...Chez soi, et à Paris

"Il n’y a que deux endroits au monde où l’on puisse vivre heureux:  chez soi et à Paris."- Ernest Hemingway. 
Translation: "There are only two places in the world where we can live happy:  at home and in Paris."
Saturday morning began with a delicious, free Korean breakfast including (unlimited!) rice, a bowl of miso soup, and some various vegetable or meat dishes to eat with the rice, most of them spicy. It was so good, and so filling. Jenn and I left for the metro around nine and bought day-passes for the metro, thinking we would be using it enough for it to be worth it (we were totally right, especially since it was only 7€ for two days per person because we're 21 and if we'd bought each ticket, it would have been 1€70 each time). While waiting for the metro, we witnessed a few policemen coming in and frisking this guy and talking to him, but we never figured out why. 

We started at Notre Dame. 

Heey Notre Dame, wassup!

The first thing we did was to use the restroom (it was a really gross bathroom with no soap, thankfully Jenn had hand sanitizer, and these two women who were taking tips but not doing anything). We admired the outside of the building, but since Jenn had gone inside the day before (she got there pretty early in the morning on Friday), we didn't go inside. I'm going back to Paris next weekend anyway, so I'm going to go inside, and even tour the towers. We found out that, even though we're students (and that got Jenn into the Louvre for free yesterday), we'd still have to pay 6€ for the towers tour, so we skipped out and moved on the Musée d'Orsay. 

We walked along the Seine to get there, which was beautiful, 

and I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time, which was totally awesome! 

Jenn probably thought I'd gone crazy. I was quite excited. One stupid thing we did at the Museum was to go through all the stuff we didn't care about first (we just happened to do it by accident because we didn't have a good map), and so by the time we got to the paintings we really wanted to see, we were too tired to care. "Museum-fatigue," as the Australian girl Eleanor in the hostel who we had met the night before would say. 

As we were leaving the museum, it was just beginning to rain. There were street venders everywhere selling crappy trinkets and Jenn and I got to see them, upon feeling the rain, rush to a man-hole in the street, open it, and get out giant bags of umbrellas and begin selling them. It was insane! They literally just took them out of the street. One of them came up to me and Jenn and tried to sell us one... while we were both holding our umbrellas over our heads. What?!

After the museum, we took the metro to the Eiffel Tower. It was raining by that time, which was miserable and cold, but we did come out right next to a supermarket. Instead of getting really expensive sandwiches, we each bought a little euro-baguette, some slices of Gouda cheese, and some little French cookies. We didn't actually have any way to cut the bread, so when we ate our baguettes, we would take a bite of bread and then a bite of cheese. Why yes, we are cheap college students, how could you tell? 

By the time we actually got to the Eiffel Tower, it had stopped raining for the most part (weather changing in fifteen minutes? feels like home!), and so we sat on a semi-damp bench and ate half of our super-cheap, kinda-sketchy lunch, and people-watched (let's be honest; that really is the most fun thing to do anywhere in the world). There was this kid whose parents kept encouraging him to chase after the pigeons, simply because it was hilarious to watch him. He fell down a couple times, but didn't ever cry, just picked himself up and found another pigeon to chase. 

Being under the Eiffel Tower was an experience in and of itself. The architecture is absolutely beautiful- very elegant and impressive, and not a single bit of it could be considered ugly. It is an absolutely lovely creation. 

Jenn and I got in one line for a couple minutes, realizing after a bit that we needed another line. We wanted to take the stairs (because it's about 10€ cheaper than taking the elevator up to the second level). The line wasn't too long, thankfully, and we got in about half an hour after we arrived to the tower. It took about ten minutes to walk up to the first level (which they call the first floor). 

On that level, there is a lot of information about the tower (the building itself, the architect, the reason it was built, etc), as well as information about the famous French buildings that you can see from the tower, even from the first floor. 

That tiny building in the distance sticking above everything else is Sacre Coeur

Some interesting facts you may not (and that I certainly did not) know: 

1. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel designed the Eiffel Tower for a competition for the 1889 World Fair, which coincided with the 100 year anniversary of the French Revolution. 

2. It was originally meant to be a temporary structure, and everyone hated it when it was first built. In fact, one of the only reasons it was kept around is because it had become a radio and tele-communication tower. 

3. It takes 60 tons of paint to cover the Eiffel Tower, and a team of painters repaints it every seven years. 

4. There are 108 stories in the Tower (43 of which Jenn and I walked). 

After we were done with the first floor, and already feeling pretty tired, we trekked up to the second floor. We didn't read much of the information on that level because of our exhaustion, and then we took the elevator (that's the only way to get there) up to the top. It was very cold (about ten degrees difference, I'd say), and windy up there. Jenn and I admired the view and took a picture or two and then hurried into the interior to stay warm(er) and finish our lunch. Another cool thing is that the inside has the distances of many well-known cities all over the world posted. 

 Les deux

La vue

Jenn and I left the tower, but before we left the area, a man in an official tower vest asked us to take a survey about our experience. He really did not understand much of what he was saying (maybe the words, but not the grammar), and whenever we said we didn't use the restrooms or go into the restaurants (since there was no option called n/a or "did not go"), he wrote "very satisfied." Hmm... a little biased, maybe? I do remember that from statistics. At the end of the survey, though, we each got a little tower keychain (which are EVERYWHERE in Paris). 

We decided to walk across the Champs de Mars (the park next to the tower) to the École Militaire, 

hoping it would be open and have free admission. It wasn't open (it is, after all, still a functioning school and it was a saturday), but there was an interesting art-sculpture-thingy across from it which had "peace" written on it in a bunch of different languages, which I found gloriously amusing, because I can't imagine that it's placement in front of the "Military School" was accidental. 

Anyway, by then we were close enough to the Église des Invalides to walk over (we were getting very tired of walking at this point). This was also mostly closed (it was around 5), but the actual Dome of the church was still open, which holds Napolean's tomb (and the tombs of many other famous people). 

 L'Église des Invalides

Jesus with mood lighting

It was absolutely beautiful. Jenn's favorite part was the "mood lighting," which was some serious mood lighting. One area was just this beautiful gold, accented by the sunset outside, and another room was blue. 

This wasn't because of lights; it's because of the color of the stained-glass windows. The church was built by Louis XIV (Versailles guy) and "SL" is engraved all over the place. We were laughing about this church being  dedicated to "Saint Louis," (as in the city in Missouri, USA) but it turns out that that really is what it means; It's for Saint Louis (which totally makes sense; that Louis is such a pretentious bastard). I asked the woman staying at the entrance of the church to count the number of people coming and going what it stood for. She looked like she wanted to die; we're assuming she just really hates her job. Like, really. 

...

We went back to the Hostel for dinner and spent a little bit of time resting and on the computers. On the metro back out, we saw a man with a guitar who was singing in the other compartment. We took about twenty seconds to think about moving to the other compartment in order to listen to him, and then we were at a stop. We opened the doors, ran out, and the train nearly started moving by the time we got the doors on the other compartment open, but we made it! Turns out, though, that the man wasn't singing but just babbling in crazy-person talk and it was really uncomfortable for a good two minutes until he got off at the next stop. Thankfully, a couple stops after that, a young man with an accordion stepped on, and just as we rounded a corner in an above-ground section of the metro line and saw the Eiffel Tower lit up for the night, he began playing beautiful French music. I felt faint I was so happy. 

We were beyond excited to get to the tower, and we rushed out of the metro up to the street, almost instantly happening upon a man playing a piano on the sidewalk (a PIANO).

see that? It's a piano. 

Anyway, we listened for a tiny amount of time, but we were too excited to see the tower to stay, so we hurried over and spent a long time just admiring the beauty of the Eiffel Tower by night. We got there just in time, too, because not only does the tower light up like this every night after sunset: 

But also, for five minutes at 11pm and midnight, for five minutes only; something along the lines of sparkly-moving white Christmas lights dazzle the viewers (every person there made the exact same sound "ahhhh"), and it is just fantastic. Pictures, no matter how professionally taken, do not do it justice. This is the best picture I got, while there. 

We slowly made our way toward the tower, stopping at some point to admire (and then hop onto) a carousel. We did not pay. I tried taking a picture of Jenn, and that's the moment when my camera died, so there will be no more pictures from my camera (we got a few with Jenn's, but not many because every time you take a picture with her camera, it "dies" within a few seconds). We stayed on the carousel until the guy started coming around to get tickets and then hopped off, moving ever closer to the spectacular tower. 

The underside of the tower was even cooler when lit up, but we didn't stay for too long because we still wanted to see the Arc du Triumph and the Louvre Pyramid lit up. 

We assumed the Arc would at least be well-lit, but it really was just there and happened to be lit-ish by street lamps. If you've never been, it is in the middle of a giant roundabout which was impossible to get across with (probably) dying. Jenn and I, that night, did not know about the tunnel underneath that leads to the Arc. Even if we had known about it, it would have been closed. We very briefly considered just running for it, but then decided we would just come back tomorrow in the day time and hopefully find a way across. 

We left, then, and went to the Louvre. We were expecting the Pyramid to be lit (like it always is in all the pictures!) It was not. We asked the security guard who was closing the place up (it was like midnight at this point) if it had been, or would be tomorrow. "Non." Well, whatever. 

So, slightly less excited about the glory of Paris, we went home and slept. 

Next up: Sunday in Paris!