Apologies friends and loves for the delay in the posting, I had written my previous post and was hitting the "publish" button just as my battery died and I shortly learned the adapter I had ensured would work in Italy did not also work in Paris. C'est la vie! Luckily, the one that I had for my phone did, so all was not lost on the electronics front.
So what I did instead of blogging was write myself some notes and I'm sat here now in my bed at my Airbnb in Venice working on catching up. I have a melatonin melting under my tongue so we have until that baby starts kicking in for me to try my best to honor chronology and describe for you all with feeble words the incredible, expansive, breath taking beauty and presence that is Paris.
Stepping onto the tarmac of the Beauvais airport I was hit with one primary thing: incredible cold. I could see my breath coming out of my mouth and that was rather a novelty coming from Milan where there has been record breaking heat and I had to sleep like a starfish in my room to try and let the heat escape my body as best it could without me dying first. Luckily, Dublin is at the end of this journey so I packed exactly one pair of jeans and one hoodie and they served me very well in the French climate.
Getting onto the Metro I got trapped in the turnstile with Belinda (my giant bag) and had to ever so gracefully limbo my way back out, to the disgust of the French people around me but I didn't care too much because those people won't see me again ever and really, who am I trying to impress in Paris? Once I got on the train, I started to pretty much instantly fall in love with the vibrance and magic of the city. The subway cars have windows along them so you can see out, and the stations have white tiles and often lovely designs that make NYC's subways look like the smoldering trash heaps that they literally are. It also helped that French couple got on board with an accorian and started singing to us. It was lovely and I started to get super pumped for Paris.
Finding the Airbnb wasn't too bad, and my greatest worry, the infamous 6th floor walkup with no lift plus Belinda was assuaged by the husband of the family who came all the way downstairs like a champion hero figure and carried Belinda all the way up for me. I find men in Europe are very helpful with bags and very resistant to my offer to assist them with it, often pushing me off like I'm insulting their manhood. I think feminism might not have taken hold as deeply or perhaps in the same ways. Either way, after all these days of running around the streets of Europe, I was willing to relinquish the task.
The Airbnb was as cool and funky as I thought it would be from the posting, with a loft bedroom for me with funky furniture and decor and a cosy space for me. Bonus: a cat named Lola who looked at me from her place in the middle of the bed and decided she didn't want a thing to do with me, and was never to be seen again. Still, having a cat around in some way was comforting.
I quickly evaluated the time and what was going on with my mind and body and decided to book it to the Louvre, the one of two things I had to see while I was in Paris. I screwed the pooch a bit on my planning, not knowing for sure which days I would want to do which thing, so I didn't do the book ahead thing. And my hard won phone data was not having it when I tried to book an online ticket. So I resigned myself to the offensively long line. Standing there I contemplated a lot of things, a lot of them terrorism related as that morning some military police were run down by yet another car-wielding ISIS asshat. One thing that I enjoy watching is people and their interactions, and the line at the Louvre is stinking with teen angst, couple drama, family tension and reminders that travelling alone is a blessing a lot of the time because you don't have to put up with other people's bullshit.
Once I finally hit menopause and got through the line, I commenced what amounted to a 6 hour visit of the Louvre. I did not by any stretch see it all. I splurged on the audiotour which uses Nintendo DS which I thought was really funky, until I tried to use it and found the navigation sucked and really it was largely useless. Either way, I saw some beautiful, historic, incredible things that will stay with me always. I am by no means an art historian, but I noticed a distinct theme of shit popping off resulting in women's boobs erupting from their chemises. Possible conclusions I have come to upon much discussion with other tourists include: terrible bra technology at the time, the fact that men were the painters and men like boobies, misogyny, boobs being nice to paint, and what seems like the best one so far from Leanne who you will meet in my next blog, boobs are a symbol of fertility and motherhood and so are exposed as a way of highlighting the fertile nature of women. I liked that one especially for the lady liberty one where she is liberating France and it seems a rather odd moment to pop a tit, but if you think about her wiedling the milk of freedom for the people of France, maybe that makes more sense. Other fun/weird highlights included a portrait called, creatively, "Dead Cat" of a ct that looks exactly like Gregory, only once he's popped his clogs, and some seashells and stuff where I thought, finally, someone is speaking my language! only to notice that it was a lady painter, and so that made sense that she had a fresh perspective on the old tits and sorrow theme.
Staggering out of the Louvre I started walking through the gardens sort of towards the Eiffel Tower because I wanted to get there for sunset, and a man came and asked if he could sit beside me. (Parents, clutch thine pearls, I was talking to a stranger!) and he only spoke French so I got the chance to terribly mangle the language. Almost every person I spoke French to immediately switched to English my whole trip, but he was trying to jump my bones so he was willing to give it the old college try. We walked down to the Sienne and talked about CAnada and Paris, and then he tried to hold my hand. I said, no thanks. He asked me why (why do they always need an explanation?! I don't want to touch you, and now you're making me tell you it's because you aren't sexy?) and to avoid getting murdered and pitched in the river I simply said, I just don't want to thank you, I should probably leave now. And, to his credit, he said goodbye and off he left. I took a bus and wham! There I was at the Eiffel Tower.
I wasn't expecting to think a big tower is so great, but it was so great! I didn't go up it, but I was enchanted with how pretty it is. Ok, melatonin kicking in hard, need to ride this wave to snoozeville, will write more tomorrow! Bon soir!
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