Alright, this post is reaaaaaly late, because it took me until now to gather together all the pictures I wanted. I still don't have everyone's, but I have enough of a selection. Thanks to George, Olivier, Lindsey, Vance, Bernard and Henry for sharing their pics!
I have already been to Paris, but I wanted to go again because there were lots of things that I didn't see while I was there that I wanted to. Olivier was planning a trip for October, so I decided that would be a good time to return. The group ended up being quite large, every day new people would buy tickets and eventually there was 13 of us going (lucky 13): me, Henry, Bernard, Lindsey, Vance, Olivier, George, Evan, Shane, Rebeca, Fengli and Fengli's friend (who I never met, and I don't know her name). It was a really fun trip, very different from the first time I went when it was only Adrienn and I. I was the only one that had been to Paris before, so I got to feel like a pro and be the tour guide, haha.
We took the night train to Paris, which I have never done before (well, I went on an overnight train to Jasper when I was little...but that was different). It left late friday night, so we stopped by Mojo (a bar in Baden) on the way to the station since some of the other praktikats were hanging out there. I felt a little silly, since I was wearing my pyjamas, haha, but who wants to fit in anyways. Lindsey, George and I found our way to the little 6-person compartment we were sharing, and got settled. It was pretty comfortable, though the tiny sheet was hard to keep in place so it wasn't the best sleep.
Me ready for sleeping on the night train
We arrived bright and early in Paris, and after taking forever to get everyone sorted out with metro passes, arrived at our hotel. It was a pretty sweet place, and only cost $20/night for each of us...cheaper than most hostels! Our room was even cheaper, since we had an extra person (Vance decided at the last minute to join the trip, and it was too late to change the booking). We slept 3 people in one of the double beds, it wasn't too bad.
The plan for the day was to go to
Versailles, one of the things that I didn't get a chance to see last time I was in Paris. It was the perfect day for it too, beautiful sunny fall day. We all took the train there (it's about 30min out of the city) and than bought day tickets. It was 20euro (~$30), but well worth it because we got 3 audioguided tours, and access to almost everything on the grounds.
I have never done an audioguided tour before, but it ended up being really sweet. For those that don't know, you get a headset, and then everytime you enter a new room you press a button and get all the interesting info from that room,
accompanied by a pleasant soundtrack. It's especially fun if everybody presses the button at the same time, because then you are all looking at the same things at the same time (aka, to an observer, a group of 10 people would all suddenly look at the ceiling in unison for no apparent reason). Anyways, though it lacked the personality and humour of a guided tour, the audioguided tour was a lot more flexible, and easier to hear, so it gets my approval. We took the audiotour of the States Apartments first, which included things like the apartments of the King and Queen, and the Hall of Mirrors (which was unfortunately being renovated....too bad, I bet it would have been sweet).
A chapel inside the Chateau de Versailles
Rebeca, Henry, George and Bernard enjoying the audiotour
Me and Vance checking out some paintings of Napoleon's battles
After the tour we realized that our group had been split up...which was alright, because there were just too many people for an effective tour. I ended up with Lindsey and Vance, so we wandered out to the grounds and marvelled at the amazing view. The Grand Canal stretched out forever in front of us, and it was surrounded by gardens and forest.
Me in front of the Versailles Gardens and Grand Canal
We ran into Tyler, Kevin and Mike, and decided to go check out the grounds together. It was really cool, as soon as we stepped past the hedges it was like you were in a different place...everything was all foresty and cool. There were various buildings and sites out on the grounds that were included in our daypass so we made our way to all of them. There were so many paths and high hedges (no hedge maze though, boo) that it took a bit of navigation not to get lost.
We checked out the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, which are basically houses where the King and Queen could go to relax...you know in case the Palace felt too cramped and they wanted to get away, lol. Next we went to the Queen's Hamlet not really knowing what to expect. It ended up being this cute little village surrounding a big pond (or small lake...not really sure how the classification system works). It was a really nice little area...I think if I lived at Versailles I would rather stay at the Hamlet than the main Palace.
Some big fallen tree near the Grand Trianon that Mike decided to enjoy
Part of the Queen's Hamlet
We discovered that there were fish in the pond...there was one big one that kept surfacing, causing us to yell with excitement every time (I think we provided humour for the other tourists). Then we found a spot where somebody was throwing food into the water for the fish and/or ducks and swans. I was a feeding frenzy! The amount of fish trying to eat the food was insane.
We sat and relaxed on the hill for awhile. While sitting Tyler discovered that the tree had a strange fruit that had fallen on the ground. He opened one up and debated whether or not it was edible. In the end, curiosity won over and both him and Mike tried a bite of the mysterious fruit. They didn't die, but said it didn't taste very good either.
Fish fighting for food...so many!
Chillaxing at the Queen's Hamlet
Probably the coolest looking tree I have ever seen. I love autumn...
After our break we walked back to the Palace (there was a lot of walking, that place is huge). We took audiotours of the King's Chambers and Apartments of Mesdames (the last to tours included in our day pass). They were interesting, but by the end we were all pretty tired. By then it was late afternoon and we were ready to go back to the hotel. By some miracle we met up with everyone else....I have no idea how it happened, since we had broken up into about 4 groups and done different things.
Mike, Kevin, Tyler, me and Lindsey in front of the Palace.
Cool pic of Olivier out on the grounds
Meeting up at the end of the day (a Paris Miracle)
We got on the train to go back to Paris (minus Rebeca and Olivier...they never ended up on the train and we discovered later that it was because Rebeca had lost her metro pass and they were getting a new one). The highlight of the trip home (and any metro ride actually) was this weird French teenager, all decked out in hip hop gear and bling. He was bopping to his music, and jumping around all over the place making quite a commotion (eg. doing head spins and banging on the windows). Every now and then he would yell out in French, and at one point he started taking (lots of) money out and throwing it on the seats, before returning it to his wallet. Anyways, we were very entertained by this (though I think I would have been freaked out if we weren't in such a big group) and being the hardcore tourists that we are, of course got a picture.
Vance and the hardcore French Hip-Hop dude
Sleeping on the train back to Paris...triple shocker sort of...what are you doing Tyler)
When we got back to Paris we were all hungry, so we got off near Notre Dame (it was on the way) and bought dinner supplies at a grocery store. We sat near the river with a view of the Cathedral and enjoyed our food (I had bread, cheese and tomato...classic). I threw in some Notre Dame pics, but I don't think they are actually from this day (I didn't go into Notre Dame this trip). Oh well, they had to go somewhere.
Mike, Tyler, Kevin, Vance, Bernard and Henry in front of Notre Dame
Notre Dame Cathedral
Gargoyles at Notre Dame
Nice view of Paris at dusk.
It was evening by then, so we went back to the hotel to shower and get ready for the evening. We had all bought wine (that's just what you have to drink in Paris) and had a nice pre-party in our hotel room (I was sharing a room with Lindsey, Vance, Shane, and Olivier). One highlight was when Vance went on a massive rant about x-men...ah, it's been awhile since I have witnessed a drunken Vance geek rant, lol.
Mike, Shane and Lindsey drinking wine (and George's hand). Nice shirt colour choices guys, very effective
Vance, Henry, Rebeca, Olivier and Bernard chillin in the hotel room
Olivier, after having his hair styled by Rebeca
Around 10:30pm we took the metro over to the Eiffel Tower to ooo and ahh at being lit up. It really does look amazing, I don't think I could ever get tired of seeing it. We hung out there for awhile, taking pictures and having fun.
Kevin, Vance, George, me, Lindsey, Henry and Bernard on the way to the Eiffel Tower
Riding the metro. Vance managed to jump into every single pic taken on this journey (if only I could post them all..), with the same expression...haha
Vance, Lindsey, Shane and me at the Eiffel Tower
Nice pic Bernard
Olivier, Rebeca, Shane, me, Lindsey, Vance, Evan and George with the Eiffel Tower.
Some people were smart and left in time to catch the last metro back to the hotel. Unfortunately, I was not one of that group...we didn't want to leave yet, and convinced ourselves that it wasn't that far back to the hotel. Once we started walking and checked a map though, we realized that it was in fact quite far (we were basically walking from the Eiffel Tower to north of Sacre Coeur...if you know anything about the layout of Paris you will shake your head at our poor decision). Walking around Paris at night was fun though, especially after we stopped to buy more wine. We walked past the Arch de Triomph which was beautifully lit up and took some pics.
It was around this time that Shane got the hiccups. He said that he had to sit down and take a break, so I sat down too and before we knew it, everyone one else had left. The good news: we both had maps. The bad news: we had no idea where we were and our navigation skills were highly compromised at this point in the night. We attempted for quite some time to get home, but it seemed that every time we figured out our location we were veering even further off course. Eventually (around 4:30am) Shane just lay down on the grass, and by then I had lost all hope as well so I lay down too. We slept there until about 6, when the metro was running again and caught the train back to the hotel, crawling into bed around 7. Needless to say, we were both fairly tired the next day, haha, but at least we had an adventure to tell.
Sunday...everyone else had a museum day: Lourve, Orsay, Modern Art (I can't remember who went to which ones, and what else everyone did all day, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to read all the different
itineraries anyways). Since I had already seen all those museums, I decided to check out the
Paris Science Center, which is apparently one of the biggest ones in Europe. It was a really cool place, though it took me awhile to figure out where the cool exhibits were and how to buy tickets for a show. I discovered that I had come on some special weekend where everything was free, woot! I wandered around looking at stuff, and ended up spending most of my time in the mathematics section, it was sweet (in a geeky way, sigh), they had all these demos and videos explaining chaos theory, fractals, etc. Some exhibits were translated into english, but some were just in french, so I got to break out my pathetic french skills to try and figure out what was going on. The day also included a (free) show in the planetarium, which was sweet even though it was in french. It started with showing some constellations in the sky, which I sort of know so it made the french easier to understand. I love the planetarium theaters...how you are just surrounded by stars and in those big reclining comfy chairs. Unfortunately, they were too comfy, because I fell asleep near the end of the show (this was probably due to my night adventures, lol), but it was a nice power nap so that was ok.
Bernard and Mike with the inverted pyramid at the Louvre. If you have read The DeVinci Code you will know all about this ;)
The outside of the Paris Science Center...the big sphere is some strange musical clock that played different sounds for hours, minutes and seconds, it was pretty cool.
After the science center I went to central to wander around a bit. I saw a couple churches and the opera house (one of them), it was fun just walked down the streets in Paris. Eventually I got tired, so I went back to the hostel and had a quick nap before it was time to meet the rest of the group. Unfortunately, the meeting plan had been changed without anyone informing me, so instead of meeting for dinner we were meeting at 9. I wasn't too impressed, but at least somebody had come back early for a rest and mentioned it to me around 8...
By 9 most people had returned back to the hotel, so we went out to see the Moulin Rouge. It was pretty cool looking, but nothing too exciting since it was too expensive to actually go in and see a show (though I bet that would have been sweet). More exciting was that it was located in a sort of red light district...so as we walked down the street were were surrounded by sex shops and erotic show theaters, haha.
Olivier, Vance, Henry, Bernard, Mike and Lindsey in front of the Moulin Rouge. They are standing on this big air vent for added effect, haha.
Haha...
We walked to Sacre Coeur (it was only a few blocks away) and marvelled at how cool it looks lit up. It was here that we somehow met up with George and Shane, and basically the rest of the group. It was another Paris miracle...though I think we planned to see Sacre Coeur that night so I guess everyone was just sticking to the plan. We hung out on the steps just enjoying the night. There were a few guys playing the guitar and singing, and I swear it was the same guy that was playing when Adrienn and I were there last time. I guess maybe he goes every weekend, that is cool, the one guy was amazingly good too. We left early enough to take the metro home and go to bed at a decent hour (hooray for good decisions!).
Chillaxing at Sacre Coeur
The next day I went with Evan, Shane and George to
Pere Lachaise Cemetery. It's famous because lots of famous people are buried at it...the most well know is Jim Morrison (he somehow outshadows lots of other historical arts figures, haha). We did the typical thing, which was go straight to Jim Morrison's grave which was surprisingly small...and guarded (there had been vandalism problems, but it is all cleaned up now). After that we found Chopin's grave, and after that we had had enough (it took a long time to locate graves, it is a huge place with minimal navigation aids).
Jim Morrison's grave...not as fancy as most of the others
The guys wanted to go check out Notre Dame, so I broke off and went to the Picasso Museum. I had issues finding it, so had to ask for directions a few times...which I did completely in french, woot. Eventually I found it, and managed to get in for free ("under 17"), nice beating the system. It was a cool place, with art from Picasso starting from just sketches from when he was a student. There was a lot of info about his life too, and I had a good time wandering around looking at everything. After that I had time to go over to the Museum of Modern Art (also got in free, haha), which I saw last time but wanted to check out again. It was cool that I did, since almost all the exhibits had changed. I only had time to look around a little bit, but it was still fun, I find the art there really interesting (though some of it is pretty strange).
I went over to the Eiffel Tower to meet everyone at 4pm like we had planned. Almost everyone showed up, and people that weren't there we met up with later once we were up the tower. We all paid to walk up the stairs, and had fun reading all the tower history and interesting facts, and of course taking pictures of the view. We walked up to the second observation deck, which is as far as you can go by stairs. Everyone wanted to pay and line up to take the elevator to the top, which was cool because I didn't do that last time. It was worth it, even though the view isn't that much better you feel so high up! And there is just something cool about being at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
Henry taking a pic of Bernard, haha
The Eiffel Tower!
Almost all of us at the top of the Eiffel Tower (Henry and Bernard didn't come up, tsk tsk).
back row: Mike, Shane, Kevin, Evan
middle row: George, Lindsey, Vance, Tyler, me, Rebeca
front row: Olivier
Arch de Triomph from the top of the Eiffel Tower
View of Paris (primarily the Louvre) from the top of the Eiffel Tower
After the Eiffel Tower we all had different last minute Paris things we wanted to do, so we split up again. I went with Shane, Evan, Lindsey, George, Rebeca and Olivier to the Louvre...the plan was to start at the Louvre and walk up Champs-Elysses (a famous street that joins at the giant traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe. Also the name of a catchy French
song that was stuck in my head all weekend...NOFX does a cover of it that you might know) to the Arch de Triomphe. There was a bit of a snag when we discovered that the Tuileries Gardens were closed for the night. Evan and Shane were insistent that we stick to the plan of walking directly, so I went with them to climb over a hedge into the gardens. It was surprisingly easy, the guard on the other end just let us out with no hassle, it was sweet.
We met up with the others, and then took a break at Place de la Concorde. We took some pictures, and then puzzled over strange markings on the ground for awhile....it appeared to be some sort of sun dial with the obelisk, but we never really figured it out.
We walked up Champ Elysses, stopping for a break to have a snack and coffee. Eventually we made it to the Arc, and everyone quickly paid and went inside. It was here that I had the most embarrassing part of my weekend...Lindsey and I tried to pull the whole "pretend to be 17 to get in for free" scam, which worked fine, they believed us. However, we were told that we had to be accompanied by an adult to go up the Arc, and everyone else had already rushed inside. After a bit of debating, we went back to the booth and told them we were actually 21, and showed ID....they let us in, but we got some disapproving looks, it was pretty embarrassing. Serves us right, lol...
I hadn't been up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe before, it seemed like it wouldn't be that special since it's not really that high (although, higher than it looks). It was totally worth it though, the view is amazing...you can see all 12 streets circling out away from the traffic circle, and especially at night it is really impressive. We got to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle, and stayed up there enjoying the view and taking pictures. At one point, Shane decided that he wanted to get a better view, so he used some tricky moves to climb up onto the center section. A little while later, we heard a guard say "Oh-la-la!" (yes, he actually said that, hahahaha) when he noticed that Shane was up there. He had to leave, which was alright since it was time for us to go anyways. Haha, it was a good thing that Shane wasn't Lindsey and my's "responsible adult guardian".
George, Lindsey, me, Rebeca, Shane, Olivier and Evan in front of the Louvre
The Louvre at night, the pyramid looks cool.
Champ Elysses from the top of the Arch de Triomphe
On top of the Arch de Tiomphe (too bad the Eiffel Tower didn't make it into the picture)
The stairs inside to the Arch de Triomphe to the top
We took the metro back to the hotel to get our stuff, which was interesting because the desk clerk pretended that our bags were missing. I was kind of freaked out for a bit until he showed us to the room where they were being kept...crazy French people and their sketchy humour.... We went to the train station where we met up with the others and got onto the train for another fun sleep. I slept pretty well (it was a tireing day) and then had time to go home and shower before taking the train to work.
I am impressed how smoothly the trip went considering the giant group that we went with. I guess we have finally mastered group travelling, and figured out that you can't do everything together, and not to wait for late people at meeting times (sorry guys, you snooze you lose...or some other more fitting quote...). I'm glad that I got to see Paris again, to revisit my favorite things and see the things that I missed last time. It is a city that I would love to return to some day, and maybe even live in (just think how good my french would get!)
