All about baguettes and crêpes...

Start of the trip to Paris....trains are on strike again. This time luckily it didn't stop Reijo and I from getting on our train to the airport. When they called our flight, we waited til everyone else ran to the gate to board...laughing at how Reijo said we should wait til they call our names on the intercom. We got up, and right then they announced our names. We are either jackasses or movie stars, I can't tell.


So the first thing we hit, the Eiffel tower. The start of about 50 photos of it begins on my camera from this point. We had a few hours to kill before Clement gets off work....so this is where we started. There were quite a few tourists around, you can just tell from the look and the clicking of a thousand cameras. The Eiffel tower is much bigger than I imagined...not like I spent a lot of time studying it before I went there though. We crossed over a river where just before is an underpass. It looks just like the one Princess Diana drove under before she was killed, kind of a weird moment being there. Turned out it wasn't the actual one, but in my mind it looked like all the pictures I have seen. As we got under the tower, the view around was amazing. Tons of people getting tickets to go up, eating food from the little stands around the tower, and pigeons swooping by your head at mach 3.




We left the tower and walked for a bit more, wanting some food to snack on. I found a place that sold crêpes...so we dug in. I got Nutella and bananas....if you've never had a crêpes, go for this and you will be satisfied. We got a call from Clement, so we made our way back to the train station and headed for his place.

We spent the next 5 hours or so 'prepartying' at his flat. It's on the fifth floor of a thirteen floor apartment building. From the balcony you can see the Eiffel tower, especially at night. Oh, and the weather, it was grey, cloudy, and cold the entire time. I only saw son once I got back on the plane to return to Munich. We headed downstairs to the market by his place to get drinks. He had asked the security guard to show him where some limes were, and he proceeded to get into some conversation with Clement I can only describe as awkward if you don't know French. Towards the end, he was motioning something on his crotch and laughing. Reijo and I just looked confused...but he was basically telling Clement how he snuck weed in his pants from Amsterdam by putting it near his crotch so the dogs couldn't sniff it. Genius.

We get back to his flat and watched English MTV, YouTube videos of a guy named 'Bling Bling' (a crackhead that raps), and saw about 20 videos of Clements crazy roomate from San Diego when he lived there. His friend Sidi also showed up to join in for the night. We get on the train around 1245 because 'that's when the party starts in Paris' as Clement put it. I remember one stop we came to, about 3 or 4 cops were frantically looking in the trains for somebody. One guy stepped out and they grabbed him and put him against the wall and started searching him like crazy. From what I could tell they didn't say much and grabbed every pocket and opened every pouch in his bag. But soon after we made our exit and headed for the boat party where we could get in and get a bottle of champagne and vodka for 25 Euro a piece. Well, the rest of Paris beat us to it, because when we got there the line was rediculous. We decided to leave and try somewhere else, rather than wait for the next 2 hours to get in.



From this point on, long story short, we waited for a taxi for 90 minutes, then f0und our next bar, then were denied access because we 'didn't have enough girls'. Then we got denied again for the same reason. Then we stopped and at Donor Kebab with fries in it which was fantastic, then we waited for another taxi for 30 minutes...then we walked home. The night was a bust, we were tired, cranky, and had lost our steam.

Woke up at 1pm the next day. The three of us headed to the Notre Dame cathedral. Beautiful to say the least. We walked inside and spent a few minutes there. It was huge inside, I could easily tell this because of all the people inside and out...and it's a huge Paris attraction so it'd have to be pretty big. We skipped the view from the top because they wanted 9 Euro ($15) and the line was a bit long. Refer to google images for reference if you must see it.




Next we hit Clement's school, Creopole. He also studied car design, like myself, and now works at the same company, RTT. This is how I met him in Munich while he was training there. The school was small but had a few really cool works of art. It was also on one of the busiest streets in Paris, so busy you almost get frustrating navigating past the hoards of people.



On to the Louvre. We approach it on the east side, and it appears to go for at least half a mile. We enter from the street and soon we are inside the courtyard and I am staring at the Louvre Pyramid and the Arc de Triomphe from a middle point in between them. We head down into the pyramid to see the gallery that houses the Mona Lisa, Venus statue, and probably a thousand other amazing things I don't have enough time to mention. They close in 30 minutes, and actually Clement and Reijo bought the last tickets before his maching shut down, leaving me with no ticket but free entrance, sweet. We make a B line down the huge long corridor full of artwork for the Mona Lisa. It in a room off to the side about half way down. It's located on it's own wall in the middle of the room, and you can't get any closer than about 10 feet to it. I didn't really get to spend any time looking at it, to see if it could capture me in any way, but generally this is how these trips go. So much to see, so little time. Why is this painting so famous? Who know, but I saw it. Mark that off the list.








This painting was behind it....don't know who painted it but by the looks of the little old lady in front of it, it's huge.

And in honor of the popularity of rollerblading in Europe...I took this video outside the Louvre...



We head back to another Museum called the BeuxBourg(sp?) museum where I was told they might have some cool stuff. Reijo got talked into getting his caricature painted be some guy, so we stopped to watch a crappy drawing get made. Another guy asked me if he could draw me, I declined. But he kept persisting I got a little bothered and told him I just wanted to watch my friend. He then asked me if I was American, and proceeds to say "oh yeah, Americans, they never pay for paintings". I called him a jackass and started mocking his words back to him, so pissed off but we had to stay while Reijo got his portrait done. He soon walked away to go bother someone else, we saw Reijo's caricature, and quickly left. Picture Venice beach in Paris, this was the place. Gypsies, hippies, artists, and street performers. We finish the Paris tour by seeing the Obelisk in Bastille, and head back to Clements to get ready.



We arrive back by the Eiffel tower around 915 or so. We had to find a boat that had our party on it for the night. Well, it took about 45 minutes and 2 miles or so of walking back and forth before we found it, the 'River's King'. On the way I almost got attacked by a dog, and then as I ran past a security guard jumped out of his office and spoke something urgently to me in French. I was running to catch up with Reijo and Clement, so I looked guilty of something. I responded with "Sprechen sie English?". I just asked a French guy if he spoke English in German. He looked more confused than me, so he turned and I started walking.

Boat was awesome, we went down the Seine River past the Eiffel Tower, which is illuminated at night and has two spotlights that circle it at the top. People yelled everytime we went under a bridge and we got to see some beautiful sights in the brisk Paris wind. We docked back just after midnight where they let more people on for the rest of the night. We hung out for awhile, Clement kept saying he needed to rest, and soon fell asleep, where I got this picture....




But sure enough just like he said, by 1245 he was up and dancing, ready to party. We were on the dance floor and some girl came over and tried to put Clements collar down, so we ended up talking to her and her friend for awhile. People know maybe half the English the Germans know in Paris, so conversation was to a minimum with people for Reijo and I. We left around 3 to get coffee with the girls, and then headed home. I played a pretty good wingman than night, just ask Clement.

I hit the airport Sunday morning after maybe 4 hours of sleep on an air mattress. At the gate they had some game stations like you see in Walmart or Target that had two controllers sticking out of it. An older guy of about 65 went up to it and grabbed them both, one in each hand, and stared curiously at the TV for 5 minutes while the game did nothing. He just couldn't unlock the secret of the video game. I found it quite amusing, although I'm sure it pissed him off all the same.

If anybody reads these things, congratulations, you just made it through another adventure of Parker in Europe. Join us next week when we attempt to have a quiet evening in Munich, eat some more meat and potatoes, and inhale second hand smoke in everywhere you can imagine. Tschuss!

parker