Keeping up with the times during my adventure to España!

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Paris

  Paris, it's worth a visit.  To be honest, I was much more impressed with the city than I thought I would be. Now, I know that it may sound a tad bit pessimistic to admit that I wasn't expecting the best out of a trip to Paris, but I had my reasons. Stereotypes are alive and well in this world, and sometimes you cannot avoid them. I openly admit that I fell victim to those stereotypes about the Parisians, and or French people in general. It's not that I didn't(don't) like the French, it's just that...
  With that said, as I mentioned the trip turned out to be great! From the start, things didn't go so smooth. My first encounter with a Frenchy, was a women at the information desk in the airport. She was all business, and no smiles. She made it clear without saying it, that she did not enjoy working there, and that she didn't want to help me. After that, I discovered that the airport was over an hour away from the actual city center. This however, was not a major problem, as there were buses continuously running in and out. After finally arriving in the city, things got much better.
  We had our list of things to do, and we began to chip away. This was surprisingly convenient. The subway system in Paris is second to none. There are different routes that will get you to any spot in the city, relatively quickly. On top of that, there are trains coming every two or three minutes, so there are no long waits. This allowed us to do a lot, in a short amount of time. We visited for the most part, all of the major tourist attractions in the city in just the first day. This now brings me to our time at the famous Eiffel Tower. We agreed that going up to the top was not necessary, mainly due to the enormous line of people waiting. Instead we chilled in the park, took some pictures, videos, and had just a good time. I can't move on without letting you know what else happened at the Eiffel Tower. A bird decided to take a shit, while I was sitting underneath. Yes, laugh all you want, but this was not funny for poor Scotty, who somehow ended up with the bird droppings on both arms...
  A side note to make, Paris is expensive. Yes, you most likely already assumed that, but you probably didn't know just how expensive. A perfect example would be when I went to get two bottles of water. For some reason, because the bottles were glass, I wasn't allowed to take them out with me, but he offered to pour them into plastic cups for me. After doing so, he calmly said, "9 euro, please." Naturally, I was shocked. At that point, he had already opened the bottles, and I was forced to pay, roughly the equivalent of 11 dollars just for two cups of water. Insane.
   Overall, the trip was really fun. We had a great time, despite the fact that we only had a day and a half. Our time in Paris was just awesome. There were lots of funny things, cool sites to see, and the worlds greatest croissants ever!! Can you say mouthgasm!? So I can say that I now have a different perspective about the French people. With that said, they will always be cigarette smoking, beret wearing, croissant eating, Frenchies.

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