Man Cannot Live On Bread Alone

But no one ever told the Parisians that. Seriously, all anyone eats there is bread. If you’re ever in Paris, here’s an easy way to spot the locals: they’re the ones constantly carrying around the massive breadsticks, that goofy, awkward French food item called a baguette, perpetually with just 2 or 3 bites taken off the top (seriously, I think those things are constantly regenerating. They must be made out of the widow’s oil and flour from the Bible, never running out. You never see anyone finishing a baguette. They are forever just beginning to eat them.) And I don’t blame them quite frankly (incidentally, the Franks were essentially the only definitively masculine group of French people to ever live. Those guys were awesome/scary). With the prices of food there, really the only thing anyone can afford to eat on a regular basis is bread.

Thankfully, we were only there for 5 nights, so we could afford to splurge every now and then and go crazy, like the time we bought a microwave lasagna, or the time we bought a microwave shepherd’s pie We didn’t actually know what we were buying in the latter, since we don’t read French, but it looked good on the box. Then we got home and started looking up the words while it was cooking and were a bit worried—meat and...applesauce? Then we realized that “potato” is literally translated “earth apple,” so we figured out it just mean mashed potatoes.

Anyway, I have now come to realize that I don’t actually hate British food at all. When we were in Oxford 2 years ago, I lost about 10 pounds in 6 weeks (unintentionally) and I thought that I really just did not like British food. I wholeheartedly agreed with Jim Gaffigan’s take on British food (I couldn't find a video, but here's my transcription of it from memory):

"I do love ketchup. Salsa, that's like the Mexican ketchup. And marinara is the Italian ketchup...and British food is terrible.

They use vinegar on their food there. You know what I use vinegar for? Cleaning windows! How bad does your food have to be when vinegar makes it taste better?"

Now I understand that all along it was French food I had a problem with. Coming down through Scotland, then London, then Dover, I kept wondering where all those boring baguettes were, all the tiny portions at astronomical prices. That hasn’t been my experience at all with British food. I’ve found very satisfying portions at fair prices at nearly every chip shop we’ve been to, and [insert fried greasy meat product here] and chips is one of my favorite tasting meals ever. Then we got to Paris, and it all came back. That’s it. I’m saying it flat out, right now. French food is horrible.

But what about all the fancy French restaurants, with all the fancy French food, you might ask. Well, I concede that such high-end French food does indeed taste pretty good. We were treated to such at the high table dinners when we were in Oxford (again with the French...I think Oxford’s got a bit of an obsession). However, that does not take price into consideration at all. If I were to spend 50 euros a person anywhere else in the world, I am confident that I could do far better. Case in point: every time we walked by a restaurant on the street and said to ourselves, “Hey, that looks/smells good. That could be worth burning a little cash on having a nice dinner in Paris,” it turned out to be an Italian restaurant.

Whoa, that was a curveball, eh? After that title you thought this was going to be some deep spiritual post, and then I ranted about food for four paragraphs. It’s okay, everyone else who read that title thought the same thing.

So enough about food. Every other stereotype I’ve ever heard about Paris was basically true. Maybe 4 days isn’t enough time to really judge an entire city, maybe, but on the surface, everything you’ve heard is true. Everyone one smokes cigarettes there. Everyone. They really do love wearing black and white horizontally striped shirts (like mimes. Except we never saw a mime. Nor did we ever see anyone playing an accordion, though we did hear one a few blocks away. But those were the only two stereotypes that let us down). Everyone rides scooters there. If an entire city could be labeled “promiscuous,” Paris would be it. People were literally making out in the streets (not that we didn’t add to the romantic atmosphere of Paris ourselves...it was our honeymoon after all).

We definitely saw an 80 year old woman walking down the street in a sheer black and white dress, with all her bright red underwear shining through for all the world to see (I'll spare you the picture).

The Eiffel Tower really is in Paris, we checked to make sure, so that stereotype is true too.

Guys really wear manpris there.

The people are incredibly rude/unfriendly. Seriously, we met only one nice French person the entire time we were there, who hooked Chelsea up with bathroom access in Starbucks even though we didn’t buy anything. Other than that, all jerks. And it wasn’t just because we were American. For the most part, people were never specifically rude to us, since we mostly just kept our heads down and our mouths shut and stayed out of the way. What I’m really talking about is how rude they were to each other, all the inconsiderate and obnoxious behavior we saw as passive observers.

Another stereotype, which I was apparently wholly unaware of, but was nonetheless quite true, were the gypsies in Paris. All I ever really knew of Parisian gypsies was from the Hunchback cartoon, and mostly all I remember from that movie was trying to figure out how to pronounce Notre Dame.

So, I almost got totally scammed by a gypsy. The very first day, on our way to start sight-seeing, we were walking across this sort of open gravel area in front of the Louvre. I, being the ultra tourist that I am, was wearing cargo shorts, sunglasses and a big backpack. According to Chelsea, that equates to a big target on my head. So up comes this lady, of some ethnicity I couldn’t really place, somewhere in between South American and Middle-Eastern, with some raggedy clothes on. She’s walking with some sort of purpose in our direction, and then all of the sudden points at something on the ground and reaches down and picks it up, exclaiming something in a language I didn’t recognize. This sort of grabs my attention, and I slow down a little bit. Then she comes running up, and she has a gold ring in her hand, and she starts showing it to me. I’m fairly intrigued, but thankfully Chelsea isn’t as gullible as me. She comes and tells the lady that that’s great luck for her, and that she should keep it. I still haven’t really caught on, but I follow Chelsea’s lead, thinking that she was just trying to be nice. But then the lady motions with her hands, pointing to where jewelry would go on her body (she’s not wearing any) and shakes her head, and points to the sky, as if to God, like she’s saying she can’t wear jewelry for religious reasons. I notice she has pierced ears at this point, and I begin to get a bit confused, but I still haven’t really gotten it (I’m a bit ashamed of how slow I was with all this. Thankfully Chelsea was there to keep me from being stupid). Then the lady proceeds to slide the ring on her finger, to show us that it’s too big for her, and motions to give it to us, and tells us (now in English) that it’s a gift from God and it’s our lucky day. Chelsea repeatedly tells her to keep it for herself, but finally gives in and just snatches the ring, grabs me by the arm and pulls us away. Then the lady starts walking away, but then stops and comes back, and asks us for money. Chelsea then very forcefully tells her no over and over again, forces the ring back in her hand, and physically forces me to walk away without another word. Then we checked all our things, and nothing was missing.

So, I was quite the gullible tourist, but Chelsea demonstrated her street smarts and saved the day. My question now is, what was this lady’s plan? We since discovered that this is quite a common gimmick among the gypsies—we saw quite a few other people targeted in that exact same area in the next few days, some even by the exact same lady (though none fell for it quite as bad as I did), and then someone attempted it on us again later that same day by the Arc de Triomphe (though he picked the wrong tourists to mess with...Chelsea was already in a bad mood from walking too far, and had already been targeted again by a gypsy trying to give her a rose...so she essentially just yelled at him to go away, and pulled me off by the arm again). So how exactly do they succeed anything with that little trick? As far as I could tell, that lady had played out her entire trick on us, and still went away empty handed. What’s her plan? When I get my wallet out to hand her a Euro, just steal the whole wallet and run? Like I wouldn’t chase her down and bury her face in the dirt? If she was going to pick-pocket us, she’d already had plenty of opportunity, so why hadn’t she? Why wasn’t there a second gypsy coming up behind us to take things while the first distracted us? As far as I can tell, they did not live up to their legendary status of tricksters and thieves in any way at all. I was quite glad to not have anything stolen, but gypsies, come on. That’s just disappointing.

So Paris sounds pretty horrible in this post so far. Could I beat up on it any more? Oh, how about this, Moulin Rouge was totally unimpressive and boring. It literally looks like a silly movie theater, and is actually a bit more impressive in the pictures than in real life (which did actually make it fun to photograph, but that was about it). For the record, Chelsea disagrees with me about Moulin Rouge.

What’s going on Seth? Are you telling us that you didn’t like Paris?

Nope, not at all. We absolutely loved Paris. It was wonderful, so much fun, and a perfect note to end on to all our crazy travels. The only thing that kept our private hostel room from being a bona fide hotel room was the fact that we didn’t have a private toilet or shower, but even those weren’t communal, and we only had to share them with a few other people that we never even saw. The room itself was certainly nice enough to be a hotel room, with our own little sink, a nice bed, a large wardrobe for all our clothes, and even our own little table and chairs. It was certainly the cleanest hostel we’ve ever been in, and cleaner than some hotels I’ve been in. So we couldn’t have been happier with where we stayed (except perhaps moving it a bit closer to the Eiffel Tower. We walked there twice, and almost died from exhaustion).

All the touristy sight-seeing was also truly incredible. The only way I know to describe it is that seeing it all makes you feel exactly how the movies make you think it would make you feel. Perhaps that’s a bit convoluted, but what I mean is that it’s not how watching a movie about Paris makes you feel, but how you imagine you would feel if you were really in the movie. That’s really what it feels like.

There really was so much to see in Paris. One of our favorites was Notre Dame, which I personally liked much better from the back and the side with its intricate, complex architecture, than I did the more famous view of the front entrance, which was itself still quite imposing and grandiose.

The first day, we took a free tour of the city, and our tour guide was American, but quite knowledgeable, so a pretty good combination. It was pretty awesome, and we saw and learned way more in those few hours on the tour than we ever could have on our own.

Hotel Invalides: used to be a military hospital.

The Obelisk...it was supposed to be a trade for a gift with Egypt...Egypt held up their end of the bargain and sent this. France never sent anything back. Egypt is still upset.

The opera house the Phantom of the Opera was inspired by.

The garden of the Royal Palais. This is where the first sparks of French Revolution were ignited.

Arc de Triomphe. This took forever to walk to, and we got attacked by that other gypsy here. But it was totally worth it. It was so epic.

This building has bullet holes in it from WWII.

We also crossed the Love Bridge, which I don’t remember the real name for. But essentially, the tradition is that you lock a padlock in one of the chain links with your true love, and then throw the key into the water, to represent its permanence. And then there’s some weird Parisian stuff where they have 2 or 3 different locks all locked together...I don’t even want to go there.

So, we wanted to do that, but we couldn’t find anywhere at all to buy a lock. Not a single souvenir shop was selling them. Just a sad, missed opportunity there. Seriously, gypsies, here’s your chance. Just sell locks right there and gouge the prices. Countless tour guides take countless gullible tourists there every day and tell them the exact same story. It’s a gold mine.

We did, however, pick out a chain link in the fence, and wrote down how to get back to it. That way, if we ever come back to Paris, we’ll be prepared with a lock in hand, and we’ll have a place to put it. Hopefully no one else puts a lock there first, or we could end up in one of those strange Parisian love triangles.

Finally, at the end of the tour, our entire tour group somehow got roped into being extras for a photo shoot for some clothing brand or bicycle brand or something. My photography professor and/or communication law professor wouldn't be too happy with me, since we didn't see one bit of paperwork or receive one bit of compensation for allowing our likeness to be used for commercial purposes. But it happened anyway...we basically stood there and watched these guys doing tricks on bicycles, and then a guy in a leather jacket wearing a panda costume head rode up behind us on a bicycle and forced his way through the crowd we had formed. That was the whole shoot, and they did 5 or 6 takes. And of course, somehow I ended up being the one standing right next to wear the panda man forced his way through the crowd, so I'm assuming that I'm in every single photo. So there's probably a picture of me floating around out there in French advertising somewhere...if anyone finds it, let me know haha.

We also decided to have dinner and a bottle of wine on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower one night, and hung around for the light show after dark. It was really romantic, and was definitely one of our favorite things we did in Paris.

Another day, we also went and had a nice picnic lunch at in these gardens...I don’t remember the real name, but we call them the Judge Gardens because, according to the tour guide, that’s where all the French people come just hang out and judge each other. It was really nice, and the weather was beautiful. We didn’t really judge anyone, but we probably got judged ourselves quite a lot.

Finally, the last day we saved to be devoted entirely to seeing the Louvre. Pronounced sort of like loov, which Chelsea and I both knew, but still quite fun to mispronounce. Until you’re standing in front of a public street map trying to figure out where to go, and repeatedly and intentionally mispronouncing it The Lurv just to be funny, until you discover a local standing behind you glaring, who has just confirmed that every negative stereotype they’ve ever heard about Americans is completely true. Which I may or may not have done.

Anyway, the Louvre is massive and epic and exhausting. You have to enter through this giant glass pyramid, which is pretty cool all by itself.

Then you have to go down underground, to like the Batcave of art, which links you up to three main buildings of the Louvre. Or maybe it’s like the Disney World of art. Seriously, there’s even like different Kingdoms. Over here you’ve got the paintings Kingdom, over there is the Greek and Egyptian antiquities Kingdom, and over there you’ve got the sculptures Kingdom. Except they call them by the proper names of the massive buildings housing each section, not Kingdoms. But they should.

So we went in there and saw a bunch of art. For 7 and a half hours. Seriously we were in there nearly an entire working day (equivalent to 2 whole French working days...seriously I don’t think anyone works there. They all just lounge around in the gardens or cafes judging people). Seeing that much art is exhausting. By the end we were practicing a technique I have personally developed over many museum trips, a technique in which you simply walk through the room or gallery, glance at as many pieces of work as you can without slowing down, and take in as much culture and sophistication as possible before leaving the room out the other side. I call this “absorbing.” It has become quite necessary for me, since I refuse to leave a museum until I have seen everything it has to offer (unfortunately for Chelsea. Especially unfortunately for both of us in a museum the size of the Louvre). Sadly, we didn’t quite make it. We skipped a large section of the “Decorative Arts” collection, which is essentially just what rich people used to decorate their homes with way back when. Mostly fancy vases and chairs and carpets and china. It got repetitive after 3 or 4 rooms. We did, however, see Napoleon III’s (Bonaparte’s nephew and successor) apartments, which were pretty incredible, and very interesting to see.

We also skipped a pretty large section of French sculpture (the Louvre was far less international than I expected...it very heavily favors French artists. Which is fine and all, I certainly don’t blame them for representing their own people. Just wasn’t what I expected).

Other than that though, we saw it all. We won’t ask you to revisit our entire 7 and a half hours there, so here’s just a few highlights (finally, a tourist attraction that actually allows photography! Of paintings, no less! No flash of course, but no big deal since it’s lit very well in there).

Winged Victory

Venus

Hammurabi's Code

A famous Mary Magdalene statue.

A big sphinx!

And finally, the Mona Lisa herself, in all her glory.

People have all warned us about the Mona (another word we enjoyed intentionally mispronouncing, Mon-er, with an exaggerated Southern accent. No wonder the French hate us). Everyone has said that it would be very disappointing. But we really weren’t. Yes, it’s a pretty small painting, yes you have to stay about 15 or 20 feet away, yes there were like 100 Japanese tourists crowding all around it going crazy, but it was still quite surreal. For the first time in my life, I really got the Mona Lisa. I really understood that there really is something special about that painting. I understood all the hubbub. It was quite surreal.

I must say, however, that still, even after seeing it in person, my primary thoughts concerning the Mona Lisa haven’t changed. That is, the thing I think most often when looking at it, is how ugly of a painting it is of an ugly woman. I guess now I just appreciate the impact of that ugliness much more.

So that was that at the Louvre. Before we left, we saw the inverted glass pyramid inside the underground entrance as well.

Then we left, exhausted and hungry. For our final activity in Paris, we went and sat out around the fountains around the glass pyramids and had a nice light dinner of sandwich meat and crackers (they love that word, light, in any context relating to food. It basically means they’ll charge you for a full meal but you’ll only eat enough to fill you up half way). It was really nice, and the breeze from the fountains felt wonderful. Then, much like at the Eiffel, we waited around till dark, and saw the pyramids and all the rest of the Louvre all lit up. It was quite beautiful, and really was a great way to end our trip to Paris, which was itself a great way to spend the waning days of our honeymoon.

We enjoyed one last night in our lovely hostel/hotel, and got up mega early the next morning to catch a train back to Calais, the port city of France (essentially their answer to Dover—totally lame, nowhere near as cool as Dover. Basically nothing interesting in Calais and the food is expensive). Then a ferry from Calais back to Dover—I made it back through British customs, hooray! So I’m good in the UK till I’m back in the states for Christmas, and then hopefully I can get a work visa to come back in January. Chelsea of course is all good on that front. So that was it for France, though for the next few days I had to catch my self from saying “Merci” instead of “Thank you.”