Wednesday, May 17

Paris - yeqh bqby

that was supposed to say "yeah baby" but the French keyboard is really messed up; the Q is an A, the W and Z are reversed, the M is where semi-colon normally is!! funny. Welcome to France.

Actually I am loving France so far, the people are WAY polite, don't listen to the stupid Americans that tell you otherwise. The French are only mean when they observe tourists being obnoxious and rude, which frankly in Paris is ALL the time. But when you're nice, they're nice, especially if you address them as 'Monsieur' or 'Madame' which is their custom.

Pictured above is one of a series of intentionally-blurred pictures i took of the Eiffel Tower at night. I love how it looks like a long, colorful dress.

The only thing I don't like is Paris is really overpriced (a normal restaurant dinner is about 100 € for 2), and that being said, I have to make this a short entry. The internet cafe I'm in is 5 euros an hour (most countries are 1 euro an hour) and they are blaring Phil Collins music which I can only take so much of.

so, quick udpate...
Kate's dad is here now, we met him in Holland. Monday we just got to Paris just with enough time to see Notre Dame and take a boat tour of the city at night.

Yesterday we walked the Champs Elysses, around the outside of the Louvre (where I hear Matt Lauer was taping the Today Show too), and climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe (above). I have taken a ton of pictures, I think like 100 of Paris so far, and that's after deleting the bad ones!

The second day we spent a few hours in the morning at the Museum D'orsay which is so cool, it's a great collection of French artists and especially the Impressionists, it had tons of Monet, Manet, Pisarro, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gaughin, Cezanne, and my favorite thing was the beautiful ballerina pastels by Degas.
And...if walking all of Paris the first day wasn't exhausting enough, I hiked through a huge cemetary to find Jim Morrisson's grave, and it's NOT easy to find, let me tell you. If you come to visit, buy a good map of the cemetary and your hiking shoes. There's like 30,000 people buried there or something, lots of celebritites, and not well marked. When I got to the main gates, I realized I forgot to bring Jim a present - so I hiked down to the main street, past all the flower shops, found a liquor store, and picked him up a flask of whiskey (you can see it on the front right of this picture).

This was probably the day I most appreciated having an ipod again. I'm SO grateful for Jose letting me borrow all his music, although I am like SHOCKED that he has an even more diverse and bizaare collection of 80's and Oldies music than I do (he'll totally deny this) but like it includes Toto, A-ha, Right Said Fred, Duran Duran (Hungry Like the Wolf?!)... shall I continue? No I've embarassed him enough. But anyway, it was cool to listen to some obscure live Doors tracks while walking around the cemetery, and yes, the ipod still has some incredible psychic or supernatural powers, just believe me on this.

On our last day, we visited Montmartre (above), home of one of my favorite movies ever, Amelie. It was absolutely as adorable, charming, and photogenic as it is in the movie - although the Sacre Coure cathedral is surrounded by scummy African guys trying to put embrodered bracelets on your hand and then make you pay for it.

We enjoyed an unusually bright sunny afternoon in Montmartre though, and finished it with a dinner and a little live music inside Amelie's own restaurant, Le Deux Moulin (the 2 windmills) which is not cheezed up from the movie at all, it's actually probably exactly the same as it was before the movie made it famous, it was totally mellow and full of locals.

Pictured above right is me by the carousel that was in the movie. Love Montmartre.

5 comments:

Casa Ogden said...

I was suprised when I visited Jim's grave how out of the way/crammed in with other people his was- I was NOT surprised to find a security guard overseeing his grave though (was there one there when you guys visited?)! One of my favorite graves was Oscar Wilde's! Did you get to see it and did you leave a famous Lara lipstick mark on the side?

Liz

Anonymous said...

'sfunny you should ask - I couldn't FIND Oscar Wildes' grave, and by the time I got to that area, it was turning to dusk so they were kicking everyone out.

I really had a hard time finding Jim's too because the cemetary is so massive and crammed. But I read it's crammed because it's "really hard to get into" that cemetary and Jim's friends had to convince the caretakers that he was a "great American writer" not just a musician (fair enough).

I must have been lucky because there was no security guard there, just a metal barricade which I gladly climbed right over. And no people either, it was totally dead, for reals. get it? it's punny. huh.

Casa Ogden said...

You know I think we had a really good map. There was no fence in 2000 though. Oscar's grave is this huge deco native man sort of reclining but upside down (actually it's a little strange). Here's a link to a picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Perelachaise-Wilde-p1000393.jpg

All of the spots around the base and on the legs are kiss marks left by people.

Casa Ogden said...

by the way if you go to the page with the picture and click on the blue "Père Lachaise" below it will take you to a ton more "pics" of monuments/graves.

-Liz

Anonymous said...

cool. thanks Liz. check your aol for an email from me

p.s.
in case you didn't notice from my picture, the bust of Jim was stolen somewhat recently. I always thought it didn't really look like him anyway.