The next day all I did was walk. I was expecting to leave Paris at midnight, but my ride (which I had found through covoiturage) ended up not coming and I had to schedule another ride for Saturday at noon. Highlights:
Bread with chocolate chips/pain au chocolat. Best euro I ever spent.
This is how people take a break from the city... Inside the city.
I took a mini sun nap.
Then on my way home I saw four prostitutes and a million sex shops. I'd never seen a prostitute before and it scared me the first time. You're just walking down the street, minding your own business, and suddenly BOOBS. BOOBS EVERYWHERE. Pushed up, smacking you in the face, high-laced stockings and short skirts... Etc. Enough of that.
Last night, Kawtar came over with Camille and we ate escargot. It was terrifying at first, but... When in Rome, right? Or Paris, that works too.
These are snails. Snails, with butter and garlic and herbs shoved into their shells. She you bake them, the stuff melts and seasons the snail for eating. Mmmmmm!
Kawtar likes.
Finally, this morning, I went to meet my covoiturage ride to Toulouse (a city not far from where I'm headed: Saint-Girons). I'm dressed in blue and pink and I can't help but feel I look like a giant walking stick of cotton candy. And my backpack matches my shirt, to boot! Are you all ready for adventure? Cuz I AM.
It's no question whether I'm poor/cheap/stupid. When all three of those traits take over, though, it leads to adventure (and saving money, and illegal things).
This morning didn't start off too great. I had to make my first student loan payment, which I couldn't do through credit card, so I had to dig through some old email to find a scan of an old check, and in light of other financial burdens (you know, having my crap stolen), I was in a pretty awful mood. I decided to head out to Versailles today to see the palace and the gardens, but took the wrong train line first (of course) so had to backtrack a little and I got there around 1.
There were lots and lots of tourists there, many of them French, surprisingly. I didn't hear any American English, but there were plenty of Australians for whatever reason.
Gates at the palace.
A building across from the palace.
I entered the area that was labeled "TICKETS," not expecting to have to pay anything as a student, but the attendant explained to me in Italian (after I asked her in Spanish) how much it cost to see the palace. Fifteen euro! No no, that's too much to see a building. I walked outside and decided to look around the city instead. After all, what's a palace without its city?
That quickly got boring, because Versailles looks exactly like Paris but with more free space and a few unique buildings located near the palace and the city center. So I figured, maybe I can find another way in. A free way in. I remembered seeing a video online about how to travel on the cheap, and one of the pieces of advice was to sneak in. Could I sneak into a palace though? It was probably full of guards, danger, and je-ne-sais-quoi. And surely each vulnerable point in the walls surrounding the place would have been blocked off in the past four hundred years, right?
I walked through the streets of Versailles with the palace and gardens on my left. I ran into an opening at a gate that looked unguarded, but as soon as I was close a man in a black suit appeared to tell me in really awful Spanish (I kept telling people I only spoke Spanish today, I don't know why) that it would cost fifty euro to enter the gardens. Whoah, what?! No. I thought fifteen euro would cover the palace and the gardens, but apparently not, as the gardens are totally separate. I found out later that its only 6.50 to get tithe gardens, but for this point in the story I was under the impression that I would have to spend a total of 65 euro to see everything. So I kept walking.
There were some fences that looked easy to climb, but there were too many pedestrians to sneak over it, and it was three meters off the ground on a concrete slab, so I'd have to run up the wall too. So I kept walking, and finally ran across a low point in the wall that had a ledge and was covered with minimal flora. I had my chance.
Heart racing with adrenaline, I looked all ways before making the jump. I would have to make sure no one was on the other side during the jump or risk getting caught. Here goes nothing.
Alley-oop! I jumped as hard as I could and managed to land a hand on the ledge. Swinging left I got my other hand on the ledge, pulled myself up hard, looked around to make sure no one was there, and jumped down on the other side. Then I felt like Harry potter in the scene in the Goblet of Fire where he's running through the Tri-Wizard maze to avoid being killed by Viktor who was under the imperious curse. I ran quietly to the next wall of shrubbery and looked around to make sure I wasn't being followed. Nothing. Okay, I was in. Time to see the gardens.
Battle wound from the wall!
It put up a good fight, but to no avail.
The gardens weren't very impressive on the side I came in (save for the sheer magnitude) because none of the fountains were running, and because I'm not really into art. Sorry!
For whatever reason, there were a ton of these trees with a rock lodged in their branches. I couldn't figure it out either, don't worry.
The whole time, I could hear classical music coming from far away, which turned out to be coming from a fountain show on the other side.
I walked through basically the entire park, then upon finding out I couldn't get into the palace by sneaking in, decided to stroll through the public access part.
Public access running trail.
I'd had my fill of walking for the day and I didn't want to be late to make dinner for Camille so I went to a local supermarket, devoured a baguette and a banana, and got on the train, which was probably the most fun part of my day aside from jumping the wall. Couple after couple after couple of people kept coming to the train asking me which direction it was going (because the line we were on could have gone several ways depending on the train. We were going toward Paris and then I didn't know where, so I just kept asking where people were going and informing them which stop they were safe until. The cool part, though, was that I used basically every language I know to help everyone. There was a Spanish couple, some French tourists, a guy from Australia, an Italian woman and her husband, a Portuguese girl (I had to speak to her in Spanish though), and -- I kid you not -- an older Japanese couple. I was standing right where the door was so I was the first person people saw when they were looking for a place to board the train. Here's how it goes...
"Creo que este tren va en la dirección de París. A dónde vais? Vale."
"Je croix que ce train va à Paris, ou est-ce que vous allez? A bon? Ça va."
"どこに行く？ええ、この電車はパリスえいくよ。後で知っていないんだけど大丈夫。"
And so on. The only problem is that after speaking so many languages, you answer people on the wrong language and you can figure out what to say when you accidentally step on someone's foot because you're all literally piled on each other. But when everyone is like, "Dude, you're crazy" and smiling at you when you turn to someone new to talk to them in a different language, it's a great feeling. I just think the whole world needs to be polyglot (capable of speaking several languages). How else are you gonna communicate with all those billions of people who are so different (and after reflection, maybe not so different?) than you?
TOO MANY PEOPLE IN THIS SPACE
The rest of the day was unremarkable except for the American style dinner I made, which was supposed to adhere to French meal rules but didn't really. We had grapes and pasta and then French toast for "dessert." Camille put caramel on hers and thought it was atrocious how much syrup I was using, and found it strange that I tore it into pieces before putting the syrup on. "You have to tear it up like that?" she asked, sounding appalled. She didn't want a picture of her in her jammies so she took one of me instead, holding up the only thing that really matters in the world (FRENCH TOAST).
There have French toast in France, but it's not very popular and it's called 'pain perdu' or "lost bread." It's made with bread that is very dried out and isn't covered in maple syrup because it basically doesn't exist here (unless you want to pay lots of money for the imported stuff (my little 110mL bottle cost €3,50 or so). Still, very much worth it. Today was a good day!
On Saturday morning, Camillle and some of her coworkers/friends/brother planned on doing brunch together (a very un-French thing to do, apparently) and she was nice enough to invite me along. And oh, what a brunch it was. Let me tell you, the French know how to eat (...have I already written that somewhere else?).
First you get bread with butter and jam served with tea, coffee, orange juice, or hot chocolate. I almost made the mistake of asking for the "preservatifs" which for a second I thought was the word for jelly, but then I remembered that meant condoms in French and I wasn't about to yell sexual things inadvertently in front of several strangers again so soon. They also served little muffins that were the best I've ever had. But for real.
Here's the entree. Salad with a house sauce, fried potato wedges, raw fish (that freaked me out a little but I still ate it), scrambled eggs, a chicken kabob and what I think was Gouda cheese. Gouda is good.
Okay, here's the weird part. They also serve dessert after all that other food. You absolutely have to wait in between each course so you can digest some before you continue eating. I couldn't believe the amount of food I was getting for one meal, let alone the quality. And meanwhile I'm learning French through cultural osmosis, surrounded by 11 Parisians. Anyway, the dessert consists of a fruit cup, a crêpe, and a cup of sour cream. A cup of sour cream? Yes. They call it fromage blanc here, which means white cheese. In order to eat this correctly, first you eat the fruit, but leave the juice. Then you pou sugar in the sour cream, and then the leftover fruit juice on top of that. Mix it together, and eat it like pudding. It was SO GOOD. Definitely a dish to bring home. The crepe you just open up, pour sugar on it, and then fold it back up and eat it from the outside in down to the point. Jeez.
Me enjoying my brunch thoroughly.
After brunch I split up with the group to go explore some more. Camille wasn't going to be home until lat that afternoon so I had a lot of time to kill before I could get into the apartment, so off I went. I intended on first seeing Sacré Cœur, but I got super lost and ended up running into some of huge coolest things I've ever seen.
I ran into the Moulin Rouge totally by accident. For whatever reason, I noticed there was a really high population of trans people in the area.
A few streets over, I stumbled upon the Montmartre cemetery. Guys, I can't even begin to describe how impressive this cemetery was. The lengths people go to to honor the memory of others is astounding and has led to some of the coolest architecture and art that I've ever seen. I felt bad taking pictures of graves so I didn't, except for one:
I recommend that everyone at point in their lives go to see this cemetery. It's seriously the coolest thing I've seen so far. And I didn't even know it existed until I walked in. And the weird thing? It was literally inhabited heavily by ravens and black cats.
Creepy, right?
It took a couple hours but I finally found my way up Montmartre to Sacré Cœur. You have to find your way through literally hundreds of tourists, all crowded around various trinket and souvenir shops, yelling about people bumping into them, watching mimes and musicians in the street, and betting on boxes into he middle of the street that they can tell which cup has that white square on it after having been thrown around by a gambler. Being a non-tourist tourist (aka a hipster tourist), I just shoved my way through people to get to the chapel. And it was beautiful.
Sacré Cœur chapel
The view from Sacré Cœur of Paris. This city is enormous.
After all that nonsense I was in desperate need of actual clothes and shoes if I had even the slightest desire not to look like a homeless person in Paris. I found a great thrift shop (magazin d'occasion here) and bought a winter coat, shoes, and two pairs of jeans for €27. Great! Total Parisian makeover.
It'll have to do.
That night Camille invited me to have dinner with her friends. We had chips, bread, little weiners in croissants, and guacamole for an appetizer, chicken enchilada burritos as the entree, and fruit AND cheesecake for dessert (and there were plans to have chocolate fondu afterwards as well, but everyone was full). So now I can say I've had French-Mex. I'm also learning how to do the bises, which is where when you greet people you kiss next to the person's cheeks instead of shaking their hands or hugging like an American.
It's too good to be true!
On Sunday, Camille and I wanted to tour around Paris a bit and I knew something I really wanted to see was the Notre Dame de Paris. I can't even put into words how ridiculously huge it is, let alone the detail that went into literally every corner and surface of the construction of this 850 year-old masterpiece. I think if I took my mom to see it and walked inside with her, she would probably end up crying (she's like that with grandiose religious things). Totally by accident I'd managed to make it to the Notre Dame on a Sunday morning, so they were having mass when we walked in. The center is reserved "pour les fidèles" and the sides are roped off for tourists to walk around as long as they're quiet and avoid flash photography, which some people were ignoring to the chagrin of several church members. Here are some pictures.
What's with all these people getting married by all these gorgeous buildings? Oh well. Wedding photo count: 3.
Charlemagne.
A view of Notre Dame of Paris from father away.
Camille and I went our separate ways again so she could eat dinner with her brother and I went out exploring some more. Everything in France is closed on Sundays except at Champs-Élysées, where all the tourists gather on Sunday afternoons to do shopping. The point of this is to let people have a day to spend with their friends and family and rest from work. Maybe we could learn something from the French!
