Now I Can Say I've Been to Paris (Las Vegas) AND Paris (France)
Editor's note: the events described here actually happened May 27-29, 2010.
Full disclosure: I am not a fan of France. Or the French people. Or the French language. I am not one of those people that thinks "trip to Europe" = "trip to Paris". I would have been totally happy to never, ever visit France. But there are two things that I have always said that I wanted to do if I was ever in the unfortunate situation of being in/near Paris:
So after my day in Antwerp, I hopped on a train and headed to gay Paris. It was a crappy, rainy day. My jeans and shoes were completely soaked through after walking around for the first hour. I had to eat my stupid baguette while walking through the rain. I got lost repeatedly. The trains stunk of French B.O. But! I finally found the right neighborhood for the catacombs!
French for "catacombs that-away!"
I got so excited and was so ready to go underground and see the creepy tunnels and get out of the rain. And then...
As if I needed another reason to hate France.
Then this dead Frenchman / catacomb mascot mocked me...
0
"France hates you, too, Halee."
So the catacomb adventure was a full-on French failure. I made the best of the rest of my day in stupid Paris by visiting the stupid Louvre and looking at the stupid Eiffel Tower from a stupid boat. Also, I ate a stupid crepe. Luckily for me, Sophie was meeting up with me in Paris that night and once she arrived, things got a million times better. I got her singing the "Les poissons, les poissons, hee hee hee, hawr hawr hawr" song from The Little Mermaid. (But we usually substituted "poissons" with "croissants", or whatever we were eating/doing at that moment.) We met up with her friend, and turned in early so we'd be ready for all the hot tennis action the next day!
I had bought my Roland Garros tickets many months before, right when they went on sale, but even then I was too slow to get seats at the big daddy court (Court Phillippe Chartrier). I had to settle for tickets to the #2 show court (Court Suzanne Lenglen). But once we arrived at the Roland Garros grounds and got our hands on a schedule, our crappy #2 court tickets suddenly got amazing. We weren't able to see Rafael Nadal, because obviously they're going to put that boy on the biggest court. But since Rafa was hogging the big court, that meant this guy was delivered to my court...
In case you don't follow tennis enough to recognize faces or have never seen a Gillette commercial, that is Roger F'ing Federer. Probably the greatest tennis player of all time. And I saw him. In the flesh. With my own two little eyes. For about 40 minutes or however long it took him to dismantle his opponent. It was the best, I still can't believe we got so lucky. When you watch him on TV, he always looks really smooth and graceful...but it was 20x more apparent in person. His opponent moved really well, but looked like a drunk Clydesdale in comparison.
Afterwards we watched Andy Murray vs. Marcos Baghdatis, and then headed to some of the outer courts to watch a few women's matches. One girl in particular caught our attention due to her super manly serving grunts. The following week, that same Francesca "Grunthouse" Schiavone went on to win the whole tournament, oops!
So after a rocky first day in Paris, the second day at the tennis was awesome. The third day we spent flying through the city on bicycles. Macaroons were consumed. Eurovision finals were watched. All in all, a really good trip considering I never wanted to be there!
As far as returning someday to see the catacombs that I should have rightfully seen, don't count on it. If I want to see dead Frenchmen, I can just watch a Gerard Depardieu movie. (He's dead, right?)
Full disclosure: I am not a fan of France. Or the French people. Or the French language. I am not one of those people that thinks "trip to Europe" = "trip to Paris". I would have been totally happy to never, ever visit France. But there are two things that I have always said that I wanted to do if I was ever in the unfortunate situation of being in/near Paris:
- Visit the catacombs, which are tunnels underneath the city lined with the skulls and bones of dead Frenchmen.
- Attend Roland Garros, aka the French Open grand slam clay court tennis tournament. (This is the biggie. One of my life goals is to attend all of the grand slam
tennis tournaments in person, so I knew that I would have to suck it up
and go to Paris to be able to achieve that goal.)
So after my day in Antwerp, I hopped on a train and headed to gay Paris. It was a crappy, rainy day. My jeans and shoes were completely soaked through after walking around for the first hour. I had to eat my stupid baguette while walking through the rain. I got lost repeatedly. The trains stunk of French B.O. But! I finally found the right neighborhood for the catacombs!
French for "catacombs that-away!"
I got so excited and was so ready to go underground and see the creepy tunnels and get out of the rain. And then...
As if I needed another reason to hate France.
Then this dead Frenchman / catacomb mascot mocked me...
0"France hates you, too, Halee."
So the catacomb adventure was a full-on French failure. I made the best of the rest of my day in stupid Paris by visiting the stupid Louvre and looking at the stupid Eiffel Tower from a stupid boat. Also, I ate a stupid crepe. Luckily for me, Sophie was meeting up with me in Paris that night and once she arrived, things got a million times better. I got her singing the "Les poissons, les poissons, hee hee hee, hawr hawr hawr" song from The Little Mermaid. (But we usually substituted "poissons" with "croissants", or whatever we were eating/doing at that moment.) We met up with her friend, and turned in early so we'd be ready for all the hot tennis action the next day!
I had bought my Roland Garros tickets many months before, right when they went on sale, but even then I was too slow to get seats at the big daddy court (Court Phillippe Chartrier). I had to settle for tickets to the #2 show court (Court Suzanne Lenglen). But once we arrived at the Roland Garros grounds and got our hands on a schedule, our crappy #2 court tickets suddenly got amazing. We weren't able to see Rafael Nadal, because obviously they're going to put that boy on the biggest court. But since Rafa was hogging the big court, that meant this guy was delivered to my court...
In case you don't follow tennis enough to recognize faces or have never seen a Gillette commercial, that is Roger F'ing Federer. Probably the greatest tennis player of all time. And I saw him. In the flesh. With my own two little eyes. For about 40 minutes or however long it took him to dismantle his opponent. It was the best, I still can't believe we got so lucky. When you watch him on TV, he always looks really smooth and graceful...but it was 20x more apparent in person. His opponent moved really well, but looked like a drunk Clydesdale in comparison.
Afterwards we watched Andy Murray vs. Marcos Baghdatis, and then headed to some of the outer courts to watch a few women's matches. One girl in particular caught our attention due to her super manly serving grunts. The following week, that same Francesca "Grunthouse" Schiavone went on to win the whole tournament, oops!
So after a rocky first day in Paris, the second day at the tennis was awesome. The third day we spent flying through the city on bicycles. Macaroons were consumed. Eurovision finals were watched. All in all, a really good trip considering I never wanted to be there!
As far as returning someday to see the catacombs that I should have rightfully seen, don't count on it. If I want to see dead Frenchmen, I can just watch a Gerard Depardieu movie. (He's dead, right?)
Gerard Depardieu is fat and bloathed but still very much alive :)
So please, go watch a movie!
oh wow! it worked! i'm so confused now!
i meant a FRENCH movie of course!