over to the Louvre... it's HUGE. I think it used to be a fortress/royal palace. Supposedly, if you were to take 3 seconds to stand in front of every single painting/exhibit in here, you would be in there for four months. The clear pyramid thingy is the new main entrance.


The Arc de Triomphe... built during the Napolean era to commemorate war victories? As you can tell, my history/knowledge of all of this is kinda iffy.


My tour guide... she had this heavy french accent so I couldn't tell what she was saying half the time. BUT check this out - you know how asian tour guides always hold up those fobbyass flags? They hold up colorful umbrellas... much more stylish, but still funny to see.


And of course... the Mona Lisa. This is as close as I could get to it. It gets so crowded around it that not only do they put it behind a velvet rope, they also display it behind a glass case. At the entrance of the museum, you can pick a number of tours to go on, and one of them is the "Da Vinci Code" tour. So you basically walk the path and see everything that was mentioned in the book. Awesome way for the Louvre to capitalize on that!

After the Louvre, it was time to head back to London...


And in five days, it's time to head home... yay =)