à la paris

becca and i set out on our journey on the 28th. we flew into cincinnati to meet up with dad, which is where his flight to paris was departing from. cots throughout the airport served as reminders that just days before, families were stranded at the airport over the christmas holiday. most of these weary travelers were conair passengers. rumor has it that conair had a computer glitch with the scheduling of all their flights or something or rather, and as a result they would have to pay for the food and lodging of all their customers. they found a loophole though, and claimed the cancellation of flights due to bad weather because of the blizzards. stinkers. oh well, cheap airlines do cheap business i suppose.

anyway, turns out that becca and i didn't have to take the role of stranded travelers (the flight was sold over by about 60 seats, so we were taking a gamble). rather, we flew across the atlantic and reached charles de gaulle airport in business class style. on the way, we watched shark tale (which i think was terrible) and the end of irobot, played a few video games, and even managed to get a few winks in. we arrived at 3 am by my bed at home's time...but since we only had two days to see the city of paris, we had to hit the ground running. becca and i couldn't ride on the crew bus with dad, so we had to navigate our way through the metros of paris to get to our hotel. with a few leaps of faith, we jumped on the metros and managed to make it to our stop with no problems. we met up with dad on the way to the hotel. he asked if we wanted to take a power nap before we got going...we opted to skip the nap and get started, since it was already 11:30 am there. i actually wasn't too tired...too bad becca's watch kept serving as a reminder to my body clock's true time...."its 5:30 in the morning!" sheer torture becca, thanks.

finally got out of my non-rev clothes and my heels, which were killing me. we set out for our first stop, the sacre couer. its a relatively new cathedral (early 1900s) that is situated on a hill that overlooks the city of paris. it was quite a hike to get up to the base of the church. we toured the inside first, which was quite lovely. the stained glass and mosaics are amazing. candles were lit everywhere...supposedly lifting up prayers for people or something...i dunno, i'm not catholic. it really made me appreciate knowing that there's no need to pay 8 euros to light a candle so that God can hear my prayers. we exited the church and went around the side to climb into the towers. i love climbing cathedrals. all those secret passageways stir up my curiosity and make me want to explore beyond all the iron gates. even the path we had to take felt like we were just wandering in no particular direction. then we got to the stairs. i'm telling you, with america's reputation in this day and age, most of us wouldn't be able to fit in these stairwells. round and round and round in circles we went for a good seven minutes. we finally got to the top and had our first bird's eye view of the city. buildings and buildings went on in every direction. kinda crazy. we picked out all of the hot spots, such as the eiffel tower, the arcs de triomphe, and other sights on our agenda.

we were all starving, so we wandered around through the art gallery on the streets right below the church looking for a place to warm up and fill up. there had to be about 50 sketchers with their captive tourists standing completely still, an awkward look on their faces and only their eyeballs moving back and forth. i'm sure they weren't aware that they would be charged about 25 euros for their compliance, a price i wouldn't be willing to pay. took us a while to be waited on at the little restaurant we had chosen. when we finally got our chance to use our four years worth of french to order, the man replied to us in english. he had obviously understood us...just simply thought that he was better at english than we were at french. grrrrr. had some four dollar 12oz cokes (which would cover about 2 twelve packs back at home) and ham and cheese crepes...a combination we would become quite familiar with over the trip. the waiter/owner put up a hissy fit in front of all his customers when one customer said it took too long and she wanted to leave. while trying to get back to the metro, we stumbled upon the infamous moulin rouge. hey, good movie, so we posed for a shot in front of it.

next stop, the arcs de triomphe along the champs elysees. right as we got off the metro there were these little kids singing to their dad's video camera "aux champs elysees, dadadadada, aux champs elysees, dadadadada..." it was so cute. becca and i continued the rest of the song quietly with each other...we sang that all the time in mme. scott's french class. strolled down the champs elysees, which was all lit up for the christmas season. there was a ferris wheel lit up just at the other end, which was pretty neat looking. when we got tired of walking, we caught the metro to the other end of the champs elysees by the ferris wheel. didn't get a chance to ride it because it was about $12 us dollars...which was way too much. ate at a restaurant with a view of the eiffel tower. figured out that it sets off on the hour for ten minutes in its sparkly twinkly mode. suddenly, tiredness struck us and we headed back to the hotel for what turned out to be almost 12 hours of sleep.

since we hadn't actually been in the midst of the eiffel tower yet, it was the first thing to do on the second day's checklist. its really amazing how big it actually is...that may sound stupid, but you never really understand its ratio, no matter how many miniature replicas or pictures you've seen. those annoying guys trying to sell you those eiffel tower trinkets really got on my nerves...you had to shoo them away like flies. it was a long walk after that all the way to les invaldids...which is where napoleon's tomb is. its really amazing how full of himself this guy was. encircling his ginormous tomb are carvings depicting what all hes done for france and his head is way above everyone else's. hes not fooling everyone with that trick...i know he was really short. anyway, it was interesting, to say the least.

we then walked along the seine, debated about going on a river cruise, but then decided to visit the notre dame before the towers closed. well, they only let 20 people up the tower every 10 minutes...and the line looked as if it would be a four hours wait. we picked someone out of the line to see where they were when we got back from lunch. yet again, had a ham and cheese sandwich, as well as some chocolate crepes. we got back and the line was only about a fourth of its size before. what luck! dad hopped in line and becca and i went to take pictures. a few minutes later we found dad wandering around looking for us...turns out the line had closed for the day and they weren't letting any more people up that got there after a certain point. so no chance to see quazimodo or his gargoyle friends. we then walked to an "old time" paris square that was quite different from the rest of the city. it would have been nice to see all the trees in bloom and the fountains running...but i guess thats what happens when you visit in the middle of winter.

it started spitting harder, so we decided to take shelter in the musee d'orsay. we didn't go for the louvre because it didn't seem feasible in the amount of time we had left in the day. they had a lot of impressionists at the musee d'orsay, and it was strange becuase i had seen a lot of the paintings before at the high when we went with my french class. but there were a lot of interesting things and it was good to get indoors for awhile.

it was getting late and we still wanted to go to the top of the eiffel tower. we had just arrived when the lights on the tower went off at 9 pm. the tower closes at 11 pm. waiting and waiting, the lights went off again at 10 pm. we finally got onto the elevator that went to the second stage, where we had to get off and wait again for the one that went to the third. it was in this line that i over heard an older british couple discussing when the eiffel tower came about. they had me in tears and almost rolling on the ground when they deduced it was from the french revolution. too funny. for those who are too shy to ask, it was built in the late 1890s for the 1900 world's fair. i think i held my composure pretty well...i had a hard time explaining to becca and dad what made me laugh so hard. i guess you had to be there...and really tired...perhaps even me. anyway, it tickled my funny bone. we finally made it to the top, which was really beautiful and really cold. the wind forced everyone to smoosh onto one side of the tower to stay warm. becca and i even witnessed a man proposing to his girlfriend. awwww. its not so much that it was on top of the eiffel tower...just that he proposed. we were on our way down when the 11 pm lights went off.

it was 11 pm and we hadn't even eaten dinner yet. most places closed at 10...so we ditched the eiffel tower mob when we got to the bottom and wandered the back streets in search of a restaurant. finally found one, with the stinkiest man i've ever smelled as the waiter. completly unappetizing...but at least we found somewhere to eat. had pasta with, what else, but a ham and cheese sauce on it? as we walked back, the 12 am lights went off. it had been a long day and we had to wake up early the next morning to get to the airport.

it was friday, new years eve, when we had to get up to make our way back to the airport. well, this time, the leaps of faith didn't work out for us too well and becca and i were stuck on a one way loop that would take us an extra 30 minutes just to get back to where we had got on. we were pushed for time, but somehow we managed to hop on the non-stop train to the airport. how we pulled that one off, i have no idea. God is good. we stood in line at the ticketing counter for about 40 mins only to be told we were in the wrong line. figures. we got to the right spot seven minutes before the flight closed. holy crap. again, we somehow managed to snag first class back to atlanta. strong headwinds delayed our flight about 30 minutes and we got off the plane with yet again, 7 minutes before the flight to chattanooga was departing (becca and i were flying there to be with some of my ruf friends for new year's). it was a record sprint from the e terminal to the d terminal...having to go through customs and security and take the train to the other terminal, we only missed our flight by two minutes. four hours until the next flight. wonderful. the ipod and dinner with dad in the airport helped it go by relatively quickly. what was strange is that on the tv in the terminal, we watched it turn new year's in paris...the eiffel tower was all lit up flashing 2005. we had been at its summit only 24 hours prior. well, it was six more hours til our new years, and we were still sitting in the airport.